Labor gains Senate seats in Victoria and Queensland, and surges to a national 55.6–44.4 two-party margin

Buttons have been pressed to electronically distribute preferences for the Senate in Victoria, the ACT, Queensland and Western Australia. Labor gained a seat from the Liberals in Victoria, with the other two unchanged. I had a wrap of earlier button presses on Tuesday^[1].

Six of the 12 senators for each state and all four territory senators were up for election on May 3. Changes in state senate representation are measured against 2019, the last time these senators were up for election.

Senators are elected by proportional representation in their jurisdictions with preferences. At a half-Senate election, with six senators in each state up for election, a quota is one-seventh of the vote, or 14.3%. For the territories, a quota is one-third or 33.3%.

Labor has won three of the six Victorian senators^[2], the Coalition two and the Greens one, a gain for Labor from the Coalition since 2019. That’s a 4–2 split from Victoria to the left.

Final primary votes gave Labor 2.43 quotas, the Coalition 2.20, the Greens 0.87, One Nation 0.31, Legalise Cannabis 0.25, Trumpet of Patriots 0.18, Family First 0.13, Animal Justice 0.11 and Victorian Socialists 0.11.

On the distribution of preferences^[3], Labor’s third candidate defeated One Nation by 0.87 quotas to 0.81. Neither the third Liberal nor Legalise Cannabis were anywhere near One Nation at earlier exclusion points.

On the exclusion of the Liberals, 50% of their preferences went to One Nation, 22% to Labor, 14% to Legalise Cannabis and the rest exhausted. At this point, One Nation led Labor by 0.73 quotas to 0.67 with 0.47 for Legalise Cannabis. On Legalise Cannabis’ exclusion, Labor won 42% of preferences, One Nation 19% and the rest exhausted, giving Labor its win.

The third candidate^[4] on Labor’s Victorian Senate ticket was Michelle Ananda-Rajah, the former Labor member for Higgins before Higgins was abolished in a redistribution.

Usually Labor only wins two Victorian senators with the Greens winning the third for the left. Ananda-Rajah would not have expected to be back in parliament, although in a different chamber.

WA, Queensland and ACT Senate results

The Western Australian Senate result is two Labor, two Liberals, one Green and one One Nation, a gain for One Nation from the Liberals. Final WA primary votes gave Labor 2.53 quotas, the Liberals 1.86, the Greens 0.90, One Nation 0.41, Legalise Cannabis 0.28, the Nationals 0.25 and Australian Christians 0.19.

Until very late it had been expected that Labor would take the last seat instead of One Nation, but The Poll Bludger^[5] changed his model to give One Nation a slight lead owing to evidence of stronger Coalition flows to One Nation in other states.

In Queensland, Labor won two seats, the Liberal National Party two, the Greens one and One Nation one. This was a gain for Labor from the LNP after Labor’s 2019 disaster, when they won just one Queensland senator.

Final Queensland primary votes gave the LNP 2.17 quotas, Labor 2.13, the Greens 0.73, One Nation 0.50, Gerard Rennick 0.33, Trumpet of Patriots 0.26 and Legalise Cannabis 0.25.

I will analyse the WA and Queensland preference distributions in a final Senate results wrap article that will be posted after the final state, New South Wales, has its button pressed. Labor is expected to gain a seat in NSW from the Coalition.

Left-wing independent David Pocock and Labor were both re-elected in the ACT, with no change since 2022. Final primary votes were 1.17 quotas for Pocock, 0.95 Labor, 0.53 for the Liberals (just 17.8%) and 0.23 for the Greens. Labor crossed quota^[6] on the exclusion of second Pocock candidate with the Liberals and Greens still remaining.

Labor’s national two party vote up to a 55.6–44.4 lead

On May 5, two days after the election, I explained that we needed to wait^[7] for “non-classic” seats to have a special two-party count undertaken between the Labor and Coalition candidates. Non-classic seats are seats where the final two were not Labor and Coalition candidates.

With the major party national primary votes so low at this election, 35 of the 150 House of Representatives seats were non-classics^[8]. Before the two-party counts in these seats started, The Poll Bludger’s national two-party estimate gave Labor a 54.6–45.4 margin and the ABC a 55.0–45.0 margin.

This week the electoral commission has been counting the Labor vs Coalition two-party votes in the non-classic seats, and Labor currently leads^[9] by 55.6–44.4. The national two-party vote is still incomplete, but the large majority of non-classic seats have now had a two-party count undertaken.

The remaining non-classic seats that are either uncounted or partially counted to two-party are favourable to the Coalition, so Labor will drop back a little, but will still win the national two party vote by about 55.4–44.6.

Labor’s biggest wins on a Labor vs Coalition basis are seats where Labor and the Greens made the final two. For example in Wills^[10], Labor defeated the Greens by 51.4–48.6, but the two-party count gives Labor a massive 80.9–19.1 win over the Liberals. Swings to Labor in non-classic seats have been bigger than swings in classic seats, so Labor’s two-party vote has increased.

Labor’s big two-party win makes the pre-election polls look worse than they did on election night^[11]. Here’s the poll graph I was posting in all my pre-election articles updated with the estimated final two-party margin.