Category: Federal Politics 2025-2028

The potential for a Liberal legal challenge to the result in Bradfield remains the only complication to a resolution of the federal election, with a 40-day period for the lodgement of such a challenge to commence when the Australian Electoral Commission returns the writs, which it must do by July 9. The impasse also stands in the way of a final resolution of the national two-party preferred result, with the AEC relating it is loath to disturb the ballot papers as required to complete its Labor-versus-Liberal count for the seat. The current progress result recorded for the seat on the AEC site is stuck at an early stage accounts for only about 10% of the total, and is evidently dominated by strong areas for the Liberals. With full results available for all other seats, the final result looks likely to land at 55.2-44.8 to Labor.

We remain in something of a limbo on the federal polling front. Roy Morgan had the first voting intention poll of the term last week, but has apparently not resumed its normal weekly schedule. Peter Lewis of Essential Research says his agency’s normally fortnightly poll is “on a post-election sabbatical/hiatus for a few months”. Experience suggests Newspoll in The Australian may be another month away, and Resolve Strategic for Nine Newspapers perhaps another month more.

Never fear though, for a snap Tasmanian election may shortly be upon us, just 14 months after an election at which the Liberals held on to power with the support of a now alienated cross-bench. The state’s Governor currently considering Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s request for a dissolution following last week’s parliamentary no confidence motion. I’ll have a post up on that when the situation becomes clearer, and if an election indeed ensues, will put together a guide for it as fast as humanly possible and set to work on live results. Local hero Kevin Bonham relates that the window for such an election is in the four weeks between July 19 and August 9.

With Labor’s win confirmed yesterday in Calwell, Labor can lay claim to 94 seats in the House of Representatives, shattering its previous record of 86 at the 1987 election. In seat terms, the only result that bears comparison for Labor is the wartime election of 1943, when Labor under John Curtin won 49 in what was them a chamber of 75 seats. As covered on the dedicated late counting thread, the only seat that remains seriously in doubt is Bradfield, where the Liberals hold a 14-vote lead over the independent in the early stages of a recount – a partial recount begins today in Goldstein, though something fairly extraordinary would have to turn up to overturn the 260-vote Liberal lead. If nothing changes from here, the Liberals will have 29 seats, the Nationals nine, independents nine, and the Greens, Katter’s Australian Party and the Centre Alliance one each.

Some further random points of note:

• JWS Research has produced a “post-federal election survey report” along the same lines of a similar effort after the 2022 election, but has been sparing with details thus far. The Financial Review reports it found 49% of Labor voters identified a favourable view of the party as the main motivation for their choice, followed by 23% for the leader, 18% for policies or issues and 7% for the local candidate. Among Coalition voters, 56% named the party, 20% policies or issues, 13% the local candidate and only 9% the leader. The pollster further relates a finding that 16% decided on the day they voted and another 39% during the campaign period, which didn’t differ greatly from the 2022 results. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Wednesday in the week after the election from a sample of 1000.

• Josh Dolega, an officer at the Australian Taxation Office in Burnie and organiser with the Left faction Community and Public Sector Union, has been preselected to fill the Labor Tasmanian Senate vacancy created by Anne Urquhart’s successful move to the lower house seat of Braddon. Sue Bailey of The Mercury reports the field also included Unions Tasmania secretary Jessica Munday, Meander Valley councillor Ben Dudman, former party state secretary Stuart Benson, Australian Education Union state president David Genford, and Burnie councillor and disabilities worker Chris Lynch. Dolega has a distinctly low profile, but had backing from Urquhart and her power base in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

• By way of refuting suggestions that Labor’s low primary vote raised questions about Labor’s legitimacy or mandate, national secretary Paul Erickson noted in his National Press Club address last week that the party recorded a higher vote in the Senate than the House of Representatives, which he attributed to tactical voting in the lower house. While the distinction was fine – Labor recorded 34.6% of the vote in the House and 35.1% in the Senate – the last occasion I can identify where the two were matched at concurrent elections was in 1958.

• On the subject of Paul Erickson, Nine Newspapers reports on suggestions he could contest a by-election for the Melbourne seat of Isaacs should Mark Dreyfus react to his dumping as Attorney-General by quitting politics, the odds on which would seem rather short.

Some random scraps of reading to keep the ball rolling until normal service resumes:

• Casey Briggs at the ABC has a very nifty bit of data visualisation recording how seats moved between Labor, Coalition and – most tellingly “others” at the signpost elections of 1995, 2004, 2022 and 2025, which you can observe by moving the scroll bar from about a third to half way down. Sticking the change from 2022 to 2025, it can be noted that seats either moved leftwards from Coalition to Labor or upwards from either to “others”.

• Samantha Maiden of news.com.au reports on the post-election reckoning following the Coalition’s evidently over-optimistic internal polling, a neat analogue to a similar failure in the Labor camp in 2019, both failures to some extent reflecting the errors in the published polling.

• I took part in a weekly Crikey debate feature on Friday, arguing to a brief in defending our electoral system. Kevin Bonham has a piece in The Guardian responding to those who have responded to a displeasing result by taking aim at preferential voting, which would have been a helpful thing for me to link to if the chronology had been right.

The first poll since the election is the regular fortnightly Essential Research, but it does not feature voting intention, which was presumably considered superfluous in the week after the real thing. We do get leadership ratings for Anthony Albanese, who gets a six point post-election bump on approval to 50% with disapproval down eight to 39%, and, a little redundantly, for Peter Dutton, who gets insult added to injury with a ten point drop on approval to 29% and an eight point hike on disapproval to 59%. The “national mood” has improved for one reason or another: 37% now rate the country as headed in the right direction, up six from late April, with wrong track down ten to 42%.

Out of the few who had an opinion on the matter, Sussan Ley scored highest for preferred Liberal leader at 16%, followed by Angus Taylor on 12% and Dan Tehan on 7%, with 45% unsure and 20% for none of the above. The apparent swing to Labor as the election approached appears not to have reflected a dramatic change in national priorities, with 53% rating cost-of-living the most important determinant of vote choice. It is arguably telling that “wanting a stable government in an uncertain world” came second with 12%, but the result was scarcely different from 11% for health policies and 9% for energy policies and “not liking Peter Dutton”. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1137.