Independents

FED2025 – Independent Two-Party Preferred Preference Flow Data

The 2025 House of Representatives election was the first where more than a third of primary votes were cast for ‘Others’.

In total, minor parties and Independents recorded 33.6% of the primary vote. This was more than 31.8% for the Coalition and only one percent short of Labor’s vote.

The rise in support for ‘Others’ has changed the nature of seat contests at House elections. Elections today are far removed from the days when almost all seats finished as two-party preferred contests between Labor and the Coalition.

The word ‘classic’, which I’ve always associated with vintage cars and ice cream marketing, has been adopted by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) to describe traditional Labor versus Coalition contests. Or rather the AEC calls all other combinations of final candidates after preferences as ‘Non-Classic’, which it helpfully provides a list of on its election results website. (2025 list here)

In this post I’m providing information on two-party preferred preference flows in these Non-Classic seats, data that has not previously been available. This includes preference flow splits between Labor and the Coalition from votes cast for Independents in Non-Classic contests.

Until 1983, preferences were only distributed in seats where no candidate reached 50% of the primary vote. The AEC began to conduct distributions in all seats for ‘information purposes’ in 1984. That election saw every seat finish as a two-party preferred race.

Every election since has seen at least one Non-Classic contest. And as the chart below shows, the numbers have ballooned at the last four elections.

The chart above is based on all Non-Classic contests. The last three elections have seen a particular surge in these contests involving Independents. In 2019 there were seven final counts that involved Independents, rising to 16 in 2022 and 20 in 2025.

The AEC continues to do full distributions of preferences to the final pairing of candidates in every seat. Since the 1990s it has also undertaken alternative two-party preferred counts in every seat. (Except in Bradfield in 2025 for reasons explained later.)

The AEC counts preferences in two ways. First is by conducting the legally required full distribution of preferences in every seat to produce a two-candidate preferred count. Second, the AEC tallies what are called ‘preference flows’ in every seat for both two-candidate and two-party preferred finishes. I’ll describe how preference flows are calculated inside the post.Read More »FED2025 – Independent Two-Party Preferred Preference Flow Data

The Success of Local Independents – Kooyong

A key story of the last three federal elections has been the Liberal Party’s loss of once safe heartland seats to ‘teal’ Independents.

The list is a catalogue of seats once held by Prime Ministers and senior Liberal Ministers. In NSW there’s Wentworth, North Sydney (now abolished), Warringah, Mackellar and Bradfield. In Victoria it’s Goldstein (recovered in 2025) and Kooyong, and in Western Australia, Curtin.

These electorates top lists of the most affluent in the country. They encompass some of the most desirable and expensive real estate in each state. As recently as a decade ago, it was unthinkable they could leave the Liberal fold.

There are no Queensland or South Australian seats in the above list, but two could be. The Adelaide Hills seat of Mayo, held by Rebekha Sharkie since 2016, is effectively an independent as the only member of the Centre Alliance. Ryan, Brisbane’s leafiest and once safest Liberal seat, has been held by the Greens since 2022.

As well as being Liberal Party losses, these seats have seen a dramatic decline in their Liberal two-party preferred margins based on alternative preference counts versus Labor.

Indeed, Wentworth, Warringah, Ryan and Mayo recorded Labor two-party preferred majorities by alternative counts in 2025. Had a full two-party preferred count been completed in Bradfield, this once safest of safe Liberal seats could also have turned red.

The paradox is that Labor is achieving record two-party preferred results in these seats despite the party’s primary vote collapsing. The decline in Liberal two-party preferred results in these seats says more about Liberal support in its once safe seats than it says about Labor prospects.

Support for both sides of politics has declined since the high point of two-party politics in 1975. The decline has accelerated in the last two decades. Labor’s support is down sharply from its 2007 victory under Kevin Rudd. The Coalition’s collapse is an even steeper decline from a higher starting point at the 2013 election.

The loss for Labor has been in large part matched by rising support for the Greens. Much of Labor’s fall has also been in seats it doesn’t win, such as rural seats and Coalition seats contested by high profile Independents. This causes Labor’s loss of primary vote to have less impact on the number of seats it wins.

For the Coalition, and more particularly the Liberal Party, the destination of lost primary votes is less obvious. The Liberal Party has lost some support to Labor and to several conservative minor parties. But it is the loss of support in a limited number of seats to ‘teal’ and other centrist Independents that has damaged the Liberal Party by costing it once safe seats.

In this post I’m going to look at the loss of Liberal vote to the centre, to urban Independents. To illustrate the trend, I’m going to analyse one ‘teal’ seat in depth, the inner Melbourne seat of Kooyong.
Read More »The Success of Local Independents – Kooyong

FED2025 – Evidence on Labor Supporters Voting Strategically for Independents

It has long been a given of Australian politics that support for the two major parties is higher in the House than the Senate.

