Polls have just closed on the east coast.
You can discuss the election results here tonight.
I won’t be liveblogging tonight – I’ll be helping with the ABC’s election coverage. But I’ll be back on Sunday with some written analysis and a podcast.
I suspect the website may struggle with traffic tonight, but I am just going to let it cope as best it can.
Very confident about Bass going Labor.
Who honestly expected the likes of Petrie, Forde and Hughes going into the Labor column?
Interested to see if postals flip any of those marginal or teal seats back to Libs. I’m still traumatised from Warringah 2019.
I’m still processing the whole situation
– Was it just me or was I unable to access this site during election night?
– Adam Bandt possibly losing Melbourne to Labor
– Labor wins a landslide election, beating Rudd (83), Hawke (86) and potentially getting near Howard’s record of 94 seats; btw I’m using Pollbludger’s numbers here, ABC at this time still shows Labor on 85 seats
– Labor winning big in QLD- Bonner, Petrie, Forde, Dickson, Leichhardt, Brisbane, Griffith
– Labor unseating popular incumbents in Banks, Bass and Menzies (losing Keith Wolohan is great loss for Liberals)
– Caz Heise not winning Cowper
Finally the site’s back up, but the result is shocking. Labor have won a landslide, despite their poor record in government.
Very strange election results in some areas. Clearly the election was a massive rejection of Peter Dutton, because it meant an unpopular Albo got re-elected easily even while having low approval ratings.
Peter Dutton has lost his own seat of Dickson and the Coalition have been poor nationwide and statewide everywhere except Queensland (where they still have a slim majority of the TPP which I suspect will increase with prepolls and postals) and the Northern Territory (where there was a swing to them and they nearly did (and still could) gain Solomon).
The Coalition might still pick up Bullwinkel, but that’s not good enough at all. So many talented young and moderate MPs were unseated due to Dutton. I don’t think the reason Dutton lost is because of Trump, even though he’s even more unpopular than Albo and Dutton, but rather because he’s unelectable and his personality is off-putting.
A leader who can’t hold his or her own seat and not only can’t pick up key marginals but also has gone backwards in them is unelectable, and this disproves Sky News’ theory of Trumpism or right-wing populism working in Australia. Trumpet of Patriots have won zero House seats and zero Senate seats despite billions of spending by Clive Palmer.
I think another big thing we need to see is that the state results are becoming more and more different from the federal ones. Take Forde for example. Labor’s picked up Forde from the LNP, yet Queensland Labor who did better than expected in Brisbane would’ve notionally lost it to the LNP on the state election results.
Unfortunately, Bridget Archer has lost her seat, meaning the Liberals are without their key moderate, though I suspect she’ll be back soon either in federal or state parliament, perhaps as a Senator. The Liberals now have no seats left in Tassie despite the state having a four term incumbent Liberal government.
Herbert has swung to the LNP yet again, showing a continuing trend away from Labor in Townsville on the federal and state level, though in Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth the trend is very much against the Coalition, with the Coalition now without any seats that are entirely within those cities.
More analysis to come in the morning and in the coming few weeks and months. Elections are a lot to unpack, this one’s no exception.
Interestingly, Andrew Hastie retained his seat with a 3.6% swing towards him
What an utter failure for Dutton, the coalition and everyone else who thought leaning into right wing talking points would win an election. Focusing on welcome to countries rather than the economy showed everyone who they really were, but sky after dark liked it so they went along with it.
While 90+ seats it huge, the bigger result is picking up 18 senate seats compared to coalitions 13. Plus 6 for the greens, one for Pocock and one for Lambie. Even if it swings back towards liberal next election, they will struggle to get anything through the senate until a second term.
30/76 senate seats Labor.
27 coalition.
11 greens.
8 others.
Gives them options to pass legislation. Can work with the Greens OR the coaltions OR the cross bench. Where as before they needed greens and some of the cross bench.
