Senate – Australian Capital Territory – Australia 2025

I sense David Pocock will retain his seat next election because of the sophomore surge and name recognition. Dutton has a really bad rap within the APS as a Health Minister and a Home Affairs Minister, moreso than other ministers, Labor or LNP. The Liberals would be better off focusing on winning/retaining three seats in the states. They do have a shot in QLD and VIC at picking up a third seat out of the six up for election.

The ACT Libs should not preselect Zed Seselja. His hard right politics won’t appeal to an affluent and progressive electorate. He’s also a “seat shopper” as he tried to get a NSW senate seat and ACT voters will question his loyalty. It’s best they preselect new blood.

I believe Labor was more worried about losing than the Liberals were in 2022 because of imminent three horse race where:
– Pocock could split the vote and reduce Labor’s primary.
– Greens and other minor party voters could send their preferences to Pocock instead of Labor.

This and NT will only be two seats next election. I’m going to say this will be

1 Pocock
1 Labor

not sure if Pocock will outpoll Labor but should be re-elected maybe a slightly better result for Pocock than in 2022.

atm id say libs within a chance of retaking the senate spot but would have to analyse the 2022 results and the upcoming act election results before making a definite prediction

Pocock will likely be elected and outpoll Labor if he and the libs strip enough votes off Labor who barely made a quota last time libs could swap out with lab

Based on ACT election, seeing a status quo result.

It wouldn’t take much to shift the Labor seat to liberal especially if the left vote solidifies behind pocock

Pocock has been building a strong profile as an active ACT Senator & on 70% of issues important to Green voters voting with them. Enough Green voters will vote tactically for Pocock to ensure he holds his seat. Liberal candidate is invisible & has no profile. Recent ACT election suggested that ACT voters still regard the local Liberals with deep suspicion & Peter Dutton is doing nothing to dissolve that suspicion.

David Pocock is gonna draw a heap of votes away from the minor partiesand candidates and likely Labor as well. The Liberals might just be able to topple Gallagher instead. Pocock will be reflected i have no doubt about that.

@John Labor wouldn’t lose a Senate spot in the ACT. It’s the ACT. Similarly the NT will always be both major parties.

The ACT is not Tealish due to being dominated by Public servents it is somewhat economically left-wing maybe not to the extent as Blaxland, Watson, Calwell or Scullin but nevertherless strong for the Centre Left, hence the Labor party cannot be knocked out of the 2CP in any ACT Lower house seat.

I’ve done the maths and it’s entirely possible for it to happen

@John Labor’s vote is too high for that to happen and I think David Pocock only won because he captured the centrist vote.

If the Liberal vote increases then Pocock will be defeated. It is like saying the Greens can win more seats than Labor in the ACT Legislative assembly

It is possible that Greens vote will drop as their voters vote tactically and also, given they’ll come fourth at best.

The lead Liberal candidate seems like a political outsider without much local profile, unlike the last two or three Liberal senators. The last two Liberal senators were former ACT opposition leaders and one of them, Gary Humphries, was a Chief Minister.

I feel that Pocock may outpoll Gallagher, but they will both be re-elected comfortably

The lead Liberal candidate, Jacob Vadakkedathu, has a cloud hanging over him. There’s discontent within the ranks about his low-profile and also there’s allegations of branch-stacking. ABC reports that the Canberra Liberals will vote in early February on his future as the lead candidate.

Pocock will easily be relected there is an outside chance the Libs could snag the second spot from Gallagher

@Darth Vader not a chance unfortunately.

IMO the ACT is ideologically left wing for the most part, but largely respects the orthodoxy on foreign policy and Defence, and also won’t go much more economically left than social democracy. This I think will largely keep them with Labor, especially when Labor are in opposition, and not further left than that. The Greens’ left populism will do worse here than earlier incarnations of the party, and I don’t even think they’d be a lock for a seat if it was magnitude 4 (IIRC on 2022 results Labor’s 2nd candidate would have won the 4th seat if there were 4).

Pocock basically is a Richard Di Natale era Green but he’s made overtures to be more pro business to soak up enough of the Liberal base.

Seeing a status quo result

Greens have preselected Christina Hobbs, their 2016 Senate candidate. From memory last time she was preselected before the senate reforms that made the ACT senate seat a lot less winnable for Greens. A surprisingly strong choice who definitely sits on the more moderate/teal side of the party (she runs a superannuation fund).

