NT

NT2024 – Analysis of the Northern Territory Election

Eight years and two terms after Labor defeated the Giles government and reduced the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party to just two seats, the tables were turned on 24 August this year. The Lawler Labor government suffered a massive defeat, swept from government and expelled from the greater Darwin metropolitan area, Labor retaining just four seats, all in the NT’s pastoral and remote regions.

And in another parallel with eight years ago, the 2024 election saw the government swept from office and the Chief Minister lose their seat. In 2016 it was CLP Chief Minister Adam Giles who lost his previously safe seat of Braitling. In 2024 Eva Lawler lost her marginal seat of Drysdale after a massive swing of 20.4%.

Lawler’s predecessor as Labor Chief Minister, Natasha Fyles, was also defeated. Fyles’ seat of Nightcliff had been Labor’s safest seat before the election, but was lost to the Greens who finished third on the primary vote before leap frogging to victory on preferences.

New Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro took office at her second election as leader, having lifted the CLP from two seats to eight in 2020, and going further to win 17 of the 25 seats in the Legislative Assembly at the 2024 election.

For the first time since self-government, Labor won no seats in greater Darwin. The party retained only four seats, Arafura, Arnhem, Daly and Gwoja. All four are rural and remote seats with a much higher than average percentage of Indigenous residents, and all four re-elected Labor members are themselves Indigenous.

The 2024 result is a reversion to Labor’s dire period between 1977 and 2001 when the party mainly held remote districts and struggled to break the CLP’s hold on Darwin seats.

As I wrote in my election preview, Northern Territory elections are won and lost in greater Darwin, and more particularly in Darwin’s northern suburbs. The 2012 election won by the CLP remains the only Northern Territory election where the party forming government did not electorally dominate Darwin. The three elections since, including 2024, have reverted to the long-term trend of Northern Territory politics.

The CLP’s victories in northern Darwin were not as sweeping as elsewhere in the Territory with two of Labor’s losses going to the crossbench, Independent Justine Davis winning Johnston and the Greens Kat McNamara winning Nightcliff. The CLP’s narrow victory over the Greens in Fannie Bay was an oddity with the alternative two-party preferred vote revealing a Labor majority.

I’ve prepared a summary of the results which you can find at this link. The summary also includes alternative two-party preferred counts made available by the NT Electoral Commission.

There is much detail on the results in the results summary, but I’ll go through some of the main points inside this post.Read More »NT2024 – Analysis of the Northern Territory Election

2024 Federal Redistributions – Draft Northern Territory Boundaries

(22 November – no objections were received for the draft boundaries and they should be gazetted in the new year for use at the 2025 Federal election.)

(4 March 2025 – after a long delay, the new boundaries will be gazetted today allowing them to be used at the soon to be announced federal election. That it has taken so long for an uncontroversial boundary change to be implemented is something that should be looked at in a review of the legislation.)

The final electoral jigsaw piece has been put in place for next year’s Federal election.

Redistributions have been finalised for NSW, WA and Victoria. Today has seen the release of draft boundaries for the Northern Territory.

These draft boundaries are now open for public comment, but as the Redistribution Commissioner’s proposal is the same as every submission suggested, the final stage of the redistribution will simply rubber stamp the draft proposal.

If you want to make a submission or read more detail on the redistribution, you can do so through the AEC’s NT Redistribution site.

In this post I’ll just give a brief summary of the change and estimated new margins for Lingiari and Solomon.Read More »2024 Federal Redistributions – Draft Northern Territory Boundaries

NT2024 Election – Post-Election Blog

This post will track counting in the close seats that remain in play after the Country Liberal Party’s landslide victory.

This post is ordered with the most recent updates at the top of the page.

Wednesday 4 September

4:30pm – what happened in Nightcliff shows up strongly in the table below. The table shows preference flows to the Greens by polling place and count centre. It is ordered by ascending preference flows to the Greens. The higher the vote for Independent Mililma May, the stronger the flow of excluded candidate preferences to the Greens, and the stronger the CLP vote, the weaker the flow of preferences to the Greens.

