What we learned; election night 2025
What. A. Night. I don’t think many of us can say we saw that result coming.
That’s where we’ll leave you for tonight, thank you so much for following us on the blog.
Here’s what we learned this Saturday 3 May:
Labor has achieved an emphatic win, with strong swings for the party across all states and territories.
Labor has secured majority government, securing at least 86 seats.
Anthony Albanese was overjoyed and became emotional during his victory speech, promising to “govern for every Australian”.
Peter Dutton has lost his seat of Dickson to the Labor challenger, Ali France.
Dutton apologised for the result, conceding “it is not our night”, as Liberal party faithful say there will need to be a hard look at what went wrong for the LNP, which recorded a historic loss.
The Coalition will also need to select a new leader.
The Greens have lost two of their three seats in Queensland, but have celebrated their “highest” number of votes across the country.
Zali Steggall, Allegra Spender, Monique Ryan and Sophie Scamps have retained their seats but the picture is still unclear for some of the other incumbent teal independents. Zoe Daniel and Kate Chaney are ahead in their seats. Not affiliated with the Climate 200 movement, but the independent Dai Le also looks to be ahead in her western Sydney seat of Fowler.
Updated
Which seats are still in doubt tonight?
The overall picture of a landslide re-election for the Albanese Labor government, the first federal government to serve a full first term and then increase its majority, is clear enough, but just a note on seats in doubt.
Currently the ABC is listing the following as in doubt: Bean, Bradfield, Brisbane, Bullwinkel, Melbourne, Fairfax, Wills, Richmond, Griffith, Fowler, Ryan, Longman, Calare, Franklin and popping back into the frame, surprisingly, Goldstein.
Some of these are probably set to “in doubt” just as a caution when the seat does strange things early in the night.
With Calare, the theory might be that the second independent Kate Hook could catch Andrew Gee; I don’t think that is realistic. With Franklin, Julie Collins is clearly too far in front.
Seats where there are complications with independents that I think we need to see more in include at least Monash, Fremantle, Calwell, Forrest and Flinders, though it is common for scenarios with independents winning from low primaries to fall over with more counting, especially as independents do badly on pre-polls.
The ABC is projecting the Greens ahead in Richmond but that would require a 50-50 preference split, which seems very unlikely. Petrie and Forde are still reasonably close but projected leads of 52-48 and above with this much counted don’t fall over often.
While the swing in pre-polls does seem to be less than the swing in day votes, it is not greatly less, so that doesn’t offer much hope for trailing incumbents. At present, I think Labor is very likely to gain Brisbane and Griffith.
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Bandt hails Greens’ ‘highest ever vote in history’, despite loss of two seats
The Greens are celebrating their “highest ever vote in history”, despite having lost two seats in Brisbane, and suffering a swing against them