7 NAT seats in NSW compared to 6 liberal.
3 NAT seats in VIC compared to 4 liberal.
@Lurking Westie the Liberals have lost Moore but look currently set to gain Bullwinkel. I think part of this is the recovery swing back to the Liberals but Dutton being unpopular (again I note that Albo is too) drained some of that out.
Swings to Labor so far in WA on TPP/TCP:
* Brand: +0.1%
* Bullwinkel: –3.8%
* Burt: +2.8%
* Canning: –3.6%
* Cowan: +3.2%
* Curtin: +0.6% to Independent from Liberal
* Durack: –6.1%
* Forrest: +1.5%
* Fremantle: –16.5% from Labor to Independent
* Hasluck: +6.1%
* Moore: +4.6%
* O’Connor: –7.5%
* Pearce: –2.3%
* Perth: +2.8%
* Swan: +5.3%
* Tangney: +3.9%
The swings to Labor seem to mostly be in the working-class suburbs, the inner-city suburbs and the multicultural suburbs of Perth. The only outlier seems to be Forrest.
I have a feeling Andrew Hastie may have to take up the Liberal leadership mantle he may not have wanted so early on. Dutton’s out of parliament now, while I think a lot of blame will be put at the feet of Angus Taylor after such a disastrous defeat, and I have my doubts that Sussan Ley has much support to take the top job. Keith Wolahan would have been a good pick as well, but he’s lost his seat as well. As for deputy, I’m thinking maybe Melissa McIntosh in Lindsay?
“Look to your left, look to the right and look to the left again…”
Is holding or winning seats more difficult for the Libs than safely crossing the road? Was the above their operational plan? They fail as an organisation in so many ways. To their credit the ALP plan the game so much better!
Being the poor man’s ALP is not a solution.
The reality is than with so many employees in government jobs, and large numbers of voters in receipt of taxpayer dollars and corporate bodies having their interests ingratiated by the ALP by way of subsidies and of course the money of unions, the Liberals have no where to turn in respect of the centre, migrants etc.
The vote garnered by the right of centre microparties can’t even save them!
Given how difficult it is to make any impact at State Level, we are rapidly approaching a one party state based on 30 something percent being a win! Imagine if the College of Cardinals had that as a representative outcome!
Anyway- credit where it’s due- the ALP machine, membership enthusiasm and collective mindset is a winning formula and keeps fooling the electorate- I mean power bills etc – but the reality was even all the crap was not enough to bounce them when the opposition provided no significant alternative save going nuclear!
Nuked indeed…
I don’t know why people are surprised about the website going down tonight. It goes down every federal election and for some bigger state elections and the only solution is to double the size of the server, which I can’t do. I don’t have time to grapple with any other IT solutions when doing results. But the donors on the Discord had a great chat tonight. If it’s really worth it for you, sign up next time.
This election has reinforced my fundamental belief that the liberal and national party need to re-split. The LNP pulls the liberal party too far to the right (especially socially), which makes it not only uncompetitive in Victoria but also even in Greater Brisbane. I say this as a late 20’s man who has drifted from the Turnbull wing of the liberals to labor.
I feel sorry for the libs, they were already lacking in talent, but now they have as much talent as the Gold Coast Titans.
The primary purpose of this site is to post my content. The comments are secondary and honestly it’s mostly a pain to keep up on them. I am not going to prioritise keeping the website running when I’m not posting.
Credit deserves to go to Albo and the Labor party for a very disciplined campaign and an excellent result. One could call this Howard-esque. The other side’s partisans seem to be in disbelief but the “quiet Australians” seem to think they had the right offering and focus on cost of living at the end and the unfocused spray from the opposition turned out totally toxic.
Seems Bullwinkel is being projected very differently between the ABC and PB based on preference estimates. Besides that, most of the in doubt seats seem to have a quite likely winner, with only about 5 I’d consider uncertain. The tally for Labor should be at least 92 which would be just short of Howard’s 1996. The scale of this win is perhaps even greater considering the size of the crossbench, seeing as the 2PP looks like it will be higher for ALP than that election for the Coalition and consequently that the number of seats won by 2PP would be even higher.
