Final TPP: 52.1-47.9 to Labor

The final national two-party preferred total from the election is now settled, give or take a few hundred votes.

Click here for full display of House of Representatives election results.

The Australian Electoral Commission has completed its Labor-versus-Coalition two-party preferred counts for what it calls “non-classic” contests, namely those in which independent or minor party candidates made it to the final exclusion in the preference distribution – notwithstanding two minor errors which, by my estimate, will add an all-important 0.01% to Labor’s total when corrected. That will produce a final result of 52.14% and Coalition 47.86%, for a swing to Labor from the 2019 election of 3.67%. I have revised the entry guide to my results feature, linked to above, which had previously been projecting 51.9-48.1 to Labor based on preference estimates.

As well as a national figure, the two-party preferred counts have also yielded a number of interesting results at electorate level. Mayo tipped over to Labor for the first time by 1.6%, the Liberal margin having shrunk over the three previous election from 12.5% in 2013 to 5.4% when Rebekha Sharkie won the seat in 2016 to 2.5% in 2019. Labor also won the two-party vote in Ryan by 2.4% after a swing of 8.4%, in Brisbane by 4.4% after a swing of 9.3%, and in Griffith by 11.1% after a swing of 8.2%, for all the good it did third-placed Terri Butler.

In the teal independent seats, Liberal two-party margins over Labor were reduced to 1.3% in North Sydney by a swing of 8.0%; 8.6% in Mackellar by a swing of 4.6%; 5.9% in Wentworth after a swing of 3.9%; 4.8% in Goldstein after a swing of 3.0%; 4.2% in Kooyong after a swing of 2.2%; and 5.6% in Curtin after a swing of 8.3%. Despite/because of the absence/presence of Tony Abbott/Katherine Deves, the two-party swing to Labor in Warringah was only 0.7%, reducing the Liberal margin to 1.4% after a 9.0% swing in 2019 reduced it to a then-unprecedented 2.1%. In Bradfield, where Nicolette Boele rode the teal independent wave to make the final count and reduce Liberal member Paul Fletcher to a winning margin of 4.2%, Labor picked up a 10.0% two-party swing to reduce the margin on that measure to 6.5%. The Liberals’ previous lowest winning margin over Labor in Bradfield was 13.5% in 2007, when it was held by Brendan Nelson.

On the other side of the coin, Kristina Keneally suffered an 8.3% two-party swing in the course of losing Fowler to independent Dai Le, reducing the margin there to 5.7%, breaking a previous record in that seat of 8.8% in 2010. In what might have been seen as a warning to Labor, the 2010 result came off the back of a 13.8% swing after Labor used the seat to accommodate Chris Hayes. Hayes’ existing seat of Werriwa had in turn been used to accommodate Left faction powerbroker Laurie Ferguson, whose existing seat of Reid had been made a lot less safe after being effectively merged with its abolished neighbour, Lowe.

The AEC has also published a zip file of full preference distributions for all 151 seats, pending the data entry required to make them available in a more accessible format on the site. Groom was a late addition to the AEC’s non-classic contests lists when the preference distribution made it apparent that independent candidate Suzie Holt had received enough preferences from minor party and independent candidates to close a gap of 18.73% to 8.26% on the primary vote. The Liberal National Party member, Garth Hamilton, ended up within a winning margin over Holt of 6.89% at the final count. If you observe the booth results map at the bottom of my results page, you can observe that support for the two candidates was finely balanced in the electorate’s dominant population centre of Toowoomba, with rural and small town votes tipping the balance in favour of Hamilton.

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.

32 comments on “Final TPP: 52.1-47.9 to Labor”

  1. Can we please keep this thread for discussion of the finer points of the election result, as discussed in the post. The latest general discussion thread continues here. There’s also a fairly fresh post on an ANU pre- and post-election survey that was published earlier this week here.

  2. Although Labor won and there should be an overall sense of satisfaction after having worked hard to achieve this result. I regard the result as not sufficiently satisfactory. The main issue that played against the ALP was their long time away from real power federally. This opened up the rhetoric of suspicion (“Libs and Labs are just the same”, the “Labs are Neoliberal”, “the Labs have betrayed the working classes”, “the Labs are in the pockets of Big Business”… blah, blah). So, many voters remained unconvinced and didn’t vote ALP1, instead preferring minor parties and, in some progressive seats, the Greens.

