Welcome to the Tally Room’s guide to the 2024 Northern Territory election. This guide includes comprehensive coverage of each seat’s history, geography, political situation and results of the 2020 election.
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Table of contents:
Electorate profiles
Seat profiles have been produced all 25 Legislative Assembly electorates. You can use the following navigation to click through to each seat’s profile.
You can also use this map to find an electorate and view the seat guide.
Redistribution
A redistribution of electoral boundaries is conducted before every election.
The 2023 redistribution took longer than planned. A second draft needed to be conducted after a significant amount of growth in enrolment numbers in remote electorates. The process then needed to be restarted due to an error in officially announcing the original process.
No seats were abolished, created or renamed in this redistribution.
There were no significant shifts in electorates between regions – the number of seats in the Darwin-Palmerston area remained the same, and there was no changes to the border between urban and rural regions despite a significant imbalance in enrolment numbers.
The most significant shift was in the increasing population in the Palmerston area. Spillett was redrawn from a seat that was partly based in Palmerston into an entirely Palmerston-based seat, meaning that this city now includes four whole electorates.
There should be a word of caution about how redistribution margins are calculated.
There are very few local polling places used in the Northern Territory. Many seats only have one booth, and some don’t have a single booth. It is rare that a seat has two or three booths. Quite a few electorates have large shares of the vote cast via mobile polling teams, and we don’t have precise data on where those votes were cast. This makes it difficult to precisely determine which voters come from a particular part of an electorate when transferring a share of an electorate to a neighbouring seat.
In addition, the last election was conducted in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than half of the vote was cast via pre-poll, which also makes it hard to geolocate those voters.
So while I have estimated how margins have changed, it is more difficult to be precise than in other elections.
You can see a summary of the changes at this blog post, and the below map shows the changes between 2020 and 2024.
Contact
If you have a correction or an update for a single electorate page, feel free to post a comment. You can also send an email by using this form.
If you’d like me to include a candidate name or website link in my election guide, please check out my candidate information policy.
Friends in the rural area have said, people aren’t a huge of kezia’s person and have said the 2 people that are better suited for the role as mackay and the independent salter, both are on the Litchfield council
I was joking. But if you are considering it?
@John I’m leaving for Darwin tonight.
We’re five days out from the election. You can officially count the number of days until the election on a single hand.
I’ve arrived in Darwin. Here’s what’s making news:
* Chief Minister Eva Lawler has proposed to give free land to Aldi or Costco should they set up in the Territory to divert customers from going to the increasingly-expensive major supermarkets of Coles and Woolworths.
* The NT News has reported that Labor is at risk of losing three marginal seats in Darwin: Fannie Bay, Fong Lim and Port Darwin.
What are you doing in Darwin, out of curiousity?
@Darcy me and my girlfriend are meeting up with a few mates, sightseeing and then I will be at the CLP after-party on Saturday too.
@np your assuming everyone has five fingers
The supermarket policy is a definite ‘brain fart’ from a government in trouble. It was announced without any consultation and Aldi have already come out and said they have no plans to expand into the NT.
Np thought you were so committed to the libs that you travelled to Darwin to help out. I do not support the liberals or their tail the nats. Such commitment is either extreme loyalty or insanity. A meet up of mates is a much better idea
They never said they were coming. They said they’d establish a working group with the federal Solomon MP to liaise with a third party supermarket chains to see how they could get them to come to the NT. They said such as Aldi or Costco. Someone said drakes who I haven’t heard of.
Aldi in Sydney is definitely cheaper than Woolworths or Coles!!
Alp would be very lucky to retain Blain and Port Darwin. Drysdale and Daly would be very difficult but not impossible. Barkly and Namitara (probably misspelled) are lnp held and ultra marginal…given small electorate size 6000 it is Possible that one or both could switch sides.
Arnhem may well be a different proposition now the previous independent has joined the lnp…. he may not win. This I suggest along with my previous post would create a hung parliament. This is probably the best case Scenario for Labor
Territorians always want more like what’s down south, Aldi would be fantastic. Truthfully, we hear something we like, and hold onto it. Hearing the word Aldi, everyone has probably latched on thinking we’ll get it but they didn’t say it’s possible or not possible.
