I’ve previously posted a number of times before about the dataset I have compiled of election results since 2004, adjusted for 2025 electoral boundaries.
Most recently, prior to the election, I specifically did a comparison of the 2007 and 2022 electoral map: two elections with similar two-party-preferred votes and a similar number of seats with a two-party-preferred majority for each major party.
Unfortunately there is no clear comparison for the 2025 election: it is the best result for Labor since 1943, with Labor polling a two-party-preferred majority in 100 seats. I also wouldn’t rule out the possibility they could take the lead in Bradfield too, but it looks like they fell just short.
So for this blog post I am going to focus mostly on how each seat is ranked, from 1 to 150, on the two-party-preferred vote, and how that rank has changed over time. I will consistently use the rank of 1 to refer to Labor’s best seat, and 150 for the Coalition’s best seat.
When the country overall swings by over 3% towards Labor, you’d expect most seats to swing towards Labor and that is true. 123 seats swung towards Labor, with just 28 seats swinging towards the Coalition.
I will finish this post with a map. If you click on a seat on the map, you can see my estimate of the 2PP and the rank in each seat at the last eight elections.
I will start by comparing ranks in 2022 to 2025. This first chart shows the ten seats that shifted the most towards the Coalition and the ten seats which shifted the most towards Labor.
Bendigo shifted the most, going from Labor’s 37th safest seat to their 95th safest seat. Interestingly the neighbouring seat of Ballarat had the third biggest shift towards the Coalition, but drew a lot less attention, as it is still clearly on the Labor side of the chart.
Braddon shifted the most towards Labor, going from the Coalition’s 31st-safest seat until it was on Labor’s half of the chart.
It’s also worth noting Fowler, which has moved 44 places towards Labor. This puts Fowler back into its traditional place on the rankings. The seat was ranked 7th-15th at all but one election from 2004 to 2019, but the 2022 campaign pushed the seat towards the centre. While Dai Le managed to retain her margin, the Labor 2PP has become much stronger. I assume we’ll find that the proportion of Le’s voters who preferenced Labor over Liberal will have increased significantly, but that’s a question for next week.
For this next chart I show seats that flipped over the line that separates the 75 best Labor seats from the 75 best Coalition seats.
The three northernmost Tasmanian seats all moved to the Labor side of the chart. Solomon and Lingiari swapped sides. Outer suburban seats like Bullwinkel, Pearce, Whitlam and Werriwa have all moved to the Coalition’s top 75, although Robertson has moved the other way.
I have also looked at how seats have shifted over the longer time frame from 2004 to 2025.
A lot of these seats had already shifted by 2022, and haven’t changed as much in 2025. But Flynn has continued to shift towards the Coalition, moving from #104 in 2022 to #135 in 2025. Whitlam has also moved 26 ranks towards the Coalition in 2025, on top of moving 14 ranks over the previous 18 years. Moreton has also continued to shift towards Labor, going from #48 in 2022 to #27 in 2025.
This fourth chart shows seats that have moved from the Labor side to the Coalition side and vice versa over 21 years. There are ten seats that have moved in each direction.
My attention was drawn to the neighbouring seats of Werriwa and Macarthur, which have moved by 58 and 34 ranks respectively, but in opposite directions. This final chart shows the ranks of these two seats since 2004.
Werriwa was one of Labor’s safest seats in 2004 and 2007. Mark Latham left the seat in 2005. The seat bounced around but since 2016 it has steadily become less safe, until in 2025 it was Labor’s 76th best seat. Macarthur, on its current boundaries, has always leant towards Labor, but was usually one of Labor’s less safe seats in the 2004-2013 period.
Mike Freelander won Macarthur in 2016, and the seat became a much stronger Labor seat that year.
That’s it for today. This map shows three layers: the change in rank from 2022 to 2025, the change in rank from 2004 to 2025, and the biggest net change in ranks over the 21-year period.