    My impression is that the next federal election will be a completely different beast. The ALP would have been in power for three years, demonstrating in deeds that they mean what they say. By then, all the scaremongering, lying and propaganda about the ALP will be rather ineffective. Those who believe that 2022 was equivalent to 2007 and therefore 2025 will be equivalent to 2010 will get a very cold shower…. in my view.

  3. @Alpo

    Nay. This election is akin to 1972, but without the hope and the exultation. Albanese, the oldest PM ever to be inaugurated for a first term, is our Joe Biden. 2025 will be equivalent to 1975.

  4. Thanks William, very interesting. The other point is, reduced to a proper 2pp overall count, the pollsters look to have gotten quite close this time.

  5. William Bowe
    We know the 2PP. Can you please post the 3 way/ 4 way contest distribution of electorates like Griffith, Ryan, Brisbane, McNamara, Groom, Richmond, Page, Cowper separately? I just want to know the closeness of those contests because there was so much commentary on PB how close they were.

  6. @ Freya

    Albo is far from Australia’s oldest ever PM to be elected. He’s 59 years old. The oldest ever PM to be elected was Sir John McEwen at the age of 67. Sir William McMahon was 63 and Malcolm Turnbull was 60. So calling Albo our Biden is really uncalled for considering we have had 3 Prime Ministers who were 60+ when they entered office.

  7. Bugger, I was hoping Penny Ackery in Hume would get into the final two, but she fell 0.8% short – if she’d gotten that far she’d be a good chance to unseat Taylor next election, if she was willing to try again. Unless the federal ICAC gets him first, of course.

  8. Re Paul at 9.55 am

    Yes, Mr Never Ever GST, JW Howard, was the same age as Albo now when surprisingly (to him) re-elected in 1998. I know from his brother Bob that he thought he’d lost in the first two hours of results then.

    That was another election when Labor gained more seats from Libs in Perth than in all NSW, as occurred this time. Difference is that Howard knew sandbagging. ProMo’s troupe had no idea. Lib wins in N Tassie were caused by the poor Labor campaign there.

    McEwen had more policy sense at 67 than Howard at 57. Albo, who once described Howard as “Billy McMahon in short pants”, has some policy sense.

    Re TPP compared to the late polling, worth aggregating this by state, i.e. in table showing TPP for state and BludgerTrack figures at end of the campaign.

    Another factor worthy of some systematic analysis is number of seats (like Deakin & Gilmore) with bigger swings away from Libs in pre-polls than 21 May.

  9. It would be great if we could somehow get ALP vs Lib 2PP results at booth level in the non-classic contests. I’m in Albo’s electorate, Grayndler and haven’t for years been able to see these. I’d be fascinated to see them.

  10. Were there any significant differences between preference flows at this election compared with 2019? There had been some talk that Labor may achieve at least some improvement on preference flows from parties such as PHON and the UAP this time around. I would be also interested to know whether there was any change in preference flows from the Greens to Labor, especially given the Greens increased primary vote.

  11. Ven says:
    Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 8:47 am

    In Macnamara at the 3-candidate-preferred stage (3CP):
    LIB: 33.67% (31,327 votes)
    ALP: 33.48% (31,149 votes)
    GRN: 32.84 (30,555 votes)
    Therefore, ALP survived exclusion by 594 votes to GRN. Moreover, there were only 772 votes between first place (LIB) and third place (GRN), highlighting how narrow it was to determine the critical order of exclusion of the candidates.

    In Richmond at the 3CP stage:
    NAT: 35.63% (35,553 votes)
    ALP : 33.45% (33,379 votes)
    GRN: 30.92% (30,852 votes)
    Therefore, ALP survived exclusion by 2527 votes to GRN.

    In Brisbane at the 3CP stage:
    LNP: 41.48% (45,125 votes)
    GRN: 30.09% (32,741 votes)
    ALP: 28.43% (30,932 votes)
    Therefore, GRN survived exclusion by 1809 votes to ALP.

    In Griffith at the 3CP stage:
    GRN: 36.37% (38,668 votes)
    LNP: 33.91% (36,054 votes)
    ALP: 29.71% (31,588 votes)
    Therefore, LNP survived exclusion by 4466 votes to ALP. Had ALP made it into the final two against GRN, ALP might have had a chance at retaining the seat on LNP preferences.

