How Australia’s states and territories voted in previous elections reveal challenges for the coming poll
The Virginia University’s publication, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, recently published an interesting article about the voting performance of various US states relative to the nation as a whole.
The US approach is not directly transferable to Australia. Particularly because we have only eight states and territories compared to 50 states in the US.
In particular, NSW and Victoria, are a very large proportion of the national vote. As a result, the national figures will be more significantly affected by the vote in those states than is the case with even the largest states in the US.
However, the patterns of support and the variability of that support from election to election is interesting and may provide some insights into Australian prospects in 2025.
Over the last twenty years the voting performance of voters in different states has varied in some interesting ways.
It is not surprising that the vote in NSW has tracked the national vote very closely.
The proportion of votes cast in NSW of the national vote was 31.6 per cent and therefore some similarity of pattern would be expected. However, over the seven elections since 2004 the average of variation of the NSW vote from the national two party preferred vote for the ALP has been only -0.2 per cent.
Over this time there has been relatively little variance in the comparison of state to national vote.
The biggest over performance for Labor compared to the national vote was 1.0 per cent in 2007, the biggest underperformance was -1.3 per cent in 2010 making a variance of 2.3 per cent.
The situation in Victoria is different. Victoria constitutes a smaller but still significant proportion of Australian voters at 25.8 per cent. However, Victoria has differed more significantly from the national average.
In the past seven elections since 2004, the average difference in two-party preferred vote for the ALP between the national average and Victoria was 3.1 per cent more in Victoria than the national average. The range of results was from -1.7 per cent in 2004 to +5.3 per cent in 2010, a range of 3.6 per cent.
Queensland has been the strongest state for the conservative side of politics. Since 2004 it has registered results on average 4.4 per cent below the national average for the ALP.
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There has, however, been quite a range of results. The biggest variation was -6.9 per cent in 2019 and the smallest was -2.3 per cent in 2007, an election in which Labor’s federal leader was from Queensland.
Western Australia has had the biggest variation in results relative to the national support for the ALP.
The average divergence has been only 3.6 per cent, but this masks a very large variation in relative results.
The worst relative result for Labor in WA was in 2010 when the party underperformed the national two-party preferred result by 6.6 per cent and the best result was +2.9 per cent in 2022. The 9.5 per cent differential from best to worst is the largest for any state or territory.
South Australian results have varied less wildly than WA and have, over recent elections, shown a distinct move towards the ALP in relative terms.
Apart from NSW, which has essentially mirrored the national figures, South Australia has the smallest average difference between national and state results with an average difference of 1.2 per cent from the national results.
In the past five elections, the ALP two-party preferred vote in South Australia has been above the national average, with the largest difference, 3.0 per cent in 2010, when the Labor leader had strong South Australian connections.
The comparative results in the smaller jurisdictions, Tasmania, the ACT and Northern Territory, are likely to be distorted by events in individual electorates such as the retirement of a popular sitting member.
In the past 20 years, all these jurisdictions have consistently shown support for the ALP above the national average.
This survey of state voting patterns and history is not predictive.
However, when taken with the national polling averages published recently by the Poll Bludger website, which showed a decline in the ALP’s lead in Victoria and WA and a small fall from the Coalition’s average lead in Queensland, these figures may go some way to explain why the Prime Minister commenced his 2025 campaigning in Queensland and Western Australia while the Opposition Leader held his first 2025 campaign outing in Victoria.
Bob McMullan served as a senator and Member of Parliament from 1988 to 2010 and was a cabinet minister in the Keating government. He is a visiting fellow at the Australian Studies Institute at ANU.
This article first appeared in Pearls and Irritations. Read the original here.
