Tony Abbott’s Liberal/National Coalition has been elected, but without a sweeping landslide as previously predicted.
So far the Coalition has gained eleven seats off the ALP, as well as two off retiring independents:
- Banks, NSW
- Bass, TAS
- Braddon, TAS
- Corangamite, VIC
- Deakin, VIC
- Hindmarsh, SA
- La Trobe, VIC
- Lindsay, NSW
- Lyne, NSW
- Lyons, TAS
- New England, NSW
- Page, NSW
- Robertson, NSW
Not a single Queensland seat has fallen, although two Labor seats in that state remain in play. The ALP has lost three of their four seats in Tasmania, while losing one seat in Adelaide and a string of seats in Victoria and New South Wales. The Liberal Party has also regained the seat of O’Connor off the WA Nationals.
There are also nine seats which the ABC considers to still be in doubt which are races between Labor and the Coalition:
- Barton, NSW
- Capricornia, QLD
- Dobell, NSW
- Eden-Monaro, NSW
- McEwen, VIC
- Parramatta, NSW
- Petrie, QLD
- Reid, NSW
- Solomon, NT
This situation is very different to the 2010 election, when most seats were decided on the night and there were very few seats on extremely slim margins.
Solomon is held by the Country Liberal Party, and has seen a swing to the ALP, but the other eight are all Labor-held, and four of those eight have a Liberal or LNP candidate in the lead.
Overall, the ABC is predicting 89 seats for the Coalition, 57 for the ALP and four seats for crossbenchers (Bandt, Wilkie, Katter, Palmer).
The election result is a solid defeat for Labor, although not substantially worse than many that Labor suffered under the Howard government. The result was the third-biggest election defeat in terms of seats in the last thirty years: behind the change-of-government elections in 1983 and 1996.
Looking at two-party-preferred figures, the result is about even with 1983 and 1996.
Labor’s performance varied significantly between states. The ALP has held on to almost all of its seats in Queensland, with two in doubt. The ALP suffered the biggest swing in Tasmania, losing three out of four Labor seats. The ALP has fallen from holding all five Tasmanian seats in Kevin Rudd’s first term to now only holding Franklin.
Swings of 5-6% were felt in Victoria and South Australia, which along with Tasmania were states that were strongest for Julia Gillard in 2010. The swing in NSW was limited to less than 3%, with swings of roughly 1% in Queensland and Western Australia.
While the result has been a landslide, many of the disastrous election results for Labor have been avoided. NSW seats like Werriwa, McMahon and Kingsford Smith have been protected, along with Queensland seats such as Griffith, Lilley, Rankin and Oxley. Predictions about Labor losing all three seats in Western Australia have failed to come true. Labor remarkably held on Greenway.
After the fold, I have posted maps of the key areas where seats have changed. Seats gained by the Liberal and National parties are respectively shown in dark blue and green, with undecided seats in white. You can download the electoral maps for Google Earth with updated party colours from the maps page.
“The ALP has held on to almost all of its seats in Queensland, with two in doubt.”
Yes thanks to the Palmer Party, who gave their references to the ALP
Shirl: No, they didn’t – the PUP preferenced the Liberal party in all 150 electorates in the country. In fact PUP preferences got Liberal candidates over the line in several electorates.
Thanks. I was told it was fact.
If that’s the case, then Queenslanders have very short memories.
kme, while PUP did distribute preferences to the LNP, there is significant leakage. This is important regardless of whether the PUP voters came from the LNP or from swinging voters who otherwise would go the LNP.
Note this from Petrie – http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-17496-175.htm
Palmer gets 10.5% of first preferences yet after all preferences are distributed Luke Howarth gets less than a 7% increase to his first preference vote (that includes Family First as well). Clearly nowhere near the full PUP preferences went near Howarth.
I conclude if Palmer stayed at 7% or less of the vote, or didn’t exist n the first place, that Howarth would have won Petrie.
Right but preference leakage is a fact of life, and it’s not “thanks to the Party”, it’s “thanks to the voters”.
I think getting into counterfactuals is unproductive. It’s just as likely that if PUP didn’t run those protest votes would have ended up parked with KAP or GRN or whatever.