    In Ryan at the 3CP stage:
    LNP: 42.97% (42,678 votes)
    GRN: 33.26% (33,037 votes)
    ALP: 23.76% (23,601 votes)
    Therefore, GRN “survived” exclusion by 9436 votes to ALP.

    I think some of these results demonstrate the fault of the electoral pendulum to accurately display the closeness of some electorates, given it does not take into account the importance of and potential closeness in determining the order in which candidates are excluded from the count. In particular, this is clear in Macnamara where only 594 votes separated ALP and GRN. With this in mind, it could theoretically be seen as the third most marginal seat in Australia behind Deakin (375 votes) and Gilmore (373 votes).

  12. Fascinated that the ALP won the notional 2PP in Mayo for the first time since the creation of Mayo in 1984. I also find it interesting, since Mayo is classed as a rural electorate, a class that has generally trended away from the ALP. The state electorates in Mayo also appear to have generally swung hard to the ALP in the 2022 state election such as Mawson, Kavel, Finniss.

    The notional 2PP in Warringah is also interesting at LIB 51.4% vs ALP 48.6% (swing to ALP of only 0.7%). In 2019 with Tony Abbott the LIB candidate, the notional 2PP was LIB 52.1% vs ALP 47.9%) (a swing of 9% to ALP, possibly the largest to the ALP at the 2019 election). It appears there was not much of a greater “repudiation” of Katherine Deves (given her largely publicised, controversial views on transgender issues) as there was with Tony Abbott where many LIB voters not only voted for Zali Steggall, but also a large number even preferenced the ALP ahead of Abbott. Perhaps 51.4% is around rock-bottom for the LIB 2PP vote in Warringah, with not many more voters there willing to switch to preferencing ALP over LIB, at least in the immediate past and immediate future (but mind you, that is without the ALP running any sort of campaign there).


  13. Please stop the ridiculous Labor Greens Warssays:
    Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 9:12 pm
    Ven says:
    Thursday, June 23, 2022 at 8:47 am
    ………………
    ………..
    In particular, this is clear in Macnamara where only 594 votes separated ALP and GRN. With this in mind, it could theoretically be seen as the third most marginal seat in Australia behind Deakin (375 votes) and Gilmore (373 votes).

    Thanks ‘Please stop the ridiculous Labor Greens Wars’. I agree with your assessment that McNamara is the third most marginal seat in Australia.

    Also, ALP did not have a chance in Griffith and Ryan. Even Brisbane was not close for ALP to win the seat.
    And I did not expect Nats to finish 1st at the 3CP stage after so much hullabaloo by Greens. Greens were not even close to overhaul either Nats or ALP.

  14. Some surprising seats might go non-classic in the near future. The one that I wasn’t expecting to see was McPherson. This is Karen Andrews’ seat, and while it was Labor vs LNP, the Greens were just over 4% below Labor on the 3CP. Also in this category is Mallee, where the Independent was only a little over 2% behind ALP in the 3CP. And in Hume, the Independent was less than 1% behind ALP in the 3CP.

    Not as surprising, but surprisingly close – in Maranoa, PHON was just 190 votes away from being in the 2CP.

    None of these are going to be won by anyone but the Coalition in the near future, unless the Coalition truly implodes… but it’s still interesting to see.

  15. William,

    there is some chatter around about an error in the 2PP calculation in North Sydney, which Kevin Bonham estimates would half the published 2PP margin (already only 1.3%) if it is indeed an error and is corrected.

  16. Now that the election results have been finalised, it is sobering to reflect on just how much power the Murdoch media still wields.

    Despite reckless indifference to the national interest, corrupt self-interest, and incompetence on multiple fronts of arguably the worst government in Australia’s history, only 36.7 people per 1,000 changed their vote from the Liberal National Party to Labor. Despite how mad, bad and dangerous the Morrison government was, 478.6 people per 1,000 still chose to stick with this fraud of a government.

    Whilst we can say that Murdoch failed to engineer an election result in his own interests, he still limited the extent of defeat the conservative forces suffered.

