Federal election preference flows

New figures from the AEC confirm the Coalition’s share of Hanson and Palmer preferences was approaching two-thirds, a dramatic increase on past form.

We now have as much in the way of results out of the federal election as we’re ever going to, with the Australian Electoral Commission finally publishing preference flow by party data. The table below offers a summary and how it compares with the last two election. They confirm that YouGov Galaxy/Newspoll was actually too conservative in giving the Coalition 60% of preferences from One Nation and the United Australia Party, with the actual flow for both parties being nearly identical at just over 65%.

The United Australia Party preference flow to the Coalition was very substantially stronger than the 53.7% recorded by the Palmer United Party in 2013, despite its how-to-vote cards directing preferences to the Coalition on both occasions. A result is also listed for Palmer United in 2016, but it is important to read these numbers in conjunction with the column recording the relevant party’s vote share at the election, which in this case was next to zero (it only contested one lower house seat, and barely registered there). Greens preferences did nothing out of the ordinary, being slightly stronger to Labor than in 2016 and slightly weaker than in 2013.

The combined “others” flow to the Coalition rose from 50.8% to 53.6%, largely reflecting the much smaller footprint of the Nick Xenophon Team/Centre Alliance, whose preferences in 2016 split 60-40 to Labor. This also contributes to the smaller share for “others”, with both figures being closer to where they were in 2013. “Inter-Coalition” refers to where there were both Liberal and Nationals candidates in a seat, some of whose preferences will have flowed to Labor rather than each other. The “share” result in this case records the combined Coalition vote in such seats as a share of the national formal vote.

While we’re here, note the blog’s other two recent posts: Adrian Beaumont’s account of Brecon & Radnorshire by-election, and my own in-depth review of the legal challenges against the election of Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong and Gladys Liu in Chisholm.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,440 comments on “Federal election preference flows”

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  1. The entire Insiders episode has completed with out a single mention of the Greens.

    Goes to show how irrelevant they are 🙂

  2. “…We have a Bush Turkey mound in the back yard and no leaf or twig is left unturned by the male in building it up to gargantuan proportions!”

    They built a friggin’ Great Pyramid in our native garden.

  3. Confessions @ #300 Sunday, August 4th, 2019 – 9:57 am

    And speaking of flim flam, The Empty Suit is dreaming. The only way the Australian Greens are going to more then double their vote in 2 years is if they stop behaving like spoiled children and start acting like the adults they claim to be.

    Greens leader Richard Di Natale says there is a “real possibility” his party could see a big increase in votes, like Germany’s Greens party which recently saw its vote double in just two years.

    Senator Di Natale told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age he thinks there are “a lot of parallels” between the Australian and German situations. The Greens leader said both countries have witnessed a convergence between their two major parties alongside concern about climate change.

    “I can see that there’s real possibility of the Greens seeing that big increase – a similar increase to the increase we saw in Germany,” Senator Di Natale said.

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/greens-could-see-big-increase-in-vote-like-in-germany-di-natale-says-20190802-p52d93.html

    Tell him he’s dreaming!

  4. If the Australian Greens were serious intellectual heavyweights in the political sphere, like the German Greens are, then maybe Di Natale might have some hope of emulating them. However, in Australia The Greens won’t even support a Wind Farm project because Bob Brown doesn’t like the look of it. Not to mention that the Australian Greens are toothless tigers when it comes to protecting the Australian Environment.

  5. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/greens-could-see-big-increase-in-vote-like-in-germany-di-natale-says-20190802-p52d93.html

    “Labor’s approach at the moment is basically to give up on the position on opposition,” Senator Di Natale said. “They are showing that they are closer to the Liberal Party than they are to the Greens.
    :::
    Senator Di Natale said he had had an informal meeting with Scott Morrison since the election, but noted that “frankly, we don’t see many areas of common ground”.
    :::
    In the wake of the election, the Greens have seen about a ten per cent spike in membership, adding more than 1700 new members. Senator Di Natale says this is “clearly a response to the election”.
    :::
    Labor sources say the party has also seen a post-election membership bounce of about six per cent. It is understood the ALP now has more than 60,000 members for the first time since the mid-1990s. The Liberal Party is also understood to have seen its membership grow by several thousand after the May 18 result.
    :::
    The Coalition plans to to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030, based on 2005 levels. Labor has a target of 45 per cent, while the Greens are calling for a 63 to 82 per cent target. Environmentalists say the Greens’ target is the only one consistent with keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees. Scientists say this level of warming must be met to avoid catastrophic impacts, including the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.

