FED2025 – House Results in Victoria
I felt a certain sense of deja vu ahead of the 2025 election when it appeared the fate of the Albanese government could swing on the unpopularity of a Victorian state Labor government.
At the first Federal election I covered in March 1990, Victoria was Labor’s weak state. It was still eight months until Paul Keating uttered his ‘recession we had to have’ line, but already in March the economic failings of the Victorian Labor government had tipped the state’s economy into recession.
In March 1990 the full scale of the Victorian government’s financial disasters were still months from being known, but the souring electoral mood was to cost the Hawke government ten seats south of the Murray. It took gains elsewhere for Labor to win a narrow re-election.
The narrative ahead of the 2025 election had similarities. As I wrote in my election preview, “The question for 2025 is whether the Albanese government can distance itself from the state Labor government, or whether the Liberal Party can successfully tie the two together. Peter Dutton will also need to rally the factionalised and dispirited Victorian branch of the Liberal Party, not an easy task for a Queenslander.”
Yet it was in Victoria that Labor had gained an extra seat at the April 2023 Aston by-election. It was in Victoria that Labor retained the marginal Labor seat of Dunkley at a March 2024 by-election. At both by-elections, Peter Dutton was perceived as a negative for the Liberal Party with Victorian voters, compounded by on-going fratricide within the Liberal Party’s state branch.
Federal Labor’s wariness of its state brethren could be gauged by the scarcity of joint campaign events featuring Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. It contrasted with high rotation appearances with Labor Premiers Roger Cook (WA), Peter Malinauskas (SA) and Chris Minns (NSW).
But as elsewhere in Australia, election night shredded pre-election perceptions. Labor increased its Victorian vote and number of seats held. Labor’s Victorian two-party preferred vote was higher than in NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. Victoria joined Western Australia at the low end of swings to Labor, but both both states started from a high Labor vote in 2022.Read More »FED2025 – House Results in Victoria