Labor won a large two-party-preferred vote, yet looks set to fall short of a parliamentary majority. For most of modern Australian political history, a two-party-preferred vote of 53.6% (as the ABC currently projects) would comfortably win a majority.
For most of the post-war period, elections were almost completely dominated by the major parties, who would win pretty much every seat. So it was possible to identify who had a more efficient vote – where a party would win a majority of the 2PP vote but fail to win a majority of seats.
Part of the story in this election is the large number of minor parties and independents elected, but I still think there’s a story about the efficient distribution of vote. If you add in the five seats won by crossbenchers where Labor likely won the two-party-preferred vote, that adds up to a relatively small majority for a given 2PP.
This made me want to examine the distribution of seats for Labor, the Coalition and the crossbenchers based on their marginality. And it does show a remarkably large number of seats which the Coalition has held on to by slim margins.
This first chart is a copy of the format I used for a blog post after the Victorian election, looking to explain why a significant 2PP swing against the Labor government didn’t translate into seat losses.
This chart shows the number of seats each side held prior to the election and after the election, grouped by the seat’s margin into buckets of 4%.
The pre-election range of margins (based on the new boundaries but using the 2019 results) was reasonably smooth. Both sides had 5-6 seats with seats under a 4% margin. Labor had a concentration of seats in the 16-20% margin range, but very few safer than that, while the Coalition had more seats on 20%+ margins.
The post-election picture is quite different. Labor have won just seven seats by margins under 8%, while the Coalition won fifteen under 8%. Under 4%, it’s 12 Coalition seats versus five Labor seats.
There are 14 seats where the leading candidate currently has under 52% of the two-candidate-preferred vote. Labor is just leading in three of those, compared to eight Liberal seats. Labor came second in six of those Liberal seats, as well as Kiama and Balmain. So (assuming they hold on to Ryde) Labor has won just three of the eleven close seats they were competing in.
If these close races were more evenly distributed, Labor would have easily won a majority.
I then figured it’d be interesting to see how marginal races tend to be distributed over time. Does one side usually win most of the close races? For this chart I have used the traditional definition of a marginal seat as a seat with a margin under 6%.
In the seven elections held with the current seat numbers, no party has won so many seats by a sub-6% margin. In 2003, the Coalition did have a lot more close contests than Labor, but the total number of close races was much smaller.
All of this sets up the Coalition with a lot of close marginals that will be vulnerable at the next state election, while Labor will be defending less of its terrain as it looks to solidify its position.
The way I see it, these results leave the LNP with a chance at the next elections in NSW unlike the other recently lost states.
The question is whether they realise why, and if they will drift left or right to capitalise- noting only one of their members improved her margin!
The Liberals were really good at sandbagging seats that had low margins e.g. Oatley, Winston Hills, Goulburn, where swings were limited to single-digits. With the exception of East Hills and Penrith (which had margins <1% pre-election), all Labor gains were off the back of double-digit swings. The Liberals did overlook some traditional Liberal seats like Terrigal but they may just limp across the line this time.
Willoughby and Pittwater were really close (now <2% margins). It's not uncommon for independents to rerun when they're close. Hannan (Wollondilly) won on her third attempt. Penn (Willoughby) ran for the third attempt and missed out.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the increasing non-ALP/Coalition vote makes the concept of a statewide 2PP increasingly meaningless. Since the 2PP includes preferences (and takes into account the lack thereof as well), with a large non-major vote the 2PP does not give even a vaguely accurate picture of the electorate’s preference, at either the state or electorate level. An MP may win the seat with a 53% 2PP, yet only get a primary vote of 30% or even less, meaning a whopping 70+% of voters in that electorate did not want them or their party. With a current party vote in NSW of 37%, that means 63% did not want the ALP to win, a far cry from the 47% who opposed the win as implied by the 2PP. The danger of relying on 2PP figures is that many if not most non-major party voters who direct their preference ultimately to a major party do so not out of any desire to support that party but because they find them slightly less distasteful than the other party, that is the ‘lesser evil” scenario.
One consequence of this is the last graph, the number of marginal seats by party over time and explains why the number of marginal ALP seats has been reasonably steady, averaging around 6-8 seats whilst the number of marginal coalition seats has increased, especially since 2011. I suspect most if not all of that increase has been due to the rise of minor parties and independents and non-traditional contests, which is hitting the Coalition far harder than the ALP.