@Nether Portal – I’m not convinced by the “it’s right-wing populism’s fault” narrative. Small-l liberal use that line every time the Coalition loses, while conservatives blame the liberals. They were neither one nor the other at this election because Dutton was too scared to pick one, and so they just ran with cutting government waste, cutting fuel excise and a vague nuclear policy. And because he didn’t pick a side, the leftovers aren’t going to be able to actually figure out what would’ve worked.
Labor has the same problem between socialists and social liberals, they just hide it behind Caucus.
Bendigo is a very interesting seat. The Nationals have not only finished in the TCP but they could actually win. The Liberals have got only 9.6% this time but the Nationals have got 29.4%, so a massive switch has occurred. Could this potentially put the Bendigo seats in play for the Victorian state election next year?
@North by West I agree policies certainly played a key role in the loss but I think that it also shows the importance of having a united party.
The first thing the Coalition needs to do now is pick a new leader. My guess is that it’ll be Angus Taylor in Hume.
Also, @Adda, history will never compare Albo to Howard. Howard’s economy was stable and booming and he won four terms in a row. My prediction is that Albo will either resign or get knifed some time in his second term.
@Nether Portal, I had been to Bendigo last month for the Easter holiday and I happened to see what seemed to be very active and sophisticated campaign for the National Candidate Andrew Lethlean which was everywhere around Bendigo Urban Area.
Can’t imagine there’s any contenders for the leadership than Taylor, Tehan, Ley and Hastie. Hastie is the most competent but least experienced and I’m still not sure he’d want it yet. Young PMs tend to have already been experienced ministers.
Taylor is a decent talker, but will surely have to wear blame over some of the campaign. Ley should as well, as Dutton’s deputy. Tehan has the opposite problem to Taylor – didn’t feature in the campaign, but not exactly compelling to listen to.
Albanese absolutely deserves credit for this empathetic victory. I don’t think anyone accurately predicted this outcome when most of us (including myself) believed it would be a hung parliament at best. This is a wipeout level victory for Labor.
Also for any speculation about Albanese getting knifed, Labor’s learnt this lesson the hard way during 2007-2013 and they won’t repeat this again. The economy is back on track and everything will be getting better not worse. I don’t see any reason for him to be knifed Rudd/Gillard style.
John will be happy if the Nats can pull out Bendigo, he was quite insistent they had a chance there. Someone else said at one stage that they thought the Nationals would do better than the Liberals, that looks about right – Calare is the only loss I can see. Going off party room, all the LNPers who sit with the Nats kept their seat.
Still too many votes left to count to make definitive comments, but there’s some more interesting trends and results involving independents, even in seats where they might not win. And I wouldn’t be surprised if another one or two (e.g. Fisher in Qld) that aren’t being looked at much tonight turn out to be in the mix one the preference throws start happening.
NP, you might want to consider how your blatant partisanship is affecting your objectivity. We’re talking about the scale of a single electoral victory here, of which this is quite obviously on the level of 1996 if not even greater. And like Howard, Albo’s opponents seem to be amazed at the ability to win despite supposedly lacking popularity among the electorate.
What it goes to show is that you don’t have to be overwhelmingly popular to be a winner in politics. If anything, reliance on popularity is likely to be a sign of a leader without durable winning ability, for once popularity fades during harder times they will drop like a stone in electoral prospects (see Rudd and Turnbull for examples).
@ Nether Portal
” My prediction is that Albo will either resign or get knifed some time in his second term. ”
—
Why on earth would anyone in Labor knife the PM who just beat Bob Hawke’s seat record? 95% confident Albo will be leader at the next election. Good luck to the libs picking up the 30-35 seats they will need to win LOL!
Yep, Albanese has now proven himself a winner, and more so than anyone imagined. This win alone elevates him to the greats within the party. It would be a brave move to try removing someone who in this term has achieved such a mandate. I can only see it happening if he’s already ready to move on from politics.
