Labor won a comfortable victory in yesterday’s election, losing only a handful of seats against an opposition that performed poorly.
By the latest count at the time of writing, Labor has won 49 seats and is ahead in another seven. The Coalition has won 24 seats and is ahead in three others (plus they will likely win the Narracan supplementary election). The Greens have won four seats.
Where are the seats still unclear?
Labor is leading in Albert Park, where the Greens would need to overtake the Liberals to win, which now seems unlikely, and in Northcote, where the Greens were in the lead until late in the night. Early in the night it looked like Footscray, Pascoe Vale and Preston could be in play but they have now faded. Labor’s lead in Preston is not yet locked in.
Labor is also narrowly ahead in Bass, Hastings and Pakenham. They are “likely” in Melton since there is no Labor-Liberal preference count (instead relying on an ABC projection).
The Liberal Party is leading narrowly in the seat of Croydon.
Independents have fallen behind in Hawthorn and Mornington. In both cases the independent is in the top two, but the preference count is very close.
It’s a bit hard to say how many seats have changed hands – many of those “changing hands” have been affected by redistribution and have negligible margins.
By my count there are nine seats where the leading candidate is not from the incumbent party. In at least three of these seats, the incumbent MP was re-elected after the seat was redrawn into a notional seat held by another party.
Labor has gained three seats from the Liberal Party, all in eastern Melbourne. These seats include Bass and Bayswater, where sitting Labor MPs are leading or have won despite a redistribution turning it into a notional Liberal seat. They’ve also won Glen Waverley.
Labor also gained Hastings, which was Liberal-held in 2018 but had been redrawn with a slim Labor margin, so technically doesn’t count as a gain.
The Coalition has regained Caulfield, which they won in 2018 but lost in the redistribution, as well as Nepean. The Nationals have gained Shepparton off an independent and gained Morwell, which was held by a retiring independent but was notionally Labor. The Nationals also regained Mildura, which had been redrawn from an independent seat into a Nationals seat, and thus doesn’t appear on the list of nine seat changes.
The Liberals are also leading against an independent in Hawthorn, which was won by Labor in 2018.
The Greens have gained Richmond.
Next up, this map shows three features of the results.
Firstly, the two-party-preferred swings. I have these figures for 75 out of 87 seats. Labor gained a swing in 16 and the Coalition did in 59. The average swing was 2.8% to the Coalition while the median was 2.6%.
While Labor only gained a swing in a handful of seats, this included numerous key marginals: Box Hill, Glen Waverley, Ringwood, Ashwood come to mind.
The Coalition’s biggest swings took place in the northern and western suburbs, and not one of these big swings produced a seat gain.
You can see these geographic trends on the map. Labor gained swings of 2% or more in the eastern suburbs corridor, and gained smaller swings in the outer south-east and outer east.
The Coalition gained small swings in most other areas but the biggest swings were in the outer north and west.
The grey also tells a story: there’s a bloc of ten contiguous seats in central Melbourne where the Greens or an independent made the top two, and this doesn’t include Albert Park, which has come close.
If you toggle the map, you can also see maps showing the seats won by each party by colour – the first map shows uncalled races in a lighter colour – the second one shows seats that changed hands emphasised.
These maps show clearly the scale of the Liberal defeat: how few seats they hold in Melbourne, and how Labor has been pushed out of the inner city.
Finally I want to touch briefly on the size of the minor party vote. Votes for minor parties and independents had peaked at 22% at the 2018 election. Right now it is just under 28%.
I will be travelling today but when I get home I will be posting another post looking at the upper house. In short, the vote for Labor fell further there, and they will probably require more crossbenchers to pass legislation. Legalise Cannabis in particular polled strongly, but the Greens also picked up votes and likely seats. The Druery alliance parties generally performed poorly, and are on track to win few seats even before below-the-line votes make life harder for them, and it looks like Labor will be able to stitch together a progressive upper house majority with the Greens, Animal Justice and Legalise Cannabis.
big media are out of touch
Question re polwarth..info seems to be suggesting a slight swing to the libs therefore lib retain.. I am not
Sure
Lib 43.2
Alp 29.3
Gr 15.7
Ajp 2.3
Family first 2 5
Hinch 2.2
Ignore leaks
Left 47.3
Right 45.7
Left maj 1.6
Then hinch part8 2.2 to be
Distributed..