Perhaps less of a ‘blue wall’ and more disillusionment of voters with both major parties? The rise of a third force, democracy trying to be reborn, with Greens and Independents becoming increasingly relevant
Good post Ben. electoral geography affects the overall result. Sydney has a Blue wall that starts at the Harbour and goes up to the Hawkesbury River and West to the Hills District, Hawkesbury LGA With the exception of Ryde none of these seats are remotely winnable for for Labor so the independents winning here does nothing to help Labor win a majority in its own right. Winston Hills, Parramatta are where the two Sydneys meet so even a small redistribution can have have dramatic consequence. Oatley is another such seat which crosses a social divide so redistributions can have a major impact. Ideally the Liberals want the seat aligned east-west while Labor wants it north-south.
There is absolutely a phenomenon of voters leaving the major parties but that’s not what’s going on here – the Libs have been lucky or strategic and been able to hold on to a bunch of seats by tiny margins, most against Labor.
I’d also note that five of those 15 sub-6% Coalition marginals are against independents – Willoughby, Lane Cove, North Shore, Manly and Pittwater. But that still leaves 10 others. So it’s part of the story but not the whole story.
I absolutely don’t think you can rely on the 2PP to judge the proportionality of a result – this election result has very poor proportionality – but it is useful for gauging how many seats might fall for a certain swing.
I think another key issue to discuss here is the value of personal votes and incumbency. In the close seats in this election, the ALP has gotten above average swings in their favour in seats where there is no incumbent (Parramatta, Riverstone, South Coast, Ryde, Drummoyne) or where the incumbent has documented problems (Camden, Miranda). Monaro is another one where the personal vote works in the ALP’s favour – the ALP candidate is an ex-MP of the seat who has held the seat for longer than the sitting National Party MP.
The Coalition have benefited from sitting members and built up personal votes with below average swings in Goulburn, Winston Hills and Tweed. This has probably prevented an ALP majority. They had below average swings in Penrith and East Hills too, but a margin of 1% is too low to defend effectively. The swing in Oatley was close to the state average, but an incumbent has probably prevented the seat from falling, especially when you consider the swing in surrounding areas. Tina Ayyad may have won Holsworthy due to her personal vote in the Liverpool area, which is typically ALP leaning. And Gareth Ward in Kiama shows that personal vote can win you seats even though you’re facing serious criminal charges.
The pendulum and incumbency in key seats favoured the Coalition this time around but it’s looking a lot different for next election.
I think SP has struck a very key point that did save the Liberal Party from this turning into a landslide and that has been the personal vote of those who did stay on for this election. There was a strong swing away from the Liberal Party in Safe or Fairly Seats where there was no Liberal Incumbent. Consider the following seats:
Castle Hill – 13PP Primary Swing away (Caused by redistributions)
Davidson – 9.6PP Primary Swing away (Retirement of Jonathan O’Dea)
Pittwater – 12PP Primary Swing away (Retirement of Rob Stokes, plus Independent run)
Wakehurst – 22.9PP Primary Swing away (Retirement of Brad Hazzard, plus Independent run)
When you consider that the Primary Vote swing against the Liberal Party was 6.1PP, these 5 seats did experienced a significant swing away, resulting in 1 of these 4 seats being lost.
Great post. The ‘blue wall’ is now helped by optional preferential voting introduced by Wran government in 1979. How? Simply this: 1. because Labour and Greens voters often (10-20%) fail to preference, their votes exhaust early. It will be interesting to see the exhaust rate in the electorates where independents were strong- I think it will be lower than previous elections because of higher awareness of impact of numbering every box. 2. Many independent voters have been drawn from Liberal base. This means that if they run third after Labor, those who have indicated preferences will often flow to Liberal because they can’t bring themselves to vote Labor. Labor continues to field candidates in unwinnable seats, thereby undermining the independent who would otherwise have a very good chance of beating Liberal. There needs to be a campaign to ditch OPV- it is a mongrel. Gives the illusion of fairness of ‘preferential’ but effectively operates close to first past the post. But as you have noted in your tweets- reform will require a referendum, and that requires a draft bill that would not be in the interests of either major party. Still suffering the unconscionable political skulduggery on the part of Wran government 44 year on.
It is even more complicated given optional preferential voting: how many votes exhausted? Note the Liberal signs during the campaign encouraging this.
After the disappointment for independents in this election and the Victorian State election how many will try again next time? How many of these seats will revert to historic voting patterns?
It will be interesting to see what happens in Qld 2024 whether the Greens manage any wins and affect the 2PP.
Ben! Are you purposely trying to make me angry?! WRT your comment – the NSWEC 2CP is LIB vs ALP and it is currently showing a margin of 5.5%. Maybe you think the IND can catch the Labor candidate and not get excluded 3rd, and thus finish in the top two and final count – and perhaps, perhaps, you might be proved correct. But at the moment no one is counting those preference votes.