Also whoever said that the Greens’ focus on Dutton would cost them was bang on the money too. Did all the work for Labor in damaging the Coalition, and damaged themselves in the process.
This is hilarious. The Liberal Party, helped by the Cosplayers in the National Party, have managed to defeat themselves. In the meantime the garrulous bunch of disaffected nerds that run around in Albo’s office and at the ALP’s Nat exec now soar like a colossus, with the herd mentality of the media and the commentariat holding these stumblebum chancers up as paragons of political virtue. Albo’s going to be insufferable now. Strap yourself in for the Narcissocracy.
Meanwhile, there will be no solutions to spiralling rents, energy costs or the disfunctional Centrelink or NDIS. But there WILL continue to be downward pressure on wages and incomes, especially at the bottom end of the economy. The population ponzi scheme will still be the only driver of whatever nominal growth the economy can find. But as long as the alternative is the bug eyed neoliberalism and culture wars of the Murdoch elite we’ll keep voting for the party that best manages our disappointment.
It was Sky wot won it!
It’s like living in a Kurt Vonnegut novel. So it goes…
Nether, my friend.
I’ve seen you on blue nights. I’ve seen you on red nights. It seems this is a night that has left you particularly blue. We are here for you.
You are a one-person electoral commission. Your knowledge is deep and impressive. Your work ethic is impressive. Your vibes? Pure Sky After Dark intern who saw the ALP primary vote and whispered, “That can’t be right…”
You opened with:
“Labor have won a landslide, despite their poor record in government.”
Which is the psephological equivalent of saying “He bowled a hat-trick, but let’s not forget he dropped a catch in the warm-up.”
You track swings in Forrest. You mourn Bridget Archer. You worry about the state-federal seat divergence like it’s the plot hole in a Coen Brothers film. But then—right as Labor reaches 90+ seats—you call for Albanese’s knifing in term two.
I know you like your soccer, so let me explain it this way. It’s like calling for Liverpool to sack their coach because some Everton fans are upset.
NP, you’re the guy who reads the scoreboard, sees 12.17 to 4.6, and says, “Sure, they won, but are they really kicking straight?”
You’re the reason psephology is both a science and a contact sport.
Never change. Or do. Just don’t stop posting.
Don’t know what exactly happened, but the entire night I was unable to access the Tally Room (likely because of all the traffic on the sight). Nonetheless I watched the entire coverage on the ABC until around 11:30pm.
This result is an absolute shocker for the Liberals. People have repudiated a party that has been destroyed by a shift to the right. The Liberals have lost numerous seats, some of which were barely mentioned during the campaign. Hughes, Petrie, Forde, all seats which no one even thought Labor had a chance in. And the shocking swings in seats like Mitchell, Berowra, Braddon, Gilmore. To rub salt into the wound, the behaviour of some of the Coalition people on election night (James McGrath, Jacinta Price) was repulsive and they just acted so argumentative and like spoiled children. It’s incredibly poor considering they were promoting themselves as a ‘stronger alternative’. That is clearly not the case.
As for policy, it was a trainwreck. The constant flip-flops on policies, the central focus on a nuclear energy plan which was as shallow as a puddle and highly unrealistic. And the campaign wasn’t any better: numerous controversies and a disendorsement and some close-calls. Dutton was drag on the campaign, he was seen by many people as ‘Trump-lite’ and it’s clear taking pages from the MAGA playbook sets an almost guaranteed outcome. Labor set a clearer plan with many policies benefitting Australians, and it’s clear they won because of this, in tandem with to quote Kristina Keneally, “the people… did not leave us, we left them”. That represents how the Coalition has performed and how they have shifted away from swinging and moderate voters with an embracement of Trumpian politics, and the result is overwhelming.
Whoever the next Liberal leader is, their first goal is to shift the party to the centre. Drop the central focus on cost-of-living and nuclear energy. The party must learn from their mistakes, and they need to make do with their seats to form an effective opposition as number permit. It is imperative they move away from Dutton, and to a more centrist or at least centre-right approach.
