Source : the age
A federal election determines our political leaders and government for the next three years. But it is also an enormous opinion poll that provides an insight into the country.
The 16 million votes, cast in around 8000 booths from tiny villages to our embassies overseas, deliver 150 members to the House of Representatives and 40 in the Senate.
But beyond the sitting arrangements in Parliament and the owner of the keys to the Lodge, the individual votes also tell a story about the country and how its various components reacted to the five-week election campaign.
Here are some of those stories.
The Prime Minister had plenty of wins. One of the biggest was in his own backyard.
Anthony Albanese had plenty to be pleased about after his history-making victory. But even he was surprised by what occurred in his home electorate of Grayndler where he enjoyed some of the biggest swings in the nation.
It’s not unusual for a prime minister to hold a safe seat. But the huge swings that swelled Albanese’s margin in Grayndler were almost off the chart.
In the Enfield South booth of 576 voters, the swing to Albanese was 30.5 per cent. In the Enfield booth of 1249 votes, the swing was 25.7 per cent. And down the road at Enfield West, the swing was 26.4 per cent.
In all, there were seven booths in Grayndler which moved by more than 20 points towards Albanese.
And all of them had been in the neighbouring seat of Watson until the most recent redistribution of NSW electorates.
Local Labor operatives put the huge swings down to new Grayndler voters having a sense of “in the prime minister’s seat” excitement, as well as the near disappearance of the Liberal and Greens operations in these areas.
Meanwhile, more than 3000 kilometres to the north, there were even larger swings to Labor being recorded.
Across Cape York in a string of far-north Queensland’s most isolated communities, many with large Indigenous communities, voters supported Matt Smith in the seat of Leichhardt.
Smith enjoyed a swing of 9.5 per cent to win Leichhardt from the LNP’s Jeremy Neal who was seeking to replace long-time member Warren Entsch.
That swing was buoyed by booths such as Kowanyama where, among the 313 votes, there was a 49.7 per cent swing to Smith.
At Bamaga, the most northern polling booth on mainland Australia, the swing to Smith was 30.6 per cent. At Hope Vale (27.3 per cent), Coen (25.4 per cent) and Bloomfield (24.3 per cent) there were similarly large swings.
Each of these booths happened to have voted Yes at the Voice referendum.
The Coalition spent a lot of time campaigning in the outer suburbs. It was a gamble. It backfired.
Peter Dutton called them the “quiet Australians”. People living in the outer suburbs of our largest capital cities trying to go about their lives, which largely revolved around driving to work or driving the kids to weekend sporting events.
He leaned so heavily into the outer suburbs story that one of the Coalition’s key policies – a 25 cent cut in fuel excise for 12 months – was explicitly aimed at these millions of people.
During the campaign, Dutton stopped at more service stations than an oil tanker.
But the election results show just how poorly this plan worked in areas where another Coalition policy, effectively ending work-for-home for the public service (which had to be abandoned during the campaign), also resonated.
Labor’s primary vote in outer suburbs increased in every capital city.
The biggest jump was in Dutton’s home state of Queensland where it lifted by 5.4 per cent or about 60,000 voters.
Labor went into the election holding two of Queensland’s nine outer metro seats.
It finished the election with six.
Something very interesting seems to be happening in big country towns.
While Australia is dominated by its capital cities, it does have a number of large – and growing – country towns and rural cities.
The Nationals talked up their success in holding seats, including their close loss in the seat of Bendigo, but across the entire nation Labor’s vote in provincial areas (up 2.8 per cent) and rural areas (up by 2.3 per cent) increased.
This was driven by change in those growing country centres.
Albury is the largest city in the sprawling NSW regional seat of Farrer which has been held by Sussan Ley for more than two decades. Across the Murray River is Wodonga, which was easily retained by independent Helen Haines.
While Ley held her seat, she experienced a huge swing against her in Albury, which accounts for a quarter of the electorate’s voting population.