But that rule was broken at the 2025 Federal election when Labor polled half a percent higher in the Senate, 35.11% to 34.56% in the House.

The lower rate of informal voting for Senate elections means there were an additional 380,953 formal votes in the Senate. But of those extra votes, Labor recorded more than half, polling 218,890 more Senate votes than House votes.

More telling was where Labor’s Senate vote was stronger.

Labor’s higher Senate vote is down almost entirely to the 14 divisions that finished as contests between Coalition and Independent candidates. In these seats Labor recorded just under 250,000 more Senate votes than House votes.

Compare this to the other 136 divisions where Labor recorded around 31,000 fewer votes in the Senate than the House.

In these 14 contests, Labor’s Senate vote was 2.1 times its House support, Greens support 1.8 times higher. Compare these ratios to the Coalition polling roughly the same vote at both elections in these seats.

There are only two seats in the country where Coalition supporters showed similar rates of split voting. In Independent held Fowler in western Sydney the Coalition’s Senate vote was 1.7 times its House vote. In Calwell where Labor was challenged by an Independent, the Coalition’s chamber ratio was 1.4.

The pattern of support reveals clear evidence of Labor supporters changing their House first preference vote to engage in strategic voting. Labor voters backed Labor in the Senate, but in the House voted for Independents with a better chance of defeating the Coalition.

Strategic voting has long been a feature of simple majority voting elections in countries such as the United Kingdom. At UK elections, in seats where a voter’s preferred party can’t win, voters have learnt to vote strategically. They cast a vote for the candidate most likely to defeat their least preferred candidate rather than vote for their preferred party’s candidate who can’t win.

The UK Conservative Party has at times suffered from UK Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters switching party with the intent of defeating the Conservative candidate.

In Australia, preferential voting has allowed parties to compete against each other without splitting the vote. Liberal and National candidates, and Labor and Greens candidates, can compete for votes with preferences then reducing the contest to a left versus right contest.

But the emergence of Independent candidates, especially so-called ‘Teal’ candidates, has created a different dynamic. Independents have shown an ability to poll well and defeat Coalition candidates on strong flows of Labor and Green preferences.

But to do so, Independents must first outpoll the Labor candidate on primary votes. Which is where strategic House voting by Labor and Greens supporters in voting Independent is flipping contests against the Coalition.

The seat-by-seat difference in Labor and Green support in the two house is clear evidence that strategic voting exists in Australia, and it is becoming a major problem for the Coalition, in particular the Liberal Party.Read More »FED2025 – Evidence on Labor Supporters Voting Strategically for Independents

Obstacles in the way of Independents at the ACT Election

Australian jurisdictions that elect upper houses by proportional representation, and allow the grouping of candidates on the ballot paper, have a two step process for nomination.

First a candidate nominates. Then candidates can lodge a separate form requesting they be grouped on the ballot paper. Candidate that don’t lodge a grouping request will be placed in the ‘Ungrouped’ column on the far right of the ballot paper.

When requesting grouping, candidates also specify the order in which their names will be listed in the column. Where the candidates are from a registered party or parties, their party name or names will be printed at the top of the column.

The rules are different for Tasmania and the ACT, the two jurisdictions that use variants of the Hare-Clark electoral system. Request for grouping are allowed, but parties and candidates cannot determine the order names are listed. Hare-Clark ballot papers randomise the order of candidate names printed in each column.

In Tasmania there are differences in the grouping rules for party candidates versus independent candidates. Parties simply request their candidates, or even a single candidate, be listed in one column. An Independent or Independents can make the same request, but as explained in this post, they must supply more nominator names.

In contrast the ACT does not allow grouped Independents. Independents will be placed in the Ungrouped column unless the Independents go through the process of registering a party name. For slightly different reasons, David Pocock registered a party called David Pocock to contest the 2022 Senate election, making it easier for voters to identify him on the ballot paper.

This rule on Independents will be a major impediment for the talk of Independents contesting the ACT election in October. Unless they register some sort of party name to nominate under, ACT Independents will be placed in the Ungrouped column.

The first blog post I ever published was in 2008 and concerned changes to the ACT Electoral Act restricting ballot paper columns to registered parties.

That old blog is no longer publicly available. With Tasmanian and ACT elections looming, and talk of high profile Independents contesting both, I thought it worth resurrecting the old post. In short, Tasmania provides a mechanism allowing Independents access to a column on the ballot paper, but the ACT does not.

The unaltered post below was first published on 28 March 2008.Read More »Obstacles in the way of Independents at the ACT Election