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The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
We may be waiting weeks for a result in the seat of Calwell – the most complex ever counted in an Australian election
The winner is clear in most House of Representatives seats, one week after the election. But with a record number of votes for minor parties and independents, Australia's preferential voting system has been under increasing strain, with the full complexity of the counting system needed to determine the last few seats. One seat, Calwell, may take weeks to determine and has been described by the acting deputy commissioner of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) as 'one of the most complex distributions of preferences we've ever done'. The House of Representatives electoral system involves a series of rounds of counting. The lowest-polling candidate is knocked out first, and their preferences are distributed among the other candidates, adding to their total vote. The same happens with the next lowest-polling candidate, and so forth. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Eventually you are left with two candidates, one of which has a majority of votes. But those are not necessarily the two that receive the most primary votes – where some candidates are very close on primaries, the preferences of eliminated candidates can change the picture as the count unfolds. The final distribution of preferences usually happens long after the gaze of public attention has moved on, with the winners already clear. The AEC picks the two candidates likely to come first and second, and on election night it distributes all preferences between those two. Usually the commission gets it right, and those results can be called very quickly. But the increasing presence of minor parties and independents polling a substantial share of the vote has made it harder to work out which candidates will end up as the top two, and in a number of seats it remains unclear after election day. In the Victorian seat of Calwell, Labor's Basem Abdo won 30.6% of the primary vote, with the Liberal candidate second on 15.6%. If this was a standard Labor-Liberal contest, Abdo would win comfortably with 66% after preferences. But that may not be the result. There are two independents not far behind the Liberal on the primary vote, with 12.1% and 11.3% respectively. Then there are a further nine candidates with over 30% of the vote between them. It is entirely possible that one of those two independents will gain enough preferences to overtake the Liberal candidate and make the final two, but we don't know which one. We also don't know how they would perform in a head-to-head race against Abdo. The full distribution of preferences cannot commence until all postal and absentee votes are returned next week. The AEC's acting deputy electoral commissioner, Kath Gleeson, said of Calwell: 'That's going to go to a complete distribution of preferences, and we anticipate that's going to be one of the most complex distribution of preferences we've ever done. 'I fully expect that will go well into week five depending on how we track through. We'll have absolute guns on that count given the complexity.' Calwell – with four candidates still capable of finishing in the top two – is an extreme outlier in this election, but there are numerous other seats where the order of the top three remains unclear. To help clarify matters, the AEC has begun conducting 'three-candidate-preferred' (3CP) counts, where all preferences are allocated between the top three candidates. The AEC used this process for the first time in 2022 in just two seats. This time around it has needed to apply it in at least 10 electorates. In the Queensland seat of Ryan, the Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown was leading her Labor rival for second place on the 3CP by less than 700 votes as of Tuesday morning. Whichever candidate makes the top two will then gain the other's preferences and easily win the seat over the LNP. In the seats of Flinders, Fisher and Grey there is still uncertainty about whether Labor or an independent will make the top two against the Liberal. If the independent comes second there is a chance they could win, although they would need an exceptionally strong flow of preferences from Labor. If Labor comes second, the Liberal will win. There is only one seat uncalled due to a close race between just two candidates: Longman in south-east Queensland, where the sitting LNP member was less than 200 votes ahead on Tuesday, with a few thousand special votes left to be counted.
ABC News
09-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Labor's landslide victory obscures a disturbing trend for the major parties
Labor took the glory in last weekend's election, but beneath the surface an ongoing trend in how Australia votes has quietly carried on. The major parties' primary vote has, once again, fallen. In fact, there is a strong chance that the combined independent and minor party vote will beat one of the major parties for the first time in seven decades. On a simple two-sided political axis, most seats swung left towards Labor last Saturday. But if we look at the result in three dimensions instead, we see yet another shift away from the two big parties. This triangle can help us see it in action. It's a charming little equilateral beauty, isn't it? The result for Grayndler in 2025. There's a Labor corner, a Coalition corner, and a corner for everyone else, and we can plot seats on the triangle according to the primary vote for each of those groups. For example, if a seat has a high Labor primary vote, like the prime minister's seat of Grayndler, it'll be well into the red corner. (If you're confused, you can read a longer walkthrough of how the chart works.) Here's where the total national vote sits on the chart for 2025 — you can see it's within the Labor triangle because they won the largest share of the first preference vote. And it's coloured red because Labor won the election. The national result for 2025 was very close to the middle of the triangle. What's a little harder to see immediately is that the dot is also closer to the grey "other" corner than it is to the blue Coalition corner. That's because this election, for the first time since the creation of the Liberal Party in 1944, the combined independent and minor party vote looks likely to beat a major party. On the latest count, the Coalition got 32.2 per cent of the primary vote. Minor parties and independents received 33.1 per cent. What this means, unless the Coalition manages to bridge the gap in final counting, is that more people marked their ballot with a 1 next to an independent or minor party than did so for a Liberal or