Squiz Shortcuts - The election result

Your Shortcut to… The election result

Well, here we are on the flip side - Labor has been returned to government in a resounding win over the Coalition, which is staring down the barrel of its worst-ever election result. So to wrap up our Shortcuts series on the 2025 election, we'll get you across:

• why it was notable

• and what it means for the shape of the next parliament.

And we'll take Ask The Squiz for another trot around the park with some great questions about what the result means and what comes next. 

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Listen time: 16 minutes

Squiz the Shortcut

After a mostly forgettable campaign, the result was anything but…
Was it ever… Almost nobody predicted the scale of the victory for Labor, which has been returned with a majority. 

Where have we landed?
Labor is set to secure 86 seats - that's up from 78 seats. The Coalition is on track to win about 40 seats - down from 57. The Greens started with 4 seats, and it's possible they’ll end up with none, but there's still a lot of counting to do in a couple of their close races.

What about the independents, how did they fare?
The independents, including the ‘teals’ and Bob Katter, have won about 12 seats - so they've held their ground. And there's still counting happening in some tight races that are yet to be determined. 

Is it likely to change the outcome?
Nope… It was a huge win for Labor, and equally, a huge loss for the Coalition. They're the 2 sides of the coin when it comes to the story of this election.

Tell me more 
Let's start with the bragging rights that go to PM Anthony Albanese... He's become the first PM since John Howard to win back-to-back elections - and the first Labor leader to do it since Bob Hawke. 

What does that tell us about him?
It goes to one of his key messages that he's a steady pair of hands in the wheel... And in terms of the number of seats Labor’s won, their 86 seats surpasses Kevin Rudd’s 83 in the 2007 election when Australians voted for change after 12 years of the Howard Government. But this win is different…

Different how?
Here’s another stat for you: Labor won about 35% of the primary vote on Saturday - the second lowest of any election winner. But thanks to our preferential system of voting, Labor is expected to pick up at least 55% of the 2-party-preferred vote, which would put it up there with the highest on record.

Just explain that a bit more… How does a low primary vote translate into so many seats?
It all comes down to our preferential system of voting and the fracturing of support away from the major parties. 

Can you give us an example?
Yep… Say the Liberal candidate in a seat comes in first with 35,000 votes, and in second is the Labor candidate with 30,000. Then the Greens won 10,000, and the ‘teal’ candidate won 8,000, One Nation won 3,000, and a Pirate Party independent won 2,000. If you voted Greens, your candidate can't win, so voting officers look at who you picked out of the Labor and Liberal candidates - and it's likely to be Labor, so that's where your vote went.

Got it… What would happen if I voted for the ‘teal’?
We’ll have to see where their preferences went, but in our example, they took a fair chunk of primary votes from the Liberals, so that's a problem for the Libs right there. As for One Nation and Pirate Party independent - their preferences mostly went to the Liberal, but at a collective 5,000 votes, it's not enough to make up for the Greens and the ‘teals’. So when that count is exhausted, Labor wins - and that happened over and over on Saturday night. 

OK, why is this notable in this election?
Because it looks like we’ve crossed a significant threshold this election with at least a third of Australians voting for someone other than a Labor or Coalition candidate. That's an issue for the Liberals because they’re being taken on from the left by Labor and the Greens, and the ‘teal’ candidates are appealing to disillusioned Liberal voters, so their homebase is also under pressure. 

So, it wasn’t a good night for the Coalition
It was a disaster… The Coalition is on track to record its lowest primary vote on record. And its leader Peter Dutton lost his seat - the first time that’s ever happened to a leader in opposition in an Australian federal election. 

How did that happen?
So that scenario we talked about before happened in Dutton's seat of Dickson. He got the most primary votes, Labor's Ali France came in a close second, then a ‘teal’ candidate, and then the Greens. And it was their preferences that got Labor over the line.

Why did the campaign go so badly for the Coalition?
It's about more than the simple question about how they showed up this election - the policies they had clearly weren't enough to convince Aussies to put Albanese in the rear window, despite our standard of living declining since his government took office. And it’s got people questioning who they are as a party.

How so?
It's more core than just whether Dutton was a good leader and whether nuclear power was a smart thing to do. It's about what they fundamentally believe in, and how they are going to be a real option for enough voters to enable them to survive - because the electoral maths has only become more embedded this election cycle. 