Don’t see her upsetting the very likely Pocock/Gallagher result. May be ground work for running again when the Senate magnitude increases. I’m reminded though of when recently defeated MLC Sue Pennicuik ran for Goldstein in 2019 at the last minute, or Andrew Bartlett for Clayfield at QLD 2020 – both strong candidates on paper, and paper candidates.

I am not sure all the wishful thinking in the Tallyroom will get the Libs a spot back here

it appears the ACT Liberals have voted to keep their lead Senate candidate in the position amid claims of branch stacking after surviving a motion calling for him to be disendorsed.

It’s quite possible that Dutton becomes Prime Minister but ends up with something of a poisoned chalice due to the Coalition’s significant Senate losses in 2022.

Assuming that the Peter Dutton can find a way to work with Ralph Babet, Pauline Hanson and Tammy Tyrrell, the “Right-bloc” starts a seat behind parity due to the Coalition losing its third seat in WA to Fatima Payman.

Even if the Coalition could replicate its relatively strong result at the 2019 election (ie. an extra seat in Queensland plus regaining its ACT seat), the “Left-bloc” of Labor, Greens and David Pocock would still have 38 seats and enough to block any legislation.

So the Coalition’s options are:
– Work with one of David Pocock or Fatima Payman if at all possible
– Or hope that Labor or Greens retain less than 3 seats in any of the states outside of Queensland, which is a tall order even on the current polling

Either way, that would still require dealing with all of JLN/PHON/UAP which could be tricky.

@angas that’s actually wrong. If the libs took the act seat the left block if you include Thorpe because you know “crazy”. They would only have 37. Labor had 26 greens had 12 + pocock = 39 – Payman and Gallagher = 37. Pocock can probably also be reasoned with and negotiate for a vote. Hanson and Babet can also reliably relied upon to pass legislation. There also the possibility the libs can get back the 3rd seat in Tasmania. It will only be a matter of time before libs get back paymans seat in 2028. Also babet is no longer uap since that party has been deregistered.

Also it’s also in part to the losses of the cross bench in SA.

@John
Yeah I suppose if you remove Payman as a sure vote against the Coalition, then Labor + Greens + Thorpe will be either 36 or 37 depending on if Gallagher loses her seat. So there’d be just enough room to move without relying on every single crossbencher.

I agree that Hanson, Babet and Malcolm Roberts will be reliable enough, so mainly a matter of dealing with Tyrrell, Payman and Lambie if she gets in.

Pocock does seem like he’ll consider things on their merit regardless of who’s in power, but I believe he’d be more ideologically opposed on certain issues like nuclear.

Outside of Queensland, Tasmania definitely seems like the place where the Coalition can pick up an extra seat, either at the expense of Lambie or Labor’s 2nd. I think any of the other states would be too difficult. Maybe the Greens could be at risk in NSW or SA, but it’s hard to tell.

Now that the Libs seem fully determined to drive their ACT vote down to subterranean levels by promising to fire thousands of Canberrans and force many of the rest to stop working remotely, and just today announcing that he would leave the Lodge empty and live in Sydney because “lol Canberra sucks”, I think it’s probably reasonably likely the Libs don’t even finish top 2 on primary here.

@sean most of those people probably already vote labor or greens anyway

There’s honestly plenty of people who don’t habitually vote for Labor or the Greens, who nonetheless live in Canberra and like Canberra and have a stake here, and don’t take particularly well to attacks on the local Canberra community and its economy.

The only thing I know about Jacob Vadakkedathu is that the Liberals tried and failed to reverse his preselection (not for any controversies as far as I’m aware) and he came 4th of 5 candidates in Yerrabi.

Zed slightly underperformed the Liberals lower house vote but with no Pocock in the lower house I can’t rule out that Zed still had a personal vote. I’m not getting the sense Liberals are in any real contention to get the seat back.

Easy status quo result, Pocock may even outpoll Gallagher but nobody else will even get close (I’ve already commented on Greens who have a surprisingly strong candidate)

Probably agree BNJ, the Liberal vote in the ACT (both Senate and at territory elections) has continued to steadily decline over the years. I think their vote will increase in 2025 (coming off a low point at 25%) but I doubt it will be much, certainly not above 30% so Pocock and Labor should be safe to win a seat each.

After today I’m really not sure the Lib vote will go up in the ACT…

@Sean, well said. Only one in four people in the ACT workforce are employed in the APS, so Canberra is less of a “company town” than it used to be. It is true that some of that remaining 75% of the workforce are working for private firms where the Federal or ACT governments are the customer.