Please clarify if this was an oversight stating that Lane Cove is LIB vs IND when you really meant it is a traditional LIB vs ALP seat, or are you truly discounting the likelihood that ALP will finish second in that seat ahead of the IND?
You think I’m trying to make you angry? You’re right, it’s a classic seat. So it’s 4/15 Coalition marginals that are non-classic. I didn’t have the runner-up party in my dataset so I was going off memory.
This is why a redistribution is needed. A South Australian style one designed to give the winner of the TPP a path to majority more easily.
It should be votes that matter not seats, remember people vote not land.
“A wins a win” is just a way of deflecting your problem with the swing away from you in the primary vote and TPP.
We saw the other side of it in 2011 when the ALP emerged from an electoral catastrophe in 2PP terms with 20 lower house seats. By comparison the ALP’s worst 2PP Qld wipeouts ended up with cricket team/Tarago van parliamentary contingents
@ Max, that is a good point QLD Labor actually did slightly better in terms of TPP and Primary vote than their NSW Counter Parts did in 2011. However, it is just the way seats are distributed there is much less rock solid territory so where there is a deluge there is less high ground. I would this is due to Queensland being less centralised, lacking Heavy industry to the extent that the Illawara, Hunter regions have and also lack the concentration of ethnic communities in the middle ring of Western Sydney. If Victorian Labor go the same TPP and Primary vote as NSW Labor did in 2011 and we had optional preferential voters Labor would won more seats as the Red Wall in NW Melbourne and around, northern Geelong, Dandenong is stronger
I’m pretty sure that during the Bob Carr years, the Liberals needed a similarly ridiculous 2PP on paper to win government. The 2011 landslide ended up masking that….but if Labor hadn’t imploded and 2011 was a more normal “We don’t hate them but it’s time to give the other mob a go” type election, we might well have seen a similar outcome as here.
@Max, In terms of the QLD Wipe-out, a lot of that was also due to KAP taking votes from the ALP and exhausting the vote, resulting in the LNP coming over the top to win the election.
@Daniel T – There is some value to the South Australian model. However, I don’t think even the South Australian Model can help with what is a more radical demographic change within NSW.
You need to remember that NSW, for a long time, was a Labor State. These last two elections have shown that the demographic changes that currently exist in NSW are real, especially with the fact that the Liberal Party is still competitive in areas of Western Sydney. There is a natural realignment occurring in NSW, becoming more of a genuine swing state.
You also need to remember that some of these seats are still trying to sort themselves out, following 2011 and that there will continue to be some radical changes to come.
thanks Ben.
There’s just a lot of poor and lazy reporting in the media about electoral contests on the lower north shore of Sydney and I hope that a service of the quality of your blog can be a source of corrections, not reinforcing the media prejudice. If Lane Cove finishes less then a 5% 2PP margin, that is a marked changed from historic results in that seat.
A good proportion of people on the lower north shore do exercise their democratic right to vote ALP (and further still vote GRN) – they do consider they have a left of centre “choice” to not vote Liberal, although the media and the IND groups would have people convinced that they only have a LIB or IND choice.
It will no doubt get lost in the fog of the results but I think it notable that the LC ALP vote is up 9 -10% across the lower north shore.
Fairness gerrymanders are still gerrymanders – if you want a parliament that’s proportional to the votes received in an election, you want proportional representation.
Seems that this election had a lot less minor parties in the lower house than in 2019 (notably Keep Sydney Open)
It would appear that under OPV that the best way for Labor to get a majority in 2027 would be to make sure than smaller right leaning parties run more candidates. Maybe they could try and get family first to re-form
South Australia, with the fairness doctrine in place, had the 2014 election where Liberals lost after winning the 2PP 53/47 (same as Kevin Rudd’s 2007 “landslide”). Even in Hare Clark you get results like the Greens going from 2 seats to 6 off a not particularly large swing in the ACT. It’s always going to be a risk without true MMP, which has its own issues.
Labor has missed the chance to consolidate ultra marginals with a sophomore surge, but they do have the chance for something like Vic 2002 or WA 2013 where an incumbent with a first term minority picks up a huge majority with plenty of new seats.
On the other hand the Liberals have a path back to government, even if the Labor government isn’t particularly unpopular, through taking back the crossbench and flipping a few others. 2027 could see a federal Labor government languishing well into their 2nd term, which will squeeze the crossbenchers in traditional LNP seats.