I get if you give all hinch to the
Lib 50.6 % lib
The figures quoted on the abc site and vec.. exceed my rough margin
I would say this seat is very much line ball
A question
I voted early just outside my electorate. They had a desk for my electorate and I was crossed off the roll as if I voted on election day inside the electorate. But if I had voted early in Mildura, would my vote been an early or an absent vote?
Liberal had a woeful night, still a massive task for them to win in 2026, I hope they’ve learnt from this second landslide defeat.
Thank you for your posts and blogs! Most insightful.
@Redistributed absentee
Looking like there will be no independents in the parliament and there will only be 4 Greens. A smaller crossbench than the last parliament. So much for all the talk of a 10 seat + crossbench.
After election night it’s become clear that independents have had a horrid election. Not a single one of them will be in the lower house. And for all the widespread expectations of the Greens (and conveniently, election night looked good for them so they faced no criticism on the networks) they won’t even reach their minimum target of 5 seats.
It’s so strange for this to materialise in an election with the record lowest vote share for the major parties. It just goes to show that in single-member electorates, the disaffection needs to be focussed on key seats with disciplined campaigning in those seats instead of dispersed widely with no clear outlet. In the latter case, it will just come back to the majors.
If there was one thing a few of us were correct on, it’s that the teal wave was a flash in the pan at the federal election.
I knew it wasn’t going to replicate at the state level.
I hope Pesutto gets the leadership and wins in 2026. That’s been my hope irrespective of the result last night, so his likely win in Hawthorn is my silver lining moment 🙂
@ Mark
A wise man said to me a couple of months ago:
“It’s very easy to support a terrible premier when you don’t have to live under their rule. But I’m quite certain that the election will be much closer than external polls are showing.”
An earlier comment made the point that despite this election producing the record lowest vote share for the major parties, there are likely to be fewer cross-bench MPs, and probably only Greens, in the lower house. The Greens will gain in the Upper House, for which the count is still very early. The reason why a substantial loss in votes by Labor does not translate into a loss of seats is that the single member electoral system doesn’t promote electoral results that represent the will of the population. Because most of the swings in Labor held seats were in very safe seats, they won’t affect the number of seats; but they might affect the result in the Upper House.
Although if Pesutto were to win Hawthorn and then become opposition I do think it will improve moderate voters support. Nevertheless, I don’t think it will be at the extent of previous years like Ted Baillieu or Malcolm Turnbull due to a variety of factors:
– Last Federal election saw much of the Moderate Libs lost their seat
– Turnbull although a moderate Lib couldn’t manage to unite moderate and conservative factions ending up with policies that applease nobody
– Baillieu banned wind farms
– Pesutto voted against Euthanasia
If anything comes out of this, can it be that some of us stop taking Kos Samaras’ word as gospel?
RedBridge projected Labor couldn’t get above 48 seats, they lead in 56. They said that the Greens would get between 5-7 seats, they look stuck on 4. They said that the Teals and Independents would get between 6-8 seats, they don’t look like they’re going to win any.
RedBridge has had a mare, and there is no gymnastics that Samaras can use to get out of it.
Agreed with some here that the Greens’ performance last night is generally massively overrated by the media. They did well to consolidate the vote in their incumbent electorates but generally not much elsewhere, besides Richmond (thankfully they chose a candidate who isn’t transphobic for once). Northcote is a massive disappointment, a 10% swing against on primary votes, though depending how absentee votes pan out they may still pull off a nailbiter like they did in Brisbane. What success they did have is largely due to Liberal preferences and the rise in the Vic Socialist vote. Resourcing the Albert Park campaign at the expense of the Northern/Western Metro seats was clearly a tactical error.