A few points I will add:
– Flynn had a shockingly big swing to the LNP. No booth in Gladstone is above 60% 2PP for Labor. Yes, Gladstone is actually trending marginal. Not sure if there was a specific factor but nonetheless good for the LNP. Herbert and Dawson also swung to the LNP.
– Nationals are actually quite competitive in Bendigo. I was doubtful that they would get above 10% but it seems they’ve outperformed expectations and there is a slim chance of an upset gain for them. They’ve also gained swings in New England, Maranoa.
– Dan Tehan and Pat Conaghan retaining their seats is a huge surprise. I was expecting Cowper to go and Tehan to probably scrape in but at the moment they seem in a good position.
Overall the Coalition has had an absolutely terrible election, but on a more positive leaning for them, they have gained swings. The only problem is (with the exception of the latter two) that those seats were almost guaranteed to be retained by the Coalition.
Correction: “Drop the central focus on cost-of-living”. I just mean that they need to differentiate themselves more and combine cost-of-living measures with other areas like healthcare and transport, and at a greater scale.
@James
** It is imperative they move away from Dutton, and to a more centrist or at least centre-right approach.**
The Centrists/Moderates lost their seats last night.
Now, you can argue that was a backlash against the more conservative members of the Coalition, yet those conservatives were mostly returned, apart from Ross Vasta, Bert Van Manen and Terry Young in the Greater Brisbane area, and that may have been due to Premier David Crisafulli breaking his No New Stadiums pledge first chance he got.
NP is just another in the conga line of Dunning-Kruger candidates that populate commentary across the web. People with too much time on their hands, shaking their fist at clouds. It’s entertaining, but a long way from useful.
I think everything about the general result has already been said, except maybe just a comment that neither the Allan government or Dutton’s home state advantage in QLD seemed to help them, with both states seeing several losses, and currently no gains (Nats could scrape through in Bendigo).
@North by West agree, the Greens went way too hard on the negative against Dutton. Really the Greens’ strength is their positive vision, which I’d argue is more inspiring than either of the majors’, but they put way too much into the keep Dutton out stuff. In my seat (Ryan) their corflutes even had the phrase “Keep Elizabeth in to keep Dutton out”. And while they look like they’ll just scrape into the 2CP, Labor’s had a big swing here.
As to the future of the libs, they’re quite possibly going to go down the Tory route of increasing insanity until an alternative nearly beats them. Here, I suspect the teals will play most of that role, possibly ON in places if they can get a campaign going next time. Speaking of which, they had basically no campaign whatsoever, at least outside of their target seats. How come? Given they were doing well in the polls, I’d have thought they’d really put a lot into this election.
Replying to some comments here as I lost track of the comments on this page.
@The Banana Republic, I simply think leaders just get too exhausted now, plus there’s a chance in the modern day that Labor has an infighting problem again like the Gillard vs Rudd civil war. Mark McGowan resigned because he was exhausted. Six years is a long time for a leader.
@Real Talk not sure if this is supposed to be a pisstake or an acknowledgement as I am slightly autistic (probably). Though I do appreciate the football analogy. As for the government being poor thing I should state that what I’m referring to is the approval ratings of the leaders. Neither were popular. So for a leader to win a landslide but still have a net negative approval rating is either impressive or the other leader was just really bad.
@James I do agree the goal needs to be to bring the party back to an electable position. Win a couple by-elections, gain some ground in the polls, then at the next election gain back some of the marginals they really should’ve kept.
@Gympie people in Queensland seem to actually support a new stadium so Crisafulli breaking that pledge may have actually helped him as he is polling quite high, though I must say it could just be a honeymoon plus I live on the Gold Coast so I speak to more LNP voters than Labor voters.
@NP Intended as a bit of good spirited fun, although I do truly appreciate your contributions. I can understand you and others must be severely disappointed with the election results. Hence I’m playing the ball, not the man (another soccer reference).