Percentage Preference Flows to the Greens
Polling Place/Count Centre Votes CLP Primary % Ind May Primary % % Preference Flows
Eaton EVC 1,429 29.8 14.7 40.7
Darwin EVC 464 24.6 18.4 63.5
Absent 649 24.1 19.7 66.6
Casuarina 659 20.3 22.0 65.1
Postal 232 21.6 22.0 64.8
Nightcliff School 1,099 18.0 22.7 73.5
Declaration 35 17.1 31.4 79.2
Total 4,567 23.8 19.3 61.5

On the three way flow of preferences from May and Mamouzellos, preferences flowed 72.6% to the Greens, 14.0% to Labor and 13.4% to the CLP. On the exclusion of the CLP, preferences split 51.4% to Labor and 48.6% to the Greens. I had left the seat in doubt despite my assumption that 60% of CLP preferences would flow to Labor. It turns out I was right to leave Nightcliff in doubt as CLP preferences were weaker than I had expected. CLP voters made up their own minds on preferences with close to half ignoring the CLP HTV recommendation to put Labor before the Greens.

As the result is so close, the NT Electoral Commission will undertake a full re-count of all Nightcliff votes tomorrow. After the cut off for postal votes at midday on Friday, the final handful of postal votes will also be added to the count.

Nightcliff Update 3:45pm: The Labor versus Greens preference count has been released and the Greens are 42 votes ahead. There cannot be many votes left to count so this is bad news for Labor’s Natasha Fyles and the Greens must now be favoured to win.

If the Greens are confirmed as winning Nightcliff, Labor will be left with four seats, Arafura, Arnhem, Daly and Gwoja. Labor will be left with no urban seats, losing all seats they previously held in Darwin and Palmerston.

Nightcliff Update: The Labor-CLP two-party preferred count has disappeared from the NTEC results feed so I presume a re-throw of preferences is underway.
Read More »NT2024 Election – Post-Election Blog

2024 Northern Territory Election

This is my obligatory election night post, put here because thousands of people end up on my blog site on election night courtesy of Google.

I will not be publishing anything here tonight as I am working on the ABC’s live election coverage of the results, which you can see live in the Northern Territory from 6pm Central time on the ABC’s main channel.

If you are somewhere else in Australia, the coverage will be carried live on the ABC News Channel from 6:30pm eastern time.

Now a few links if you are after information on the election.Read More »2024 Northern Territory Election

NT2024 Election – Tracking the Early Vote

Update at the end of early voting on Friday 23 August.

(A note on terminology – I will use ‘Early’ voting as an overall term for three separate categories of vote, Pre-Poll in person, voting by Mobile teams, and Postal voting.)

This post will track the number of Pre-Poll and Mobile votes taken during the campaign and the number of Postal Vote packs dispatched.

Final figures on Friday 23 August at the end of early voting. Note that it is possible some final mobile voting numbers from remote areas may not be added until tomorrow morning.

  • 61,055 pre-poll votes have been taken representing 39.8% of enrolment. This is higher in votes but lower in percentage than 2020 when 60,295 pre-poll votes were taken representing 42.7% of enrolment.
  • 8,316 postal vote packs have been dispatched representing 5.4% of enrolment. This is down on 10,241 packs dispatched in 2020 or 7.3% of enrolment.
  • A total of 3,815 postal votes have been returned representing 45.9% of dispatched postal vote packs and 2.5% of enrolment.
  • 13,074 mobile polling team votes have been collected representing 8.5% of enrolment, or 25.7% in the eight districts where mobile polling is used. This is down on 12,877 votes or 9.1% in 2020. At this stage it looks like the turnout for mobile polling is low. Some final reports of pre-polling may arrive on Saturday.
  • In total 82,455 ballot papers have been issued or dispatched representing 53.8% of enrolment, down on 83,414 ballot papers or 59.1% in 2020. One difference is that fewer postal votes have been requested, the rate having been particularly high in 2020 due to Covid.

Note that in 2020 out of 141,225 enrolled voters, only 105,833 cast votes that were included in the count. The figure for 2024 may be around 110,000 votes, which suggests that 60% of votes have already been cast.

Based on campaign reporting, the final numbers for 2020 were –

  • 60,295 pre-poll votes were taken taken representing 42.7% of enrolment.
  • 10,242 postal vote packs were dispatched representing 7.3% of enrolment.
  • 12,877 mobile polling team votes were collected representing 9.1% of enrolment.

The breakdown of these categories in the final results was slightly different. Some early and mobile votes cast out of district ended up reported as Absent votes for other districts. Not all postal votes were returned, others were cancelled out by the voter having cast an ordinary vote, and others were rejected because the paperwork was incorrect.

The final category totals reported as part of the 2020 NT election result were –

  • 56,387 pre-poll votes were reported in results as pre-polls representing 39.9% of enrolment or 53.3% of total votes.
  • 6,790 postal votes made the final count representing 4.8% of enrolment or 6.4% of all votes.
  • 11,936 mobile polling team votes made it into the count reported as mobile team results and represented 8.5% of enrolment or 11.3% of all votes.