But every Canberran knows that the flow-on effects of being the capital city are significant. During a Parliamentary sitting week, the hotels, restaurants and taxi/Uber drivers get a boost. Ditto for the visit from any foreign leader, or government-related conferences.

So even for those Canberrans who think balancing the books is really important (and I’m one of them), the idea that doing so is as easy as just sinking the boot into Canberra and ripping 40,000 jobs out is seen as a thought bubble.

It’s really lazy thinking, based on the idea that doing so will play well elsewhere. Remember that many of those public servants were the ones helping to get the COVID-19 vaccines distributed across the nation. Was it perfectly done? No. Was it a lot better than many other countries managed it? Yes.

And there are many people who are immensely frustrated at both the lazy, entitled incompetence of the ACT government, and the fact that the local Liberals just can’t seem to get their act together. It’s incredibly bad for democracy for any party of any flavour to be in power for that long.

I was impressed with Elizabeth Lee, who was in line with the moderate Liberal politicians who ran the ACT in the 1990’s. But she got rolled, not least in the days leading up to the vote, the conservatives wanted to mouth off.
After over 20 years out of power, you would think that they would learn their lesson, but they didn’t.

I am now convinced that the only way a different party will win power in the ACT is for the Liberal to split into two – the moderate version could pick up 35-40% of the vote, and the conservative wing could get around 10%. But because the conservative tail wags the moderate dog, centrist voters don’t take the risk in big enough numbers to move the dial far enough.

Liberals have been pumping money into Vadakkedathu’s campaign; there are more corflutes for him than any of the lower house candidates combined. They still definitely won’t win

What chance Pocock tops the primary? He seems to have done a good job whilst sitting on the red leather.

Down in Bean probably more corflutes for the Lamerton than Vadakkedathu from my observation. Little energy and few volunteers for the Liberal campaign that i have observed. Greens have run a low key campaign except in Canberra & will vote in large numbers for Pocock and significant numbers for Price in the hope in Bean of kicking out a do nothing labor members

@Doug down in Bean the numbers are almost tied, but I’d say still in favour of Vadakkedathu (at least in Tuggeranong where I live). In Canberra and Fenner, it’s not even close.

I’m in Kambah – so reporting on that area & Woden. What is interesting is that there are a few Senate corflutes with his no2 running mate – she might have been a better choice

I saw a whole bunch of them have gone up in the past few days. I don’t know much about Lee, but she had to have been a better choice. Even before all the drama about public servants and branch stacking, why would they pick a guy who lost 3 territory elections?

I thought the only reason Vadakkedathu got number 1 spot was due to his branch stacking rather than his electability

I read that Katy Gallagher reckons David Pocock will score a full quota this time.

Probably right.

Status quo here.

This ended up being such a blowout for Pocock that if group ticket voting still existed, his running mate might have been a chance of winning the second seat at Katy Gallagher’s expense, but enough preferences will leak out of tickets that she should still be OK (on the last number I saw she’d need about 15% of Liberal/Green/others preferences, and there might be enough leakage before that anyway for the second Pocock candidate to be excluded before the Liberals).

Liberals currently sitting in third place as predicted by @Sean

Senator Pocock yesterday on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing said he wants more territory senators and will push for it this term. Senator Gallagher said she’s open to this discussion.

@Votante If the government says they’re open to adding territory senators, that might indicate they’re thinking of expanding the number of seats in the House for next election as well. Will be curious to see if they end up doing so – I think an expansion is probably due about now.

I’m not convinced that increasing just the territory senators is that great an idea.

Firstly, the NT already has better representation in the Senate than every state except for Tasmania, and the ACT has better representation than every state except for South Australia and Tasmania. The fact that Tasmania enjoys a vastly skewed representation compared to all other jurisdictions doesn’t necessarily imply that the territories should also gain more of an advantage than present.

Secondly, increasing the territory senators to (assuming) 3 would probably disadvantage the current Labor government from a tactical perspective. In the NT, an extra senate seat would be highly competitive between the ALP, CLP, Greens and One Nation so on average would be a hindrance. In the ACT, the extra senate seat would go to either the Liberal party or another Pocock-aligned independent.

It’d certainly be worth a look at if done at the same time as an increase to the state senators though.

@Malben
In agreement with you that an expansion is long overdue.

If not this coming term, a good time to do so would be the next as both New South Wales and Victoria are looking likely to lose and gain a seat respectively and trigger another round of large redistributions. Strong possibility that Queensland and Western Australia also both gain seats in this period as well.