Also anyone who’s saying I’m being a wanker just trying to justify the Coalition’s loss, I’m not. I acknowledged many, many times that the election was very terrible for the Coalition, and I did say that even if Dutton had held his seat the Coalition needed to get him out of his seat. Part of me thinks it’s actually good that Dutton lost Dickson because it means a new leader has to be selected.
@Real Talk thanks for the clarification. I try my best to be as accurate as possible and try to provide what is increasingly a missing perspective, a centre-right one that isn’t culture war-esque.
@Clarinet ON didn’t have much of a campaign because they have always been a disorganised, unprofessional unit. Rennick managed to put together a party that will get 5% of the Queensland Senate vote in 6 months. One Nation’s had 25 years to figure it out.
True. How has Rennick done it? Has he had inordinate amounts of money? I was quite surprised at the way he was able to have volunteers everywhere.
I think it honestly boils down to his high profile among conservatives helping the word to spread, and he seems to have good organisational skills. Being an accountant probably helps with that. I read an ABC article quoting him a few days ago lamenting that he wanted a unified party that could put out a positive message and match the Greens, but that it would be virtually impossible because Palmer treats politics like a plaything throwing money around, and Hanson doesn’t have professional polish so pushes others away when she jumps on an issue.
NxW, I had some professional dealings with NSW One Nation a few years ago and was shocked at how small their actual membership base is/was. I thought it’d be about 1,000, but it was less than a tenth of that. You can’t run a statewide campaign off a base like that. They do get a lot of volunteers come election time, but that’s all the nostalgia kick-out-teh-Asians/tekkin-er-jerbs crowd from the nineties. The irony is they do appeal to the anti immigrant immigrant (yes, this is a thing), along with our old friend Laura Norder for members. The rst of their base is culture warriors and people who can show you via a detailed diagram how the Rothschilds control climate policy and the NRL.
Doesn’t surprise me, Lachlan.
An additional problem for these groups is that a bunch of them got burnt by Cory Bernardi walking away from the merged party he started. In fairness, many of them didn’t agree with his Thatcherite economics anyway, but I think it’s left groups like Family First with shivers at the thought of trying again.
Who knows, maybe Rennick might be successful if he sticks at it. He’s clearly got something going for him.
Given how badly the coalition did nationally. There are some positives. The nats got closer then the libs ever have in Bendigo and probably would have won if the coaliton didnt sxrew themselves. Tim wilson is close to winning goldstrin and the libs got swings in indi and kooyong.some labor seats experienced very low swing and even minor swinbs towards indiciating they would have done well there if they didnt fall over themselves. Im not revising my forecast ti a labor minority govt….. in 2028.
I mentioned on another post that this may turn out to be a good election to lose, and I still think that’s possible.
I am happy to admit being somewhat bewildered at the scale of the swing to Labor; I had thought it would be much closer and that we’d get surprise results in both directions.
But for all of the excitement about the ALP’s win, their primary hasn’t moved much. Real Talk uses some AFL scores in an earlier comment, and I would suggest that yes, the ALP has won by kicking straighter.
My concern is that neither team has actually put much at all on the national scoreboard in the past 25 years. It’s a bit like watching two of the AFL teams near the bottom of the ladder play against each other.
So one team wins, but unlike an exciting, high-scoring game where both teams get into triple figures, the scoreline here reads something like:
ALP: 3.5.23
Coalition: 1.10.16
To paraphrase the PM, the ALP is now kicking with the wind, and has zero excuses not to take action on long-term, structural, unpopular issues. If they don’t, then Australia will face the equivalent of relegation to the lower division of nations.
My point is that it’s not entirely about who wins the election- it’s about putting a score on the board in terms of tangible economic and social results.
I was completely caught off guard by the results of last night. I did think Labor would flip Deakin, Menzies and had an outside chance of holding Aston but I was expecting a large anti Labor swing in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne in Sydney not to improve in the ttp or little to no change.