  6. lynlinking @lynlinking

    Scott Morrison’s government wants Australian mums to breastfeed their children more The Morrison government wants to double the amount of Australian babies that are breastfed and has launched a new $10 million strategy to make it happen.

    There are so many other ways that ScoMo could support families without wasting money on this. It’s a stunt.

  7. No need for an integrity commission choruses the mish mash of players from all parties, labor, liberal, greens, staffers, public servants, journalists, judiciary and the captains of industry.
    But robocop those recalcitrant dole bludgers, malingering in and around crown, not looking for easy work with the endeavour shown by cabinet ministers conveying opportunistic profits to unknown destinations.
    It will all come to a shuddering halt as the wombats and bush turkeys trespass on the sacred ground of wild cats, building invasive nests while upsetting the docile god fearing humans.
    Thank goodness the communist party(in name) is being proactive in controlling the feral hong kongese ungrateful denizens of a small island.
    Nothing to see here.

  8. Pegasus @ #296 Sunday, August 4th, 2019 – 9:54 am

    ‘Dole bludgers’

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/bludgeoning-the-jobless-it-s-a-work-of-decades-20190802-p52d8r.html

    The weary word around Labor offices, anyway, is that empathy for the unemployed is not much of a vote-winner these days. This should be no surprise.

    Successive governments have carefully schooled Australians to harden their hearts against significant sectors of those without jobs, all the way back to the pitiful and grudging “susso” (sustenance) handouts during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    The term dole bludger, however, didn’t get any head of steam until the mid-1970s.
    :::
    Paul Keating, frustrated by stubborn joblessness, had hissed at a demonstrator to “get a job”. The Labor Party of the ’80s and ’90s had flirted with the ideas of “mutual obligation” or “work for the dole”. John Howard’s government embraced those ideas enthusiastically.

    Keating ‘hissed’…no he didn’t.
    Look at the footage.
    Keating was grinning talking out side of his mouth and cracking a bit of joke….maybe not well judged but there was absolutely nothing malicious about it.
    Just setting the record straight.
    Again.

  9. sprocket

    The entire Insiders episode has completed with out a single mention of the Greens.

    You can’t even get a simple fact right. As confessions pointed out the Greens were mentioned in passing when the panel discussed the sexual assault and bullying claims made about the Liberal party.

  10. lizzie

    Albo says he has not seen evidence of corruption in the govt.

    Corruption has been found at state government levels but somehow Albanese thinks it doesn’t occur at the Federal level – risible imo.

    Albanese’s talking points re parliamentary inquiry are in lock-step with the Coalition. Says it all really. Mates protecting mates.

  11. Articles like this are a nightmare for the trolls and spin-merchants from the Labor Right on this site who constantly regurgitate their repetitive nonsense about the Greens supposedly supporting the Libs.

    The funniest part is that this lot from the Labor Right are far closer to the Coalition’s way of thinking than the Greens will ever be.

    Of course, the reality is that Labor desperately needs that massive preference flow from the Greens. Imagine if the Greens actually did support the Coalition instead like the Labor Right claim. They’d be permanently stuck in opposition with next to zero chance of forming government.

    If the trolls spent more time focusing on where Labor needs to improve instead of attacking the Greens and everyone else on the progressive left all the time then maybe they’d be in government right now.

  12. Player One says:
    Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 9:22 am

    Barney in Makassar @ #231 Saturday, August 3rd, 2019 – 11:19 pm

    That is why people are endeavoring to find ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

    Good luck with that.

    Well, if you leave it to natural processes, we will be dealing with the effects for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

  13. firefox

    Albanese hates the Greens more than Shorten. His seat of Grayndler is a Labor versus Greens TCP contest.

    As night follows day, every election he ramps up with the “extremist Greens” hyperbole.

    If he is still LOTO at the next election and if he continues on his current political strategy he might find he will not be as popular in his inner-city progressive electorate.

  14. Instead of sniping at each other, Labor and the Greens should swallow their respective vanities and form an official coalition.

    I can’t think of one legitimate reason why this should and could not be done.

  15. Peg

    I think Albanese just wants to close his eyes to unpleasantness. It’s not, as you like to put it, “mates protecting mates”.