    This government should have been slaughtered at the polls for its dishonesty and self-interest. But they were not. The limiting factor that prevented such a slaughter at the polls was the Murdoch tabloid media that kept feeding the electorate Morrison propaganda and pedaling untruths about Labor on a daily basis.

    Australia cannot begin to reach its potential until we cut this cancer out of our democracy.

  17. GlenO @ #18 Friday, June 24th, 2022 – 3:19 am

    And in Hume, the Independent was less than 1% behind ALP in the 3CP.

    I think if Ackery runs again in the next election she might actually be a chance – I’d certainly see her ending up in second place, and depending on how far Angus’ star falls (if he’s even the one contesting the seat at the next election) she could pull off a win. Hume is never going to go Labor, but in this day and age we might go to something like a teal independent (though it’d need to be a more blue than green shade of teal, given the seat is still very conservative).

    It would have been a much better chance if she’d got that extra percent and ended up in the final 2CP – that would be a big boost for name recognition and potential funding. But she still ran a fairly visible campaign and got good results – if the teal “movement” does a decent job of maintaining their visibility through this election cycle it’ll make it that much easier for her and the other more marginal candidates to get up.

  18. Ah the ‘Flag Hating Party’ voters in the Riverina never fail to amaze.

    62.04% distribution to Labor.
    12.21% to Nats (right)
    9.9% to LDP (further right)
    9.7% to Shooters
    6.14% to ONP (really far right)

    nearly 4 in 10 people who thought the Greens policy platform was for them then decided nah we don’t really on the same sheet of paper. Ya just gotta laugh I guess.

  19. Re King O’Malley at 10.25 am

    K. Rudd would agree with you, and will presumably continue to agitate for treating this disease. One might have great expectations of Albo in this area because, in contrast firstly to Rudd he did not get duchessed by Murdoch (22/4/07) before the election, and secondly he should retain Caucus support.

    Whether Murdoch really “limited the extent of [the] defeat [of] the conservative forces” is doubtful. McAllister and Biddle in the ANU study at p 3 (see other thread) suggest that: “this election may have ushered in a major realignment in Australian voting, with the election of six ‘Teal’ Independents in previously staunch Liberal Party seats, a dramatic increase in the number of Greens MPs concentrated in Brisbane, and the lowest primary vote ever for an incoming government”.

    Their conclusion of a major realignment is probably correct. The first factor (loss of blue-rinse seats by Libs including the most affluent WA seat, Curtin, where the new member may become a stayer as an independent, despite having a father who is to the right of Philip Ruddock in terms of the social destruction he has caused, including to higher education in WA) is potentially decisive, because it will be hard for the Libs to regain most of those seats, especially with their current Qld-based leader.

    The other two factors are significant but much less than the first one. Dr Bonham had strongly hinted that Labor would win with a historically low primary vote, though he may have been surprised by how low it was. That possibility is inherent in the Australian political system, which is majoritarian at its base (Reps) with a strong preferential slant (enhancing the majoritarian aspect), supplemented by a proportional consensus-based aspect in the Senate, in contrast to the MMP system used in NZ.

    Superficially, it would appear that Jacinda Ardern, whose Labour Party got a 50.01% primary vote based on a 10% swing, is in a stronger position historically than Albo’s Labor Party, which suffered a 0.8% swing in the Reps to fall to a 32.6% PV. One might suppose that the difference in Labor/Labour primary votes is affected by the fact that NZ is Murdoch-free. However, Ardern faces a challenging election (because of global economic headwinds) in spring or early summer 2023, and, because of the MMP system and the Teal rinse in Australia, her electoral position is actually not as strong as Albo’s.

    The one area where the Murdoch propaganda machine probably still packs a punch is among the most lowly-educated and most politically-disinterested voters. These marginal voters are usually hard to reach by most polling methods (one factor in the 2019 polling fiasco). See the table in the ANU study at the bottom of p 4. The ANU survey (3,500 or so respondents) just after the election over-estimated the Labor PV by nearly 3% (35.4 compared to 32.6). This suggests under-sampling of marginal voters.

    Other relevant evidence for the impact of Murdoch propaganda on such voters is the gap between the swings away from the Libs in pre-polls and in 21 May booths (evident e.g. in Fremantle, where the pre-poll swing against Libs was 3.6% higher than Saturday swing, as well as in Deakin and Gilmore). If that was a broad phenomenon, then that’s when and where Murdoch had his marginal influence. This is the first Labor government for ages not initially tolerated by Murdoch, and he will know that.