I don’t think Samantha Ratnam is a good leader. She’s boring, often insincere, she made some very odd policy decisions (like landing to the right of the Liberals on public transport), she made far too much of the fact that she’d basically collaborate on the vast majority of Labor’s agenda whatever the result happened to be, and ultimately she’s bad at articulating an alternative vision. I don’t know enough about the other Greens to know who’d be the best replacement. And unfortunately the talent pool hasn’t grown much.
How many absents will be expected in Mornington and Hawthorn? Surely they should massively favour the INDs who only narrowly trail after the bulk of postals were counted.
I know I read one analysis say absents don’t often favour independents, maybe not on primary vote but but they DO massively favour Greens and Labor whose preferences are flowing about 80% to the IND, and absents are usually the Liberals’ weakest vote type.
@FL regarding the Greens, I agree. Their primary vote was actually stagnant or went backwards in all their targets north of the Yarra.
A lot of their 2CP swing actually came from the increased Victorian Socialists vote, just as much if not more than the Liberals changing preference tactics (this factor seems to not be mentioned).
The two target seats where they actually genuinely improved the most were:
* Albert Park +4.5%, but still nowhere enough to make the 2CP; and
* Prahran +9.3%, a massive swing consistent with the big federal swings around Chapel St.
Prahran will now likely be the safest Greens seat in the state, has the second highest primary vote (after Brunswick) and the Chapel precinct may be their new heartland.
It seems much a the swings against Labor in the North and West are alre suprisingly going to the Victorian Socialist rather than the LNP and “freedom” party despite the stereotype that loudest voices of the Socialist be in the Inner City. Yet I wonder why so many Socialist votes are somehow preference Liberals rather than Labor despite HTV cards.
The threat of all types of independents (teal, western suburbs, rural, anti-Dan e.g. Ian Cook) was overhyped and overexagerated. At present, neither of them are in front in 2PP terms. Counting is still going on and Mornington and Hawthorn are really, really close.
Here’s why I think the independents were overestimated.
1. Before the federal election of 2022, news of any urban/metro independent winning a seat at a general election was very rare and very shocking. The federal election turned things on its head with Dai Le’s surprise win, the teal wave and Green wave.
2. Since the federal election, this belief grew that it would happen again and again. It was assumed that any independent candidate with name recognition, money and an army of volunteers could become the next Dai Le (if in Labor heartland) or the next Zoe Daniel or Monique Ryan (if in Liberal heartland).
3. The federal teal wave happened because they tapped into anti-Morrison anger and so voting for a teal would help get rid of Morrison, who was far more unpopular than Dan Andrews. Dai Le won because of Labor’s arrogance and neglect in that neck of the woods.
Just my two cents.
This election should be a case study in”how the media got it wrong”, along with the 2019 federal election.
Any idea why the swing to the Liberals was subdued in the outer southeast compared to the north and west? Dandenong only 3%, Cranbourne, Narre Warren etc less than 1%. Demographically these seats are like the west and north.
No idea Adam, I’m shocked to still see Pakenham in the Labor column at the moment, albeit very narrowly.
I’m shocked that Labor are slightly ahead in Hastings and Bass and will retain Pakenham.
@ Adam, only theory i have is that is that the Big Build and the focus on Level crossing removals was explained Better here especially in Dandenong (poorest electorate in Melbourne and strongest Labor seat after the election) All level crossings between Dandenong/CBD has been removed and also Cranbourne line duplicated so they already seeing the benefits. However, even if Pakenham is won by narrowly, it is still an embarrassing result for the Libs a seat everyone wrote off including myself and Daniel Andrews did not even campaign.
The Libs definitely underperformed in the south-east compared to the north and west with Labor doing better than expected in Hastings, Bass and Pakenham. The funny thing is that even with the double digit swings, Labor still holds most of the seats in the north and west pretty comfortably and the western suburb seats the Libs and independents were more confident in: Point Cook, Melton, Werribee swung a lot less to the Libs, resulting in no marginal seats there for the Libs to win next time. The most positive story for the Libs really is that they somehow managed to improve their margins in their affluent stronghold even though they’ve openly talked about abandoning them but not in the eastern suburb seats that fell to Labor in 2018. They truly wasted their strategy and swing and if they decided instead of chasing votes in the west and north by lurching the party to the right and jumping on the anti-vax and Trumpist freedom party bandwagon to instead improve in the east they could’ve pushed Dan Andrews into minority.
