ziltoid101

Hello! Maybe this is the wrong place as I'm sure there are a lot of political aficionados here, but I did a little write-up on the little quirks, key seats, and unexpected results of Saturday's election. I've personally found it kinda annoying to trawl through ABC and Poll Pludger on a seat-by-seat basis, so I thought I'd give more of a state-focused overview on what's happened for those that haven't really looked into the finer details of the results yet.

NSW

• Labor retain all of (and grow their margins in) their marginal seats, and gain marginal seats of Banks, Bennelong, and Hughes (thanks to a big redistribution of the district area) from the Liberal party.
• Independent (and former Nationals member) Andrew Gee has gained Calare from his old party.
• Independent Nicolette Boele is likely to gain the seat of Bradfield from the Liberal party.
• Independent Dai Le retains her marginal seat of Fowler.

VIC

• Labor gains the marginal seats of Deakin and (probably) Menzies from the Liberal party. Labor also have a good chance of winning Melbourne back from The Greens, partially due to a redistribution of the district area.
• Labor risk losing their (formerly) safe seat of Bendigo to the Nationals.
• Another safe Labor seat, Calwell, is challenged by multiple independents (making the count difficult/slower), but Labor are likely to retain.
• Similarly, the Liberal seat of Monash has a close, complicated count, but is likely to remain unchanged.
• Goldstein remains a toss-up between incumbent independent Zoe Daniel and the Liberal party.
• Independent Monique Ryan is fairly likely to retain Kooyong.
• The marginal Liberal seat of Casey has bucked the trend and been retained, with a modest swing away from Labor.

QLD

• Labor has won marginal seats Bonner, Dickson, Leichhardt, Forde, and Petrie from the LNP. Longman may join this list, but still remains a coin toss.
• Labor has gained Brisbane and Griffith from The Greens. Ryan should be retained by The Greens. A lot of these big swings are shaped more so by the 2CP count rather than changes in The Green's primary vote.
• Flynn is the one marginal LNP seat that has bucked the trend, being retained with a strengthened LNP vote.

WA

• Labor has claimed the marginal seat of Moore from the Liberal party. Probably helped by ex-Liberal incumbent MP Ian Goodenough running as an independent against his old party.
• Labor have also held onto (and strengthened their result in) Tangney, a key marginal seat they swung in their favour in 2022.
• The new seat of Bullwinkel is likely to be claimed by Labor in a very close contest (currently only 85 votes difference, out of 89000 votes total!). This seat is perhaps one of the more curious ones in Australia atm, it looks like one of those American gerrymandered districts - the area is largely around the conservative Wheatbelt and Perth Hills region, but contains a thin sliver of Labor's stronghold suburbs to the far east of Perth.
• Forrest will likely be retained by the Liberal party, although independent Sue Chapman has given them a good challenge.
• Regional areas showed very strong swings towards the Liberal party, even in the semi-metropolitan area of Canning. The 'Keep The Sheep' campaign has been very vocal and this likely reflects their efforts (although this is only really relevant to Canning, the only seat possibly within Labor's reach this time).
• Fremantle (one of Labor's safest seats nationally!) looks like it could be lost to independent Kate Hulett. A super thin margin on this, so we'll need to wait and see. I think this would be the first example of a "teal independent" targeting a safe Labor seat - to my knowledge all others have targeted safe LNP seats. If Kate gets in, this could really shape the way people see this political movement going forwards.
• Kate Chaney has held on to retain Curtin as an independent, but only slightly improved her narrow 2022 margin. This seems to be the case with many returning teal independents - a strong Liberal performance in 2028 could see them as some of the first seats to fall.

SA

• Labor has gained the marginal seat of Sturt from the Liberal party, and strengthened their lead in all other seats.
• The Liberal party holds on to two seats; Barker and Grey (the latter in spite of a strong effort from independent Anita Kuss)

TAS

• Huge swings to the ALP has seen them secure the two Liberal-held seats of Bass and Braddon. Labor will also retain their safe seat of Franklin despite a decent challenge from independent Peter George.
• The only non-Labor-held seat is now Clark, held comfortably by independent Andrew Wilkie.

ACT

• Very likely no changes, with ALP retaining their three seats despite a bit of competition from independent Jessie Price in Bean.

NT

• Labor retain their two seats. There was a considerable swing against them in Solomon (Darwin/Palmerston), but a roughly equal swing towards them in Lingiari (the rest of the NT).

SENATE

• The senate takes longer to count, so this is more of a preliminary analysis. Long story short, nothing too drastic has changed. ALP is likely to gain at least 3 senators; LNP has likely lost 5 senators. One Nation may gain up to 2 of these senator positions lost by the LNP, but Labor are probably front-runners for these spots. The best case scenario for Labor would be that they only have to rely on the Greens (and not other crossbenchers) for a majority.
• In each of the 5 big states, the LNP appear very likely to lose one senator. These spots are likely to be gained by ALP senators, but One Nation could potentially compete for this spot in both WA and SA.
• ACT and NT unsurprisingly remain unchanged. The Liberal party has plummeted to 15-20% of the primary vote in ACT - maybe threatening to sack a large portion of the population of the territory wasn't a great idea.
• Other parties are probably unaffected in the senate (QLD looks like they're going to re-elect Malcolm Roberts for One Nation :/). There's an outside chance that Jacqui Lambie loses her spot to Labor in Tasmania, but it's too early to say.

Summary

• Labor gained a lot of seats from the Liberal party, strengthening their position in the House Of Representatives. The Nationals seemed largely immune to this swing.
• Independents also did fairly well in this election, with incumbents retaining and newcomers gaining several seats, continuing the huge rise of independents we saw in 2022.
• The Greens would be concerned that their primary vote has stagnated following a decent rise in 2022. Their big loss of seats was mostly out of their control (due to changes in 2CP counts, plus the redistribution of Melbourne), although there was still a considerable swing against Bandt.
• One Nation are still a fair ways off having much power, but their primary vote grew in every state, about 1-3% of the total vote. Considering they only have ~6% of the national primary, this is a fairly decent increase for them.
• Australia continues to ignore Clive Palmer. God bless this country.

Let me know your thoughts/insights! I'd love to hear any personal experience/vibes from seats you know about.