The three-candidate-preferred (3CP) count has become a topic of more interest in recent elections because of close races where the dynamic of who makes it into the top two can decide who wins. But it’s also an interesting statistic which can tell us more then is revealed by the two-party-preferred vote, while being a bit simpler than primary vote statistics. So for this post, likely my final post analysing the 2025 federal election, I look at who made the 3CP where, and explore the dynamics of three of the most common 3CP combinations seen across Australia.
There are 150 electorates in Australia, and in 148 seats the 3CP includes a Labor candidate along with at least one Coalition candidate.
The two exceptions are Calare and Indi, where Labor did not make the 3CP. In Calare, the 3CP includes two independent candidates (Andrew Gee and Kate Hook) along with the Nationals. In Indi, independent Helen Haines was pitted against the Liberal Party and One Nation.
My dataset of 3CP results dates back to 2004, and in that time there has only been five cases where Labor failed to make the 3CP, and there has never been a case where no Coalition candidate made the 3CP.
The three other cases where Labor failed to make the 3CP, in New England 2004, Indi 2016 and Nicholls 2022, were all seats where two different Coalition candidates made the 3CP against an independent.
So Calare and Indi this year are the first cases in at least 21 years (and likely longer) where two minor parties or independents made the 3CP.
In the other 148 seats, there is a Labor candidate, a Coalition candidate, and one other. The Greens made the cut in 82 seats, independents made the cut in 35 (38 including Calare and Indi), One Nation did in 26 (plus Indi makes 27). Katter’s Australian Party made it in two, Centre Alliance in one, and there were three seats where both the Liberal and Nationals parties made the 3CP, all in regional Western Australia.
This chart shows the number of candidates in the 3CP for each party since 2004. The major parties understandably have a number around 150 consistently.
The Greens grew to the point where they made the 3CP almost everywhere in 2010. But since then the Greens vote has been roughly steady while the total pool of minor parties and independents has grown substantially, and they’ve been pushed out of the 3CP in many seats. This year was the lowest number of Greens 3CP seats since at least 2004, at 82.
Independents only cracked 20 seats for the first time in 2022, and now are getting closer to 40. One Nation has been fairly steady in the mid-20s since 2019. The Nick Xenophon Team made the cut in almost 30 seats in 2016 but no-one else has troubled the scorers since then.
So how are those seats distributed? This map shows which candidate was the third in the 3CP in each seat apart from Labor and the Coalition. I’ve marked Indi as One Nation and Calare as Independent.
One Nation tended to make the 3CP in regional parts of at least five states, but also some outer suburban seats across the country.
Independents have been taking a bigger chunk of territory. In Sydney there are two distinct areas: five seats stretching from Berowra to Wentworth, and four seats in Western Sydney.
The Greens have tended to dominate the 3CPs in the cities. They made the 3CP in almost all of Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, Perth has a strip of three independent seats. The WA Nationals also made the 3CP in Bullwinkel, Durack and O’Connor in regional Western Australia.
There has also been a shift towards the 3CP vote being relatively more even between the three candidates.
There was a gradual decline in the number of seats where the leading candidate had a majority of the 3CP vote, but it abruptly shifted in 2022. The trend continued slightly in 2025.
Meanwhile the average 3CP ote for the third-placed 3CP candidate has been increasing, from 10.1% in 2004 to 19.2% in 2025.
Finally, I have produced some new ternary charts which display three numbers in a triangular plot. These are evolutions of the triangular graphs I have previously made, in part inspired by the work of Ben Messenger and Alex Jago. Casey Briggs and the team at the ABC also made great use of triangular plots to tell this story before the election.
My charts show the 3CP in seats that share the same combination of candidates. There are three charts. All three show seats with Labor and the Coalition, with each chart showing seats with independents, the Greens or One Nation in the 3CP. The colours show who won.
The charts are divided into 12 smaller triangles, which can also be grouped into four medium-sized triangles. Those that are in the middle four triangles are those where no candidate polled a majority of the 3CP vote.
The Greens chart was particularly interesting because there are very few Coalition seats where the Greens made the 3CP. There are only six such seats, mostly the few remaining urban Liberal seats.
The vast majority of these seats have Labor winning with under 50% of the 3CP.
It’s also interesting that the Greens only won Ryan, but polled a higher 3CP in five other seats.