I think Blain will go to the CLP same as port darwin. Barkly and Namatjira being bush seats and ultra marginal could go either way whether there’s an incumbent or not. That’s just my thoughts
@John oops. Might get cancelled.
@Mick Quinlivan I’m not a member of the NT party since I live in Queensland. I’m a member of the Queensland LNP. However I’ll still be there on election night.
While I would support Aldi and Costco expanding to the NT as well as to Tasmania and to more regional areas I do think it needs some consultation and should have been announced earlier. When Jeremy Rockliff announced building the new AFL stadium in Hobart he couldn’t just say “we’re doing it”. He had to have consultation from the AFL first.
We’re still pissed off ikea suddenly stopped shipping to darwin, especially when heaps of people ordered from them. I know we’ll never be big enough for a store but paying for shipping and getting furniture was excellent
Np I did not intend any personal criticism of you. I knew you were a lnp member from yr previous posts .
@Whoknows did they primarily ship from Australia or Indonesia? Seems like a silly question but Bali has an IKEA and that’s closer to Darwin than Sydney or Perth or any other city with an IKEA in Australia.
@Mick yeah it’s fine. I knew you weren’t criticising me personally.
@NP they shipped from QLD and SA from memory and you would collect it from Toll at east arm.
@Whoknows interesting, I wonder why they stopped it.
We’re four days out from the election, and it’s my second day in Darwin.
Here’s what’s making news:
* Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro has cast an early vote.
* Both major parties are spending thousands to fund FIFO volunteers, many of whom are uni students who are members of the youth branches of other state branches of the party they are helping volunteer for. As you would know, members of the youth members of parties often help out as volunteers on the campaign and on election day, but many in the Territory are coming from other states.
* The Arafura Nolans project, a major project to develop a rare earths mine and processing facility backed by $840 million in Commonwealth funding, has reportedly been hailed as the key to getting the Territory’s economy back on track. The name is somewhat misleading though as it is nowhere near the Arafura Sea.
Listened to ABC Alice Springs debate of tbe braitling candidates. Labor candidate was not a confident speaker at all, felt like the CLP candidate was kinda shouting at you. I’m not a greens supporter at all, but I think the best speaker out of them all was the greens candidate. She knew her stuff inside out and didn’t need to repeat/read a script that I felt the other 2 needed to do. The greens have apparently door knocked the electorate 3 times. Definitely more than my electorate
Was interesting to hear the CLP talk about the ‘sentenced to a skull’ program they want to implement. When they were in power last time, they had a program called ‘sentenced to a job’ which essentially is the same program
Oops ‘sentenced to a skill’ not skull
@Whoknows yeah I was gonna say “sentenced to skull” sounds like a metaphor for the death penalty. Capital punishment is banned nationwide by federal law.
Stupid auto correct
On 9 news Darwin, Justine glover predicts there could be 7 independents. What are people’s thoughts on their chances? What are what electorates could have the independents
7 is definitely wishful thinking but if I had to guess I’d go with Araluen, Blain, Goyder, Mulka, Johnston, Wanguri, and maybe Karama where Glover is running?
Could be Nelson as well given the independent that made the 2CP there last time is running again but I really don’t think independents are winning more than 4 seats at the absolute most
Definitely agree it’s wishful thinking.
The independent for Wanguri won’t win.
I have family in Nelson and they’ve voted for the independent. They’re a swing voter. Didn’t want to vote labor as they know nothing about the candidate and felt maley hasn’t done anything for the electorate, and really like the independent and how active she’s been.
I think Johnston and Karama independents will be close with Labor but who knows.
Interesting. I’d have thought incumbency/sophomore swing would’ve helped Maley, and the fact that Ratahi couldn’t win it the first time with the outgoing member’s endorsement was a sign it should be written off, but that’s intriguing.