“It would appear that under OPV that the best way for Labor to get a majority in 2027 would be to make sure than smaller right leaning parties run more candidates. Maybe they could try and get family first to re-form”
Resurrect the Christian Democrats! Surely Silvana Nile would be up for it.
Agree that would be a solid ALP strategy. Minor right wing parties seem to come together very quickly and they generally loathe each other so preferences are less likely to be exchanged. The rugged individualism that is so admired in some right wing circles hurts them in an optional preferential environment.
I’ve linked the 2019 NSW election preference data below – it’s interesting that One Nation voters are noticeably worse than the voters of other right wing minors at preferencing the Coalition. For the left wing minors, Greens and Socialist Alliance voters are much better at preferencing the ALP (rates of 50%+) than any right wing minors voters preferencing the Coalition. Animal Justice voters do not preference the ALP strongly.
https://www.abc.net.au/dat/news/elections/nsw/2023/guide/NSW2019_PrefFlowTables.pdf
yes but on the point of the liberals sand baging seats desbite the masive spending in penrith it could not save stuart Ayrs desbit the liberals throwing evry thing at it
OMG Silvana Nero!!! She was my brother and sister’s Italian Teacher in primary school. Fred moved in with her into Beacon Hill and she just got weirder and weirder.
John is right. The Coalition end result isn’t as bad as it was first made out to be. It’s not a completely hung parliament (trying to refrain from making reference to genitalia, but goddammit, it is so hard. Oh no, I did it again).
Ok back from that distraction. Labor has a very comfortable minority government but the Coalition will easily be able to make enough noise to make the parliament interesting. As has been pointed out as well, federal labor will be expected to be sliding back at the next state election anyway.
2027 will be a fascinating election
Hawkeye – yes not a huge victory for but solid enough .
Ben, have you noticed that swings towards Labor are mostly in the wrong place that will not result in Labor gaining seats? A lot of the swings towards Labor were wasted on massive swings in heartland seats it already held, or very safe Liberal seats in the Hills Shire or Ku-ring-gai Council areas.
Among Labor heartland seats, there was a 18.4% swing to Labor in Kogarah, 12.7% swing to Labor in Port Stephens, 12.1% swing to Labor in Granville, 11.1% swing to Labor in Londonderry, 10.5% swing to Labor in Canterbury, 10.4% swing to Labor in Maroubra, 10.1% swing to Labor in Auburn, and 9.6% swing to Labor in Coogee etc. There was also a 12.7% swing to Labor in Lismore, a seat it already won in 2019.
Among Liberal seats in the Hills Shire or Ku-ring-gai Council areas, there was a 12.0% swing to Labor in Kellyville, 11.1% swing to Labor in Castle Hill, 10.3% swing to Labor in Davidson, 8.3% swing to Labor in Hornsby, and 8.2% swing to Labor in Wahroonga.
These large swings did boost Labor’s 2PP, but did not contribute to Labor gaining any seat.
FWIW, the Liberal Party won a 2PP of 53% in the 2014 South Australian state election, but did not win a majority and even won one less seat than Labor, which won a 2PP of 47%. Support from independent Geoff Brock gave Labor a fourth term.
Yes I did notice that, indeed I’d argue that was the point of this blog post. Although they also gained some hefty swings in the right places (Parramatta and Camden), and there was a few seats with big swings where they fell just short – Miranda, Terrigal and Ryde come to mind.
Having said that, if those super-close races had been split more evenly then Labor would have won a small but clear majority, despite those big swings in safe seats.
Ben, Ryde has not been called yet. Labor can still win.
Labor can definitely still win Ryde but the Libs are more likely to retain it than Labor win it with the amount of votes left relative to the margin. Either way, Ryde will be the most marginal seat in the state no matter which party wins.
I don’t think Labor is going to win Ryde.
Joseph – add an 8.7% swing in Lane Cove. And although they are not yet contributing to the 2PP, probably >6% in North Shore (nothing that remarkable really) and I think something greater than 15% in Willoughby.
Well Jordan won’t win either so I’m not sure what your point is.
Absentees will put Labor back in front.
But absentees have already been counted.
Daniel, I don’t know what maths you are currently running but, according to the votes that are available from Count 3 for Ryde that is being done today (489) and, based on the current FP Trends, Jordan Lane’s lead by the end of the FP Vote will put him beyond reach from the numbers that are currently available, before you proceed with allocating the preferences for that batch of votes.
Unless there is a massive whole of votes to come, if the trends stay as they are for Absentee Votes, ABC will likely declare Jordan Lane the winner after this count. It would require a catastrophic batch of votes from the Absentees to flip the result.
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