    I knew I’d have to repeat this. :sigh:

    Last year the Coalition finally joined the Greens and Labor in agreeing that Australia needs a National Integrity Commission. The design Christian Porter proposed last year was emphatically rejected by the opposition and the independents as too weak, but he’ll bring it forward later this year in any case and the negotiations will begin.

  16. It’s bowerbirds here.

    They come into the house to raid the kitchen and scatter emerald green poop around. And raid the veggie garden.

    Wonderful mimics, and I regularly find their bowers in the garden.

  17. lizzie

    I think Albanese just wants to close his eyes to unpleasantness.

    Are you serious. Pre-LOTO, Albanese had a reputation for being a headkicker, Labor’s attack dog. Fighting one’s way to the top of the tree in a major political party involves ‘unpleasantness’ in all its forms.

  18. I knew I’d have to repeat this. :sigh:

    I know how you feel.

    *finally* is the operative word here.

    The Coalition and Labor together stymied the implementation of a federal ICAC for at least a decade.

    Both parties have recently come on board only because of persistent and increasing pressure from a number of sources, including the Greens.

    So far it’s been talk of support from both major parties but no action.

    When a bill for a federal ICAC is put up we will see who votes for what.

  19. Albo says he has not seen evidence of corruption in the govt.

    I had to read that a few times before it sunk in that the first word is “Albo” and not “Morrison”.

    Like seriously, WTF? Jobs for mates isn’t corruption? Au-pairs for mates isn’t corruption? Dodgy water deals aren’t corruption? Throwing $500m at a company with 12 employees without a tender process or due-diligence isn’t corruption? The whole Crown thing isn’t corruption? The entire underlying motive behind the Coalition’s climate-change denial and pro-coal energy policy isn’t a corrupt one?

    Albo is a dud. Can we have Shorten back, please?

  20. The Greens don’t support the Liberals, as is attested by the 82% flow of their preferences to Labor. They have, on occasion, inadvertently aided the Coalition through what I regard as I’ll-conceived actions, for example their decision to vote against Rudd’s CPRS and, a couple of years later, the Malaysia solution. In each case, the Greens decided in good conscience that they couldn’t support the then Government’s plan, not realising the profound consequences of these decisions. But neither was part of some sinister plan to support the Coalition to gain some political advantage.

    As for the Greens’ achievements, they’ve been thin on the ground. They have no leverage over Coalition Governments, who have been in power Federally for most of the Greens’ existence. What they did manage to achieve with the Gillard Government, most notably a carbon price, has been mostly torn down. But again, that’s not part of any Liberal-Green conspiracy.

    This is the political environment that the left faces, which includes a dominant right wing Coalition in the pocket of powerful vested interests, determined to do nothing on climate change and which feels it can safely ignore the environment. Labor needs to win over Liberal voters of a moderate / Centrist outlook to win Government and achieve anything. The Greens need to think about how they can best achieve their objectives. Hint: it’s not through tearing down Labor.

  21. Firefox says:
    Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 10:19 am

    Of course, the reality is that Labor desperately needs that massive preference flow from the Greens. Imagine if the Greens actually did support the Coalition instead like the Labor Right claim. They’d be permanently stuck in opposition with next to zero chance of forming government.

    If the trolls spent more time focusing on where Labor needs to improve instead of attacking the Greens and everyone else on the progressive left all the time then maybe they’d be in government right now.

    If the Lib-kin were to direct their prefs to the Lib-Libs their PV would decline by 80%. They won’t do it. Rather than Labor needing G prefs, the Gs need to take Labor votes on a preference detour.

    As for the Lib-kin being a left voice, this is entirely risible. The Lib-kin detest Labor. They detest unions. They actively seek to prevent the election of reformist governments at the federal level. They are opposed to the interests of working people. They are facilitators of the undoing of social justice. They are the voices and authors of political dysfunction in this country.

    The Lib-kin are not interested in social, economic or environmental progress. They are interested in themselves.

  22. ‘If the trolls spent more time focusing on where the Greens needs to improve instead of attacking Labor all the time then maybe Labor would be in government right now.’

    Fixed.

  23. RD

    Indeed – the Labor Right and don’t forget Albanese, who is supposedly from Labor Left, will ensure there is no coalition or alliance, either formal or informal between Labor and the Greens at the federal level.

  24. a r

    I had to read that a few times before it sunk in that the first word is “Albo” and not “Morrison”.