Because they’ve got more competition?
Yep, the ‘teals’ aren't one term wonders and even though the Greens lost seats, they still had 1.5 million voters putting their candidates down as their first preference. So, that's the story of this election and why the focus is on the Liberals. 

Got it… What’s being said about Labor?
A lot is being said about the stability Albanese has brought to government and the polished campaign he ran - other than slipping off a stage, it was pretty flawless. 

What about Labor’s policies?
There’s been plenty of commentary around it not being overly ambitious with its policy agenda or vision for the country - but that was said about the Coalition's policy platform too, so given the choice, more Aussies put their support behind Labor. 

Did US President Donald Trump have an impact?
Yep… We spent the first 2 weeks of the campaign talking about Trump’s tariffs and how the leaders would deal with that issue and with Trump. So the uncertainty of Trump’s agenda certainly favoured Albanese. Labor and the unions also ran some very pointy attack ads comparing Dutton to Trump, which didn’t help his cause.

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Ask the Squiz

From Annie and Daniel: What does it mean that Peter Dutton 'lost his seat' and what would have happened if the Coalition had won, but Dutton had lost Dickson?
So to be a member of parliament, you have to win a ‘seat’ by winning the most votes in your electorate. That's your ticket to entry. And then - if you belong to a party - your colleagues pick their leader from those who have a seat in parliament. So Aussies don't vote for the leader of the Coalition, or the Prime Minister - who is the leader of the party in government - in this case the Labor party. We vote for our local member, and then it's up to the party members in the parliament to work out who leads them. 

So, if the Coalition had won and Dutton lost his seat, the Liberal party members would need to pick a new leader - and as a result, a new Prime Minister. They’re still picking a new leader now, just on the opposition side of the ledger.

From Christine: How did the Greens improve their vote but lose seats?
The truth is more independents and minor parties means that the long-established parties - and the Greens are one of those - have to fight harder for votes, and hope that preferences come their way. And sometimes in the seats where they hold seats, voters simply prefer another candidate.... 

So one example of that happening this time was in Griffith in Queensland. Renee Coffey from Labor did better on primary votes than the incumbent, Max Chandler-Mather from the Greens. And she's won that seat as a bit of a standout candidate for Labor this election.

From Petrina: The ‘teal’ independents have had another good election. It seems that they work together in a party-like fashion - are their platforms similar enough that they would form a party? What’s the process for that happening? Does it seem likely?
This is a sensitive one because people who support the ‘teals’ feel very strongly about it. They are independents - part of their stated reason for being is they aren't a party, and they don't want to be in lock-step on a policy agenda from head office, or doing anything other than representing their electorates. 

But we talked about this in the lead up to election day - they do have common support when it comes to funding and logistics and polling and the like… And as a result, plenty of people are saying they are essentially a party - but they’re very clear that there’s no plans to make that official anytime soon. But it is a question that is still getting asked, especially after their success in this most recent election.

And a couple of final housekeeping questions - we've had a few Squizers ask about why Peter Dutton didn't come on our News Club podcast following Anthony Albanese… 
We asked, and Dutton said he wanted to. But we couldn't get it locked in. We were disappointed because we thought it would be a fairly unique opportunity for him to outline the things analysts are now saying are existential - who are you, what do you stand for? That's the conversation we had with Albanese and we think Dutton should have done it too. But he didn't. 

And we've had a couple of people ask how we went with our campaign to get an election promise of support for Newshounds. 
Neither of the major parties committed to that. So we keep on keeping on making the case... 11,200 of you signed our petition - which you can still do and we'll put a link in the episode notes for you. It's so important we teach Aussie kids to navigate mis and disinformation, we strongly believe in it and we're not going to stop in our campaign. 

We might be a bit ahead of our time with Newshounds - the penny will drop with government that teaching kids to be critical consumers of news and information online is important, so we've just got to hang in there... 

We’ve really enjoyed producing this short series for you, and it's not the last time we'll be talking about this incredible election result. The waves are bound to reverberate into the next campaign. 

Should we keep Ask the Squiz going?

The election is done and dusted, but we’re of a mind to keep Ask the Squiz going. That is, if you’re keen for us to tackle some broader topics…

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