Agree on Wanguri, I don’t think being Lord Mayor 16 years ago is really enough to a swing a seat, I was just trying to get up to seven lol
I’m interested to see how Blain goes – a lot of the comments here are writing off Mark Turner but a fair bit of the NT media I’ve seen regards him as a strong local member with a real chance of holding his seat. Granted I’m not from the NT so I’ve no idea how things are on the ground but it appears to be one to watch on election night.
the only independent to win will be mulka. you heard it here first
Bold prediction, imo Lambley will get re-elected comfortably
I think turner works hard in his electorate cos he needs that local backing to hold onto it. But is was very close with the same CLP guy last time. I’m just sick of listening to him go about about how good of a person he is when had his cocaine sex scandal and cheated on his wife
What was interesting was in the ABC Radio debate for blain, the CLP candidate didn’t attend, only turner and the Labor candidate. You would have thought he would gone on to present his case as to why he’s the better candidate than Turner.
I’ve noticed a few of the CLP candidates in Darwin/palmerston have decided the ABC radio debates, same as greens too
@oguh i rate that one as a tossup but im giving it to the CLp on the basis they got a swing to them in 2020 and almost won the seat in a year when the swing was against them
John, although Lambley could be like Bob Katter who almost lost his seat in 2013 but then rebounded and was re-elected with a much stronger margin at the next election (2016). After all, Lambley is the longest serving MP in the Assembly re-contesting her seat.
Especially as the CLP candidate was preselected quite late, similar to Kennedy in 2016 where the originally selected LNP candidate passed away and the party had to pick a last-minute replacement.
Does anyone know how long it will take to start getting results on Saturday? I would assume it is faster than other elections due to the smaller seat size.
@John the swing wasn’t against the CLP in 2020. It was to the CLP, especially in Alice and Katherine which will both swing again and probably harder than last time.
@Yoh An Robyn Lambley has always been quite popular there. If she ever rejoins the CLP she will get at least 63% of the TPP vote.
@Darcy read below.
@Darcy the seats are small but remote mobile voting means a lot of votes come in later in the remote seats. The urban seats however (these are all the seats in the Darwin-Palmerston conurbation and the surrounding rural areas, as well as all of the Alice Springs seats and the seat of Katherine).
I managed to find the livestream of the last election on YouTube and the first results came in at 6:34pm. They were from Ludmilla in Fannie Bay and Tindal in Arnhem. Ludmilla voted Labor but swung to the CLP, while Tindal overwhelmingly voted CLP because it’s technically an outer suburb of Katherine and it has a military base (military booths tend to be quite conservative while prison booths tend to vote Labor).
*6:34pm ACST
NP – what are your thoughts on Justine glovers wishful independent predictions
Thanks for the effort NP.
@Darcy no worries. Basically we shouldn’t expect
@Whoknows about independents getting seven seats? No chance.
Mulka is basically certain to be won by Yingiya Mark Guyula, so that’s one. Robyn Lambley might hold on in Araluen, that’s two. Justine Glover might get elected in Karama, so that’s three. Justine Davis might get elected in Johnston, so that’s four. Belinda Kolstad might get elected in Goyder, so that’s five. That’s all I reckon. Nelson will be won by the CLP.
*finishing my first comment I forgot to finish
@Darcy no worries. Basically we shouldn’t expect results in seats like Gwoja until later because every booth there will be an RMV booth.
Arnhem has one in Tindal, Barkly has one in Tennant Creek and Mulka has one in Nhulunbuy. So an important note is that the first results in Arnhem will heavily favour the CLP but later results will be more favourable to Labor.
@Ben Raue, I should point out that when you click the “Election Guides” tab it still redirects to the Dunkley by-election guide. Just wanted to point that out.
@yoh an the difference beong in 2013 the libs won govt and 2020 the lavor maintained government with a swing to the clp I expect they will to here
She is very annoying but I think Lambley will retain her seat and retire prior to the 2028 election
Lambley should comfortably retain, I feel like running as a territory alliance candidate last election was a drain on her vote, and the candidate the CLP are running this time is vastly less notable – last time it was the mayor of Alice Springs, this time it’s some party official who was only announced at the close of nominations. Real paper candidate vibes and I can’t imagine the CLP are giving this a proper crack.