    I know, right. I heard him say those very words on Insiders.

  25. Pegasus says:
    Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 10:41 am
    RD

    Indeed – the Labor Right and don’t forget Albanese, who is supposedly from Labor Left, will ensure there is no coalition or alliance, either formal or informal between Labor and the Greens at the federal level.

    Labor would be fools to enter an alliance with a counter-party that is intent on Labor’s destruction. The Lib-kin are an anti-Labor device. They repeatedly disqualify themselves. They are treachery itself.

  26. a r and Peg

    Albo has absorbed the ‘lessons’ about pollies fighting amongst themselves and is working at “a new gentle polity”.

    With an aggressive PM like Morrison, I think he should stop it. Not so much smiling and shaking hands. Let his inner attack dog out. Shorten’s nature was to negotiate and regrettably it wasn’t effective as it was seen as shifty.

  27. The Greens need to think about how they can best achieve their objectives. Hint: it’s not through tearing down Labor.

    I think some Greens would lose their will to live if that ever happened. 😐

  28. zoomster whining about trolls as she trolls.

    “It’s all the fault of those Greens why Labor isn’t in government now”, she cries.

    Risible but denial is a comforting defence for the election loss.

  29. Hawaii senator nails why America is suffering from a mass shooting epidemic in three succinct sentences

    Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) explained two major issues threatening America — and a third preventing action on solving the first two.

    Schatz responded on Saturday to the mass shooting in El Paso where 20 people were murdered and another 26 wounded.

    “We have a white supremacist problem. We have a gun problem,” Schatz said.

    “We have a money in politics problem,” he added.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/hawaii-senator-nails-why-america-is-suffering-from-a-mass-shooting-epidemic-in-three-succinct-sentences/

  30. Rudd and then Gillard learned to their very great cost what happens to Labor when their destiny relies on their enemies. The Lib-Libs and the Lib-kin made sure that Labor were defeated in the Parliament on critical bills and at critical times. Labor must never depend on its enemies. Nothing but betrayal will result.

  31. briefly @ #335 Sunday, August 4th, 2019 – 10:45 am

    Pegasus says:
    Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 10:41 am
    RD

    Indeed – the Labor Right and don’t forget Albanese, who is supposedly from Labor Left, will ensure there is no coalition or alliance, either formal or informal between Labor and the Greens at the federal level.

    Labor would be fools to enter an alliance with a counter-party that is intent on Labor’s destruction. The Lib-kin are an anti-Labor device. They repeatedly disqualify themselves. They are treachery itself.

    Don’t fret.

    The current parliamentary cartel arrangement between the LN-L is Labors comfort blanket.

  32. Steve777 says:
    Sunday, August 4, 2019 at 10:38 am

    The Greens don’t support the Liberals, as is attested by the 82% flow of their preferences to Labor. …

    You are seriously conflating people who vote for a Party and the Party itself.

    A common error.

  33. lizzie

    and is working at “a new gentle polity”.

    Bloody idiot if he is. Urged on by the meeja Rudd and Obama took a shot at that. It was ever so useful…………..to the Repugs and Coalies.

  34. lizzie @ #336 Sunday, August 4th, 2019 – 10:47 am

    a r and Peg

    Albo has absorbed the ‘lessons’ about pollies fighting amongst themselves and is working at “a new gentle polity”.

    With an aggressive PM like Morrison, I think he should stop it. Not so much smiling and shaking hands. Let his inner attack dog out. Shorten’s nature was to negotiate and regrettably it wasn’t effective as it was seen as shifty.

    Albo and Labor are lost in no mans land. No firm footing, no direction, no base.

    The LibNats are sure-footed with clear direction on their agenda and base… as are the Greens on their agenda and base.

  35. Five and a half years ago our tiny micro-premmy grandson was born. Look at him now. My daughter posted this on the town’s Facebook page and it has taken off.

  36. The power system in Australia is premised on the supremacy of the Right. This has been the usual array both prior to and since Federation. When Labor win, the Right immediately set out to destroy the resulting Labor government. Labor are not meant to win. They are not meant to govern. They are not meant to succeed. The Lib-kin know this. They exploit it all the time and position themselves to help procure Labor’s defeat. They are very adroit at this game and play it most expertly. They are outriders who play in such a way that the Liberals will be the beneficiaries. The Lib-kin deny this, of course. But it is the case. The effect of their political role is to disadvantage Labor. This is intentional.

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