The swing was driven by independent Michelle Milthorpe with a significant local issue, the construction of a new hospital in Albury, the major factor.
At the 2022 election, Ley won every one of the 16 booths in and around Albury on a two-party preferred basis of 58 per cent to 42 per cent.
This time around, she lost every booth, bar a small community outside the city, 45.5 per cent to Milthorpe’s 54.5 per cent.
Albury was just one of a number of regional centres where there was a swing against the Coalition. In NSW, they included Goulburn (4 per cent swing to Labor), Dubbo (6 per cent), and Broken Hill (8 per cent).
Launceston and Devonport in Tasmania moved hard towards Labor with swings of up to 15 per cent.
In the sprawling South Australian seat of Grey, the city of Whyalla – which gained national prominence this year over the financial collapse of its steelworks – registered a 10 per cent swing towards Labor.
And in Alice Springs, Labor’s Marion Scrymgour enjoyed swings of up to 11 per cent as she increased her margin in the seat of Lingiari.
At the smallest polling booth in the country, 24 votes were cast.
While Ley went backwards in Farrer’s biggest centre, she had no troubles in the electorate’s smallest booth.
Pooncarie, where 24 votes were cast at the election, was not only Farrer’s smallest booth but the smallest in the country.
The tiny village sits on the eastern bank of the Darling River, about 90 minutes north of Mildura in the far southwest of NSW.
Of the 22 formal votes cast, Ley got 13. Two candidates – the Greens’ Richard Hendrie and the Trumpet of Patriots’ Tanya Hargraves – didn’t get one.
Ley enjoyed an astronomical 86.4 per cent swing.
There were (some) glimmers of hope for the Coalition. Here’s where their vote increased.
The 2025 election is the worst performance by the Liberal Party since its inception. But among the gloom there were some bright spots.
While Western Australia moved further towards Labor, this was in Perth. Outside the capital, Liberal candidates did well.
Rick Wilson enjoyed the largest swing of any Liberal in the country, increasing his margin in the sprawling seat of O’Connor by 7 per cent.
In the neighbouring seat of Durack, former minister Melissa Price increased her margin by 5.4 per cent.
A big campaign by live sheep export supporters helped both Wilson and Price but across the length and breadth of their seats they performed well.
Another West Australian, Andrew Hastie, defied the gloom of Perth to improve his margin in the seat of Canning – which takes in the capital’s urban fringe down to Mandurah – by 5.5 per cent.
The performance of two other Coalition MPs stand out. Defying a huge swing to Labor across Queensland, the LNP’s Colin Boyce lifted his margin by more than 6 per cent.
Also defying a broader trend, in the outer eastern Melbourne urban fringe of Casey, Liberal Aaron Violi managed to increase his margin by a modest 1.9 per cent. Given the swings to Labor in the neighbouring seats of La Trobe, Aston, Deakin, Menzies and McEwen, it was a big performance.
Peter Dutton didn’t just lose his seat of Dickson; it was a once-in-a-generation thrashing.
Much has been said about Ali France’s victory over Peter Dutton in his home seat of Dickson. Labor’s France achieved a 7.5 per cent swing to topple Dutton, who had held the outer-Brisbane seat since 2001.
Dutton joined a select group of party leaders to have lost their seat at an election that includes former Nationals’ leader Charles Blunt and prime ministers John Howard, Stanley Melbourne Bruce and Earle Page.
But the enormous scale of France’s victory has only been revealed as the count of ballots continues.
She won the ordinary vote, which takes in those cast on the day and at pre-poll centres, 57 per cent to 43 per cent.
France, however, also defeated Dutton on the absentee, provisional, declaration and postal votes. That is, all five types of votes.
Even in 2007, when Howard was swept from his seat of Bennelong, he managed to easily win the postal vote, which traditionally favours Coalition candidates.
But even on postals, France edged her much higher profile opponent.
In terms of victories, France delivered Dutton a once-in-a-generation thrashing.
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