Just for the fun of it, I thought I’d go through and identify seats where Labor saw a swing to it in 2PP (based on current numbers). These will be sorted by current (that is, new) margin to the leading party:
Solomon (0.89% swing to Labor, reduced margin)
Moreton (0.77% swing to Labor, increased margin)
Gilmore (2.77% swing to Labor, reduced margin)
Greenway (2.98% swing to Labor, increased margin)
Blair (1.43% swing to Labor, increased margin)
Rankin (0.44% swing to Labor, increased margin)
Pearce (0.39% swing to Labor, reduced margin)
Hinkler (1.47% swing to Labor, reduced margin)
Bowman (1.38% swing to Labor, reduced margin)
Blaxland (0.09% swing to Labor, increased margin)
Wide Bay (2.81% swing to Labor, reduced margin)
Groom (3.00% swing to Labor, reduced margin)
Fowler (9.51% swing to Labor, increased margin)
Maranoa (2.06% swing to Labor, reduced margin)
Plus:
Batman (4.05% swing to Labor vs Greens, increased margin)
Specific ones to note…
Greenway was the seat for Jaymes “Six Point Plan” Diaz, so that’s no surprise, but he wasn’t the worst candidate for the Coalition… Fowler is the seat with the barely-speaks-English Andrew Nguyen (not to be confused with the Andrew Nguyen that ran in Oxley), and as I suspected, he was a complete dud – a MASSIVE nearly-double-digit swing against the Liberals in Fowler.
Graham Perrett of Moreton got very lucky with his colleagues’ choice to switch to Rudd – he openly voted for Gillard, and would have easily lost his seat had she stayed as PM. Rudd saved his seat.
Solomon is a seat where it’ll only take a bit more for the seat to fall to Labor, which may conceivably happen as counting continues, in which case it could be the only seat for Labor to gain at this election.
It is also interesting that a batch of safe LNP seats in Queensland swung towards Labor – Hinkler, Bowman, Wide Bay, Groom, and Maranoa all had double-digit margins in the LNP’s favour in 2010, and received swings to Labor. Of the other three Qld seats with a swing to Labor, two are the safest Labor seats (now), Blair and Rankin, and the third is Moreton, which I think was the most marginal in 2010 (could be mistaken).
The most unexpected, I think, is Gilmore. Can anyone identify why that seat saw a decent swing towards Labor? I know that the incumbent retired, but does that explain it?
There were plenty of people tipping a swing to Labor in Gilmore before the election, perhaps even enough for it to change hands. As you note the sitting member was retiring, and she was known to have a very large personal vote.
Joanna Gash was an exrtremely popular local member. Probably her alone that kept this seat blue for so long.
Ms Gash had a particularly larger personal vote in Gilmore, plus the preselection/campaign by the Lib was a little messy, plus the Labor candidate was a good one.
What I found interesting was the PUP vote and how it seems to have surplanted the Greens as the protest vote of choice.
Now, there are plenty of Green voters who vote for them based on their platform, but I think their consistently high ‘soft support’ polling suggests that a fairly large part of their vote is pure protest, which may explain why the Green vote dived and dived the most in the stronger PUP states. Amazing to think that a protest vote could transfer from the left to the crazy-right yet the voter has the same intention.
FWIW, following from Glen and PJs comments above:
Seats where green vote increased on 1st pref % (current numbers):
1. Melbourne (VIC): + 7.82%
2. Batman (VIC): +3.03
3. Gellibrand (VIC): +1.54
4. Lyne (NSW): +1.59
5. Richmond (NSW): +1.36
6. New England (NSW): +0.71
7. Paterson (NSW): +0.51
8. Corangamite (VIC): +0.29
9. Bennelong (NSW): +0.17
In the ACT we have a fairly good test of the Greens base vote – which look to be about 14-15% – another 4% in the House of Reps and at the local ACT election went to the Bullet Train Party but may I suspect come back if things get nasty with the incoming government.
In the Senate we have tactical voting by the ALP which generally lifts the Green vote to between 20-22% and that has been consistent for several elections. that level stood up this time despite the increased number of protest parties
Of course, if those people who voted Labor in the house did so in the Senate, it would still flow to the Greens via preferences (or, better yet, elect a second Labor MP). I’m not sure how this ‘tactical voting’ idea started given our preferential system.
re Gimore……. Johanna Gash had a personal vote…. I suspect up to 5%….. ALP had a good candidate…… The now Lib member at a public forum was asked a question on work
choices and said she could not answer that until after the election.
re Petrie…. unless the figures have changed since early this afternoon looks like a lib
gain
PJ – not sure that I would classify PUP as Crazy Right. Given that PUP took the Lib/Nat policies and then softened them a bit (to such an extent that the Greens liked some of them). I think PUP would be maybe rightwing/social/family first/slightly crazy.
Mind you, 1Nation, Christian Democrates, KAT and a few of their ilk, have some really weird policies. I suppose it depends on where you are looking from.
Say good bye to Sophie Mirrabella. And say hello to Clive Palmer.
Cowper (NSW) should be at 2 in that list. Greens +3.04%.