As for the independents, the whole chart is pushed closer to the top – independents tended to get higher 3CP votes than Greens candidates. There are also a lot more seats on the Independent-Coalition axis than on the Independent-Labor axis.
Independents tend to get elected if they get above a certain primary vote. The highest-polling independents not to win were in Cowper and Wannon, where they polled just over 37%. Bradfield is the only seat below the 37% line where the independent won. The independents in Goldstein, Wannon and Cowper polled a higher 3CP than Nicolette Boele in Bradfield, but the remainder of the 3CP was much more favourable to the Coalition.
The One Nation 3CP chart is also interesting. The Coalition won most of these seats, including some seats where Labor had a higher 3CP. This chart also does a good job of identifying seats where the minor party’s preferences may have made a difference. Labor outpolled the LNP by about 5% on the 3CP, but One Nation’s preferences pushed the LNP narrowly in front. The LNP was narrowly in front in Lindsay, Capricornia and Wright before One Nation preferences were distributed and ended up winning.
So that’s where I’m going to leave this post, and leave the federal election.
I won’t be going quiet – the Tasmanian state election is coming up soon, and I’ll be covering that election both on the blog and the podcast. There will also be new election guides produces as the year goes on, and we can expect some redistributions coming soon. But I think that’s about it for my immediate coverage of 2025’s landslide federal election.
Interesting. Looks like almost all of the capital city seats have either the Greens or an independent in the 3CP or 2CP.
doesnt every seat have either the greens or and independent in the 2CP or 2cp?
@John: That very topic is covered in this blog.
Further to Nether Portal’s point
1. Some remaning Liberal held seats in Capital cities such as Mitchell, Cook, La Trobe still have the Greens in the 2CP
2. The Capital city seats of Lindsay and Longman two ASM seats that Albo missed out on have ONP in the 3CP
3. Page is interesting due to to being a regional seat with the Greens in the 3CP instead of ONP
4. Interesting to see what would have happened in seats where indepedent made 3CP if there was no indepedent. I suspect most capital city seats like Dickson, Casey, Calwell Berowra would be Greens in the 3CP while regional seats like Cowper, Farrer, Groom it would be ONP
good point i forgot about onp.
1. i assume you meant in the 3cp? because those are labor 2pp seats?
2. from what i can tell it was the greens who made the 3cp in lindsay not onp?
4. id say in farrer at least it would be greens since most of that ind vote seems to have come from the left.
also theres hunter where ONP made the 2cp against labor. in the event of a poor election by labor ONP could conceivably win this
@John I think in a bad election for Labor those votes would go to the Nationals so they would win it.
An interesting point is that Burt is a fairly safe Labor seat that is quite CALD. ONP narrowly made the 2CP there over Greens by 2%. However, i expect ONP to weaken there relative ot the Greens as the CALD population continues to increase.
The growth of teal independents in 2022 and 2025 kept a lot of Greens out of the 3CP in regional seats and affluent urban seats. On the contrary, the Green vote strengthened in working-class, traditionally Labor seats (relative to the right-wing vote). For example, UAP finished 3rd in Werriwa in 2022 but in 2025, it was the Greens. However, the strong showings of Dai Le, Muslim independents and McMahon and Calwell independents kept the Greens out of the 3CP in many south-western Sydney seats and Calwell.
Coalition now holds just 6 seats where ALP and the Greens are also in the 3CP. It’s a reflection of their loss of seats in metropolitan areas where Greens, more often than not, finish in the final 3. In provincial and rural electorates, either PHON, independents or KAP (or WA Nationals in rural WA) tend to finish in the final 3.
Page is an exception due to Green, hipster-ish locales like Nimbin and others in Lismore LGA. The Nationals vote was strong enough to keep it in Coalition hands.
Burt appears to be the closest seat to a capital city CBD with a 3CP containing One Nation.
@ Votante
One thing i strongly believe is that Palestine may have lead to Greens sweeping up the 2022 Palmer/Anti Lockdown vote. This lead to notional swing to Labor versus Libs. Even in Calwell, there was a notional swing to Labor versus Libs despite Carly Moore and Joseph Youhana preferencing Libs on their HTV and TOP way underperformed UAP in 2022 in Calwe..
@votante the nats would have a good chance at winning durack and oconnor if they were able to get over labor however this would probably influence the libs into doing a deal in exchange for fpreferences as fremantle is now at irks of being lost to kate hulett