Read More »NT2024 Election – Tracking the Early Vote

NT 2024 – The CLP’s Pathway to Power and Labor’s Options to Block it

With 25 seats up for grabs and only 13 needed for majority government, it is no exaggeration to say that just a handful of seats could decide the Northern Territory election.

And given there are an average of 6,140 electors per seat, that handful of seats could come down to a few handfuls of votes. In 2020, eight seats recorded majorities of under 120 votes, four seats under 50.

The starting grid for the election is that Labor holds 14 seats, the Country Liberal Party (CLP) seven, and four seats are held by Independents.

The loss of just two seats will cost the Labor government its majority while the CLP need a net gain of six seats for majority government.

In between two seats and six lies the possibility of minority government, the fate of both major parties resting on the Assembly crossbench.

After two terms of Labor government, everything points to there being a swing to the Country Liberals, the election to be fought overwhelmingly in Labor seats.

So which seats pave the CLP’s pathway to majority government, and what obstacles can Labor use to block the path?

All links in this post are to individual electorate pages in my ABC NT2024 Election Guide.Read More »NT 2024 – The CLP’s Pathway to Power and Labor’s Options to Block it

NT 2024 Election – Enrolment, Candidates, Parties

Nominations closed today at noon (Darwin time) for the Northern Territory Election on 24 August. The draw for ballot position started at 3pm local time.

A total of 80 candidates have nominated. Details of candidates in ballot paper order have been updated on my ABC Northern Territory Election Guide.

Inside this post you can find tables on final enrolment, the number and composition by party of candidates contesting the election, along with comparison to enrolment and nominations at previous elections.
Read More »NT 2024 Election – Enrolment, Candidates, Parties

Launch of my 2024 Northern Territory Election Guide

The Northern Territory goes to an the polls on 24 August. The two-term Labor government, led since last December by Eva Lawler, is seeking to secure a third term in government.

The opposition Country Liberal Party (CLP) hopes for a return to office and will be led for the second time by Lia Finnochiaro. She took over as CLP leader in January 2020, just before the Labor government’s fortunes were turned around by its handling of Covid19.

Finnochiaro took over a party that remained devastated by the landslide defeat of the Giles CLP government in 2016. The party had only two members, Finnochiaro becoming leader when her colleague Gary Higgins announced he would retire. Her first election as Leader lifted the CLP from two members to eight, and Finnochiaro will be hoping to reach 13 members and majority government on 24 August.

The starting point for the election, taking into account resignations and by-elections, is that Labor holds 14 seats, the CLP seven seats and Independents four in the 25 member Legislative Assembly.

The ABC has now published my NT24 election guide. You can find the full guide here with all the usual features including full details on each electorate’s geography, history and past results, as well as evolving detail on the candidates contesting each seat. The site also links to the ABC’s NT24 election news page. And there will be a full results service on election night.

My election preview gets a little long and involved so I thought I would share an excerpt on this blog explaining why the contest for the seats in Darwin’s northern suburbs will be so important to the election outcome.Read More »Launch of my 2024 Northern Territory Election Guide

Redistribution begins for Northern Territory Federal Boundaries

Today marks seven years since the Northern Territory’s current federal electoral boundaries were first gazetted. Under the ‘seven-year rule’ in Section 59 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, a redistribution of the NT’s federal boundaries must commence within 30 days.

The NT’s redistribution will differ from those currently underway in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. The other state redistributions have been triggered by a change in seat entitlements under Section 24 of the Constitution. New South Wales and Victoria will both lose a seat, Western Australia gain a seat. The seat numbers will be unchanged at two for the NT redistribution.

Seven-year rule redistributions can be deferred if they commence within twelve months of the expiry date for the House of Representatives. The deferral deadline in 2024 is May, meaning seven-year rule redistributions due for Tasmania in November and Queensland in March 2025 will be deferred until after the next election.

But the Northern Territory redistribution will go ahead. With only two seats involved, the process of drawing boundaries will be easily completed before the next election is due. Unlike with change of seat number redistributions, there are no complications if an early election is called because the existing NT divisions would remain in place.

While unlikely to have major political implications, it is worth looking at the NT redistribution to examine how the NT briefly lost its second seat in 2020, and also to observe how the Australian Electoral Commission’s Indigenous enrolment drive before the 2023 referendum has increased remote enrolment.
Read More »Redistribution begins for Northern Territory Federal Boundaries