Nationals candidate. The "other" vote is a couple of percentage points higher than it was last time, in 2022… … more than double what it was in the 2007 election … … and nearly eight times what it was 50 years ago, in 1975. Over time, the national result has drifted upwards towards the other parties. Let's expand out 1975's national vote to see the result in every single seat. Back then, nearly everyone voted for a major party, so all the seats were bunched along the triangle's lower edge. All electorates were clustered at the bottom in 1975. It was only much more recently you'd see seats starting to reliably appear in the grey zone at the top of the triangle, where "other" votes dominate. We're about to show you the results in every seat in this election, but to set the scene, here's a reminder of the 2022 results. The distribution in 2022 is much closer to the centre of the triangle. Three years ago, there were 24 seats in the top section of the triangle. That's 24 seats in which the primary vote for minor parties and independents beat both Labor and the Coalition. Now we'll show you the results from last weekend. The seats have drifted away from the Coalition – in both directions – since 2022. Even more seats have shifted upward. On the latest count, there are 32 seats in the top section of the triangle, eight more than last election. (The triangle icons represent seats where the winner is still in doubt) Those 32 include three long-term members of parliament who now hold very safe seats: Andrew Wilkie in Clark, Bob Katter in Kennedy and Helen Haines in Indi. When Wilkie first won his seat in 2010, it was a surprise to everyone — he won from third place after getting a very favourable flow of preferences. Now, he holds one of the safest seats in the country. On the triangle we can also see how individual seats like Wilkie's have moved over time. Here's where it was on the triangle in 2007, when it was held by Labor. (Back then it was called Denison.) Clark was called Denison in 2007. Wilkie won it in 2010 for the first time. And here's how, over six elections, Wilkie has turned what was once a safe Labor seat into the safest independent seat in the country. The seat continued its upward trajectory. This election, we've seen more seats shoot upwards. Labor's managed to hold off a strong challenge in WA's Fremantle, where the independent vote surged. Here, fewer people put a "1" next to Labor than put a "1" next to independents and minor parties, although the government has managed to keep the seat on preferences. In the ACT, the seat of Bean looks set to go down to the wire, and Labor could lose it to independent Jessie Price. These seats now sit much closer to the centre of the triangle. And Labor has had other scares too. Take a look at how Blaxland and Watson, in Sydney's south and south-west, have moved. These Sydney seats have also shifted upwards. They were, and still are, safe Labor seats. But in both of them, independents campaigning against the government's response to the war in Gaza have eaten into Labor's primary vote. Another seat that's shifted in a big way is Calwell. But that large "other" vote is spread across a lot of candidates and it's very unclear who will win. Labor is facing more serious challenges from independents and minor parties than it did three years ago. But compared to the Coalition side, the red side of the triangle is still looking a bit sturdier. On top of the seats it lost three years ago, the conservatives have had to fight back a slew of new challengers. It has mostly been successful this time. But going into the future, it has a fair few seats that look vulnerable. Labor and Coalition MPs with seats in the grey triangle are looking vulnerable. On the latest count, there are nine blue seats and eight red seats inside this grey area, where the Coalition and Labor have been beaten on primaries by the "other" vote but managed to win on preferences. This segment of the triangle shows us which MPs might well be looking over the shoulder in the future. The Coalition members for Wannon and Cowper have successfully fended off challenges from independents in this election. But their seats have both moved up the triangle. The primary vote in McPherson is no longer favouring the Coalition. Take a look at how the seat of McPherson on the Gold Coast has been drifting upward since 2007. This election the sitting LNP member Karen Andrews retired, and a new independent Erchana Murray-Bartlett gained 14 per cent of the vote. Not enough to win, but enough to push the seat into the grey region. In other seats there is a strong "other" vote, but there's not a lot of agreement on who the preferred "other" candidate is. Take Michael McCormack's seat of Riverina for example, where about 41 per cent of the vote has been split between 11 independents and minor party candidates, ranging the full breadth of the political spectrum. There is a glimmer of hope for the major parties though. It is possible for them to win seats back from the independents and minor parties. Because while the national vote for independents and minor parties has gone up, the crossbench hasn't really grown. In fact, once all the results are known, it will probably have shrunk compared to last election's result. Goldstein has returned to Liberal hands after three years. Independent Zoe Daniel in Goldstein has been defeated, returning one teal seat to Liberal hands. The Liberals are also locked in a very tight battle with another teal, Monique Ryan in Kooyong. The Greens leader Adam Bandt lost his seat, despite leading on primary votes. A swing against him and toward Labor, coupled with an electoral redistribution that saw Labor-leaning areas moved into the seat, saw him defeated after five terms in parliament. Here's the constellation that Melbourne has created as it has travelled across our triangle universe since 2007. Adam Bandt won the primary vote but lost Melbourne. With its latest little move back towards Labor's corner, it looks rather like the Big Dipper, right? The bad news didn't end there for The Greens: they've lost at least two of their Brisbane seats as well, with their third still in doubt. Here's how they've shifted on the triangle. The Greens lost their three Brisbane seats in 2025. As these results show, the rising vote for others doesn't mean hung parliaments are a certainty going forward. Landslide victories are absolutely still possible. And when they get them, it's easier for major parties to ignore their slowly declining primary votes. But this upward movement on the triangle hasn't stopped. That means in the future, if election results are closer than this one, the chances of a hung parliament will remain strong. It's something the major parties ignore at their peril. Credits
