To complete my set of election guides for 2024 and 2025, I’ve just finished my guide to the 2025 Western Australian state election.
The guide features profiles of all 59 lower house races and the new first ever statewide upper house election.
The 2021 Western Australian state election was a remarkable election. Labor polled almost 70% of the two-party-preferred vote and almost 60% of the primary vote, winning all but six seats. The result gave them their first every upper house majority, clearing the way to reform the upper house.
Because of the remarkable result in 2021, the pendulum now looks extremely imbalanced. For the conservative parties to form a majority government, they would need to win 25 seats off Labor. A uniform swing of 23.3% would be needed for those 25 seats to fall. This means that a close election contest would involve quite large swings.
The most marginal seats are not necessarily the most interesting. But it’s also not just a matter of assuming a uniform swing – some seats will undoubtedly swing more strongly back towards the conservatives than others, but a close election in the future may not involve exactly the same close races as previous close elections.
Most of the guide is an exclusive for Patreon donors. Sign up for $5 or more per month to access the full guide. If you want a taste, I’ve unlocked three seats:
- Churchlands – Labor’s most marginal seat, a seat that traditionally has always been held by Liberals or conservative independents. Television presenter and lord mayor Basil Zempilas has thrown his hat in the ring for Liberal preselection here.
- Collie-Preston – A Labor seat held by a 23.3% margin, this is Labor’s 25th-most marginal seat against the Liberals or Nationals. The town of Collie has always voted very strongly for Labor, and in 2021 the booths in Collie voted by well over 80% for Labor.
- Mid-West – This seat is a merger of the regional seats of Moore and North West Central, which were two of the four seats won by the Nationals in 2021. Merome Beard won the North West Central by-election in 2022, but last year defected to the Liberal Party. The seat is held by opposition leader Shane Love, but could end up being a contest directly between the two conservative parties. This could be the tip of the iceberg, with the Nationals threatening to also run in traditional Liberal seats in metro areas.
If you click through to the guide you can see an alphabetical list of seats, or a pendulum, with links to every race, or you can use the map below to navigate through to any seat profile.
The Northern Territory will undergo a federal redistribution, which will be easily completed before the federal election as there will still be two seats and none will be renamed.
https://antonygreen.com.au/redistribution-begins-for-northern-territory-federal-boundaries/
According to Antony Green, Solomon is 5.8% under quota, while Lingiari is 5.8% over quota (surprising since I thought it would be the opposite).
@np that depends on when the election is. But yes odds are it will be completed. Even if it’s not it will just he paused
In regards to wa. The libs Nat opposition should at least be competitive this election I reckon they will have a good shot at the 2029 election
To make Solomon more than just a Darwin seat, my initial proposal would be to move Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands into Solomon.
This would put Lingiari on even more of a knife’s edge, with Labor’s margin being cut from 0.95% to 0.53% (the notional TPP would be Labor 50.53%, CLP 49.47%). In 2022, Labor would have won 36.12% of the primary vote while the CLP would have won 35.04% of the primary vote.
@John the NT is easy though because it’s only two seats. NSW and Victoria have over 30.
@nether portal I’m thinking of doing something similar but I imagine they will just realign the palmerston boundary and make lingiari more closer to Labor though given the knife edge margin it shouldn’t make any difference
C’mon guys this is completely off topic. If an NT redistribution is commenced I’ll make a blog post. If you really need to discuss it in the meantime, pick one of the actual federal redistribution posts.
I wonder if there’s any formerly safe Liberal seats now held by Labor that will stay Labor into the future? There seems to be a handful of such surprises after landslides, even as an opposition begins to recover. East Hills in NSW is a prominent example.
Yeah I don’t think the swing back will be a mirror image of the swing to Labor in 2017/21.
@ben raue im assuming it will be andrew green has already put up a post saying it will