Just a say on the state by state coalition camaigns:
NSW: The nats did very well to pick up Page with a big swing and make dents in the Richmond margin and making the hunter marginal. The liberals didn’t perform the best and I think fingers need to be pointed at the head office and the removal of Mark Neham. This was his second election where the libs under performed in NSW. Lindsay and Banks fell with pretty moderate swings, not even close to knocking off Matt Thislethwaite, a disastrous campaign in Greenway. Probably the only great result was in Barton and you’d have to say that labor held up reasonably well on the coast definitely not a margin that can spare the libs at the next election.
QLD: I think the LNP arrogance in griffith has resulted in them not making any gains with Petrie and Capricornia too close. I think they did well to hold all there seats with pretty decent margins.
VIC: The obvious 3 fell with not much change but the result in Indi should not have occured and the libs certainly underestimated Cathy McGowan
TAS: Great result in the state definately pushing Dick Adams is an acomplishment, had they know it was winnable probably would have picked a stronger candiadate for the long term but will have to wait and see but sad to see Adams career end in that fashion. Not a great showing in Franklin compared to what polling said but they achived more then the 2 that was widely expected.
SA: Despite comments about Adelaide and Wakefield falling, that didn’t happen. Solid effort in Hindmarsh but the campaign probably lacked in other seats.
WA: No real change, better result in Hasluck but didn’t seem to target the labor held seats.
Terretories: CLP definately underperformed in Lingiari and although Solomon is too close, Griggs should have been able to be in a better position. ACT not much except that they have managed to avoid an unlikely green take of their senate seat
ACT situation probably results from a level of dissatisfaction with the local ALP on a range of issues and the desire to promote those issues by voting Green in the Senate.
It should be added that the ACT Green Senate campaigns pull out a lot of people without party affiliation to support the campaign – level of active community support in terms of volunteers well ahead of the Liberal Party and matching the ALP
I think swing on first preferences is more important than 2pp.
An interesting brief analysis of the polls and who did well. Lonergans mobile only clearly did not (unless you are Bob Ellis in which case you are still celebrating the ALP hanging on to govt).
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/09/09/election-poll-war-landline-lives-as-mobiles-fall-flat/
As the article points out most commentators – similar to posters here – predicted a worse result for the ALP.
One thing that has to be said WB’s Poll Bludger, Bludger Track was uncannily close to the actual result.
Observer, I think you’re being a bit unfair in relation to Griffith (full disclosure: I did think there was a decent chance of Rudd losing, and I expressed that opinion on this site).
Glasson ran a fantastic campaign and the ALP suffered the largest 2PP swing against them of any seat in Queensland and it was six times the state-wide swing! In addition to that, Rudd’s swipe at Glasson in his speech was pathetic and undignified.
Yes, I agree that the LNP missed a lot of opportunities in some Labor seats (Moreton in particular), but they did well to gain solid swings in ultra-marginal LNP seats like Brisbane and Herbert, as well as some of the other marginals like Longman and Dawson.
And let’s not forget that there were swings to the LNP in the Labor seats of Griffith, Oxley, Capricornia, Petrie and Lilley, so while there may only end up being two wins, the LNP are still ahead in Queensland.
Look Macca, in regards to my comments about the campaign in QLD, I didn’t necesarrily convey that the LNP should have won Griffith (Despite polls in the seat) but that it became unrealistic in trying to humiliate Rudd like Howard by putting a significant ammount of resources into the seat. And that looks to have cost them in winning Lilley and Moreton and making Petrie more safer although i think the LNP will gain Petrie.
I think when Glasson has the resources he does, he should and often you will find that when the PM about to lose government, often suffers a big swing in their own seat basically because the swing for them has been smaller because of their status. Well I don’t think he took a swipe at him really, it was a bit odd but I’d say the lnp probably did gloat and try and put Rudd off so there was a bit of relief for him, i think its just the LNP bitter about not picking up the seat despite resources and the quality candidate. A wasted opportunity not to put him in another seat.
Look I don’t think the ALP campaign was great in QLD at all and thats evident by not making any gains although you could argue that the situation faced months ago of a wipe out do make it look like a good campaign but not even Brisbane fell.
But on that note the LNP have been looking like taking all of labor’s seats for over a year and the fact that at the moment they can count really on 1 for now is pretty disapointing. And if Fairfax goes, thats just absolutely humiliating and shows that Clive could be a real threat in LNP heartland and they failed to stop him when they had the chance.
I don’t think LNP ran the worst campaign (I think that goes with the NSW libs) but certainly alot of missed opportunites and could come back to haunt them next election where alot of seats wont have a sophmore surge and could cost Abbott government. Its still ikely at this stage the LNP will have a net 0 if they gain petrie and lose fairfax
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