  20. Re King O’Malley at 10.25 am

    P.S. Another difference between Australia and NZ, which amplifies Murdoch’s marginal influence here, is the billionaire effect, i.e. Palmer. That was significant here in 2019, but much less so in 2022.

    The NZ media, for all its shallowness and faults, is not only Murdoch-free but not likely to be paid to promote a pernicious and deadly (in terms of public health) message such as Palmer’s. This is because a NZ billionaire likely Palmer is unlikely to reach the 5% threshold for MMP, or win an electorate seat.

    Consider the PV figures for the recent federal election transposed to MMP. Apparently, excluding the Teal rinse effect (which could occur in NZ at an electorate level but would not reduce the total number of MPs for the party suffering such a rinse, and hence would not be nearly as serious for the Tories as it is now for them in Australia), the left and right wing party groups (very broadly defined) are equal:

    Labor 32.6% + Greens 12.2% = 44.8% = LNP 35.7% + Hanson 5% + Palmer 4.1%

    If, hypothetically, such PV figures were repeated in a NZ MMP system, Palmer would be excluded as below the 5% threshold.

    Consequently, the hypothetical electoral result in such a NZ-style unicameral system would not be very different from the actual result in the Australian bicameral system. However, the big difference is the Teal rinse, which, because of Australia’s electoral system, will be very debilitating for the LNP.

  21. Fascinated that the ALP won the notional 2PP in Mayo for the first time since the creation of Mayo in 1984. I also find it interesting, since Mayo is classed as a rural electorate, a class that has generally trended away from the ALP. The state electorates in Mayo also appear to have generally swung hard to the ALP in the 2022 state election such as Mawson, Kavel, Finniss.

    Glad to see someone else is taking an interest in this. I would add that the ALP havent really put much effort into Mayo. And I would be careful classifying Mayo as rural.

    Sharkie should take note.

  22. Page also belongs on the list of electorates that could go to a three-way count next time. Hanabeth Luke was 2.4% behind when the race got to 3 candidates. Pretty sure that’s why it took so long to be declared.

  23. +1 for Mayo not really being a rural seat any more – it penetrates into the Adelaide suburbs now (and places like Mount Barker have also become increasingly suburbanised). In general “hills” areas near major cities have been trending left for a while now, the Blue Mountains (Macquarie) and Dandenong Ranges (mostly Casey) being other examples. Kangaroo Island makes up a lot of Mayo’s area but only a couple of percent of its population.

  24. there is some chatter around about an error in the 2PP calculation in North Sydney, which Kevin Bonham estimates would half the published 2PP margin (already only 1.3%) if it is indeed an error and is corrected.

    That was one of the two errors I was accounting for. The other was in Mayo.

  25. I struggle to see the importance of 2PP in places like Mayo.

    Mayo has always been a seat which a non Labor candidate might win. Sharkie obviously … and the Australian Democrats came within a whisker with John Schuman (Redgum).

    I doubt Labor will ever win it. The 2PP simply reflects the disenchantment with the Fibs.

  26. Matt31: Yes there is some improvement for Labor in preference flows but not yet clear who it is from (could be ON/UAP, Independents, maybe even Greens/others – I’m not going to go digging through the messy distributions; I will wait for the AEC to do the 2PP flows by party). The last-election-flows 2PP from the primary votes is 0.99% below the actual 2PP, so Labor has done better off someone. Effectively this just undoes the preference shift against Labor in 2019.

  27. A clear change over time in a 2PP of an electorate is different to disenchantment. You can have one without the other. Mayo has both. It seems more people (just) in Mayo prefer the ALP to the Liberal party. For Mayo, that is significant and does indeed say that Mayo may well be won (when Sharkie retires) by the right ALP candidate (although another independent is more likely). It also sends a message to Sharkie, an ex liberal party staffer, that Mayo is not a blue ribbon liberal electorate anymore. It may even be sending a message to the Liberal Party that displacing Sharkie fits into the “be careful what to wish for” category (although I doubt the local branch are capable of reflection, listening to subtle messaging, finding a good candidate or noticing a good candidate if one landed on their faces while driving their convertible sports car).

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