The freeway upgrade to Pakenham that’s just been opened probably wouldn’t have hurt Labor’s chances in that part of the world. (I was surprised by the lack of swing there, too).
Nina Taylor (ALP) was no longer a Southern Metropolitan Region MLC and if she is unsuccessful in Albert Park District, which is likely, she will be looking for a job outside parliament. Meanwhile Greens candidate for Albert Park District, Kim Samiotis, will be elected, most likely, on Liberal preferences. The Libs did not want another ALP MP elected and the Greens future MLA will not be part of any government. Liberal Lauren Sherson in Albert Park District, did well with little help from Liberal HQ with good local focused leaflets and a good You Tube clip. The last Liberal card leaflet from Liberal HQ (received on 23 Nov 22) about the Sunday morning hangover if Dan Andrews was elected was ridiculous but this was not candidate Lauren Sherson’s fault.
The divergence between north & west vs south-east despite their demographic similarities struck me as well Adam & Trent. A Labor MP argued to me that some northern & western MPs are total duds who take their electorates for granted whereas those in south-east don’t. May have been self promotion but the northern & Western swing ranged from mild to enormous & the bad performers aren’t that surprising.
If the Libs get the majority of postal votes in all tossups except Northcote and keeping Narracan:
Labor – 53 seats
LNP – 31 seats
Greens – 4 seats
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/vic/2022/results?filter=indoubt&sort=latest
I just mentioned over on the Pakenham thread that looking at Poll Bludger’s live results , there appears to be on average 3000-4000 formal postals alrady counted in most seats, which I assume will be the majority of them.
So I think what’s left to count will be more of a mix of remaining postals yet to be received, and absents, which I assume will probably outnumber remsining postals?
So while I think today’s counting of large postal batches moved everything right, is it fair to assume the counting of absents on Tuesday will move things back left again?
If I look at a seat like Hawthorn in 2018 for example, there were just under 4000 postals and just over 3000 absent votes; over 3000 postals are already counted this year so I’d assume maybe 1000 postals and 3000 absents left to count?
I should note, postals are up this year and absents will likely be down since election day votes were overall.
So if for example, on average there were 4000 postals and 3000 absents per seat last time, I’d expect maybe 4500 postals and 2500 absents this time, so given most seats are already over 3000 postals counted, they would still probably have about a 2:1 ratio of absents to remaining postals left to count I would think.
I think these results are further evidence of the faultiness of single-member electoral systems as @Stephen Morey said. There were massive 2PP swings against Labor in Yan Yean (-11.10%), Greenvale (-15.60%), St Albans (-12.30%) and Kororoit (-10.50%), yet this led to no change in the lower house representation of these areas nor had any effect on Labor’s ability to form government. I think the amount of lower-house representation a party gets should vary based on whether it scores a comparatively high vote or low vote in a certain area and not just spit out the same result regardless of whether someone wins 80/20 versus 52/48.
More broadly, as @Adda said, the combined vote for the major parties fell further, yet the crossbench will be even smaller in the new Victorian Parliament. I hope one day we get a more proportional electoral system where the government that forms looks a bit more representative of the results.
Implications for the NSW election in March?
G – I think it shows Perrottet can win.
Even with a fairly stagnant Liberal vs Labor vote, the NSW L/NP can take comfort in:
* Teals underperformance compared to federal and the strength of the inner city affluent Liberal vote. This means that Liberals will be able to hold their blue wall in Vaulcluse, the North Shore and Northern beaches without much trouble and resource marginal seats instwad. Matt Kean can play a similar role to Turnbull in 2010 and 2013. OPV is also.a help, though left wing voters have decent preference discipline.
* Nats strong performance in regional areas, including winning back Shepparton and Mildura. This may give the Nats hope of winning back the 3 shooter seats and Wagga Wagga, even Lismore (Page was strongly Nat federally), and comfort in seats like Upper Hunter.
* The outer suburban swings against the ALP. This will give Liberals comfort in retaining seats like Penrith and Mulgoa, and a chance to win some ALP held marginals like Leppington and Londonderry. However OPV may hurt Liberals chances for Dai Le style upsets.
* Healthy margins in the middle ring suburbs that swung ALP federally and in Victoria. For example Labor have a long way to go in Ryde.
* Some Greenslide talk..Greens strength was overhyped, but even a stronger Green party doesn’t have any credible LNP held target seats. Findley will shake up South Coast a bit but hard to get a 10% swing with OPV.
NSW will be close but despite scandals I think NSW Liberals are on track to a federal drag influenced 4th term and Victoria hasn’t changed my mind.
John, the swing in the outer suburbs was because of the lockdowns and vaccine mandates. In NSW this goes against the Liberals as they locked down the state, particularly Western and South Western Sydney, and enforced vaccine mandates.
It seems much a the swings against Labor in the North and West are alre suprisingly going to the Victorian Socialist rather than the LNP and “freedom” party despite the stereotype that loudest voices of the Socialist be in the Inner City. Yet I wonder why so many Socialist votes are somehow preference Liberals rather than Labor despite HTV cards.
@Adam you would think so, but lockdown resentment is largely a right wing movement. Western Sydney didn’t have big 2PP swings with a few exceptions, but Labor’s primary took a beating in seats like Werriwa with right wing parties picking it up. Liberals easily retained Lindsay. Gladys being replaced by Perrottet helped minimise damage to her.
In seats where Labor likely win on primaries, they will be fine in OPV. Labor can and do promote “just vote 1” in seats where it suits them. But I think Liberal incumbents will also be fine, and this is in an area where Labor would want to pick up seats to win majority.
Lots of factors in play in NSW, just saying that Labor winning in Vic doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll win in NSW. I’m seeing the opposite based on the way seats went.
@FL Agree on Ratnam and the Vic Greens. She makes the Greens come across as a major party, in a bad way.
Unfortunately all people who watched the election coverage and went home after Dan Andrews’ victory speech will remember is positive Greens news. So I don’t think the party will learn anything.
If Sarah Mansfield gets elected in Western Vic (she’s on track to with current votes) she would be ideal for leader.
In a way it’s interesting that despite the move away from major parties, it looks like the new LA will be made up of Labor, Coalition and Greens only.
Whilst a terrible result overall for the Coalition, I guess they can take some happiness in having defeated the independent challenge in their own backyards (both the rural and urban variety)*
*Assuming that the Libs retain their current leads in Hawthorn and Mornington over the Teals.
A lot of humble pie being eaten on the thread….. I will add to it as my predictions were miles off. Wrong on independents (including small parties) , greens, liberals, nationals and labor’s performance….. which pretty much covers the field.
I am amazed that liberals didn’t do better in seats like Box Hill, Glen Waverly, Bayswater and Ashwood. The fact, according to the ABC, that they have only won one seat (Nepean) given how badly everything went in 2018 and the underperformance of the Government through covid (and the financial mess etc).
The greens pretty much treaded water. The only surprise about Richmond is that it hadn’t been picked up at an earlier election.
The big over performer of the election was the Nationals. I had thought (again wrongly) that the independents in Sheperaton and Mildura would consolidate their positions. Euroa was a chance to be lost to the liberal in a three corner contest. And it would be virtually impossible to pick up Morwell given the last National’s performance…. The question is why didn’t they run in Ballarat / Bendigo and surrounds?
Independents – didn’t do as well as expected anywhere…..
Labor – what can you say. Not many parties maintain a thumping majority 3 terms in….. but is this due to the opposition or the Government….. The real question is who leads Labor to the next election.
A lot of soul searching for the liberals in particular. The new leader (who ever that may be) needs a new direction and new approach. I am reminded about the definition of insanity being losing an election then running the same candidates with the same policies and expecting a different result….
Keep eating the humble pie….
Best
Pollster
@Corey I’m fairly sure that was the Herald Sun’s wishcasting on “48 seats max”, not from Redbridge. The Herald Sun was using focus group data from Redbridge that was way out of date and using that to feed a headline of minority government.
Redbridge’s polling during the election was 53.5 2PP in the statewide poll they had and they didn’t make any specific predictions about the numbers of seats of Greens and Independents, just that there would be a record low major party vote (which there was, but it ended up not mattering in terms of seats). Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong though.
Pollster, I think Bendigo and Ballarat are larger regional centres that are now leaning/trending to Labor, so I don’t think the Nationals will be able to poll well in those areas. They are probably like Newcastle and Wollongong, regional centres that strongly favour Labor as well.
Okay – just opened twitter and saw Kevin Bonham going off on this topic…
“The article is generally very good. It has one error; the Redbridge seat analysis published in the Herald Sun (which turned out to be very inaccurate) was not based on a single poll.
This Victorian election was an exceptional success for statewide polling. Statewide polls predict vote share not seat tallies. Any commentator blaming these polls for pundits misinterpreting them will be given very short and particularly bad-tempered shrift by yours truly.”
An unnoticed trend has been the increase in the Green vote in the Geelong region. And not just in the inner city booths, with solid growth in Corio, Norlane, Newcomb, Whittington, Armstrong Creek, Lara, along the coast and the Bellarine and in the Otways.
Greens did well in every Geelong area seat, Oakleigh and Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe looks a lot like Albert Park. Some other Greens strengths may be buried in VicSoc and teal votes, though it’s concerning how soft the Green vote is. Keen to see the 3PP in Essendon and Williamstown, plus Brighton and Sandringham.
Not sure whether that entails any winnable seats for the future. Maybe Geelong or Polwarth if Sarah Mansfield becomes leader and they get star candidates (Di Natale lives in Polwarth IIRC).
Believe it or not, the Libs got decent 2PP swings in most seats south and east of the Yarra River. The problem is that they mainly happened in safe Labor seats or marginal Liberal seats.
The Libs on tv on election night mentioned they had a problem in seats with large populations of ethnic Chinese voters. I see a strong correlation between Chinese ancestry and 2PP swing. Labor got a 2PP swing of at least 3% in Bayswater, Glen Waverley, Ashwood, Box Hill and Ringwood.
It seems the Libs put too much attention into defending their ultra-marginal seats like Caulfield, Brighton and Sandringham and into staving off teal challengers in Hawthorn and Kew.
Anyone know how/why Labor scored swings in Bass and Hastings?
A comment on 2 seats I know something about.
First, Footscray has turned from a safe Labor v Liberal seat to a marginal Labor v Green seat. The redistribution took out safe Labor areas Braybrook and Sunshine and Included Green voting areas of Seddon and part of Yarraville. These 2 areas have a Green and Vic Socialist on local council. The shift to the Greens should be no surprise.
Second in Preston watch out for progressive independent Gaetano Greco who is on local council. He has just gone ahead of the Greens into third just behind the Libs. Their is an outside chance he could receive preferences from most of the minor parties ahead of the Greens and Labor. This may be enough to put him in the final 2. Other than Family First, all other candidates have him ahead of Labor in their preferences. A long shot, but not impossible to win the seat.
Yes I know it is there not their.
@Votante as to Hastings I’m not too sure, but I believe the swing to Labor in Bass is partly due to sea changers moving in to the southern end of the electorate, similar to the Surf Coast area. Also Wonthaggi has traditionally been a Labor town.
Was Crugnale’s personal popularity a factor in Bass?
@ Votante not sure about Hastings. However, with Bass in the prediction thread prior to the election i said i thought Labor was a chance here especially with sea changers moving into Bass Coast LGA.
Guardian valley, I did see that Gaetano slipped into 3rd place from the ABC election website. However, Anthony Green mentioned that to win, Gaetano would need to receive >70% preferences from all other parties which Anthony argued would be unlikely as the minor parties generally have preference flow rates of 60% or less even when they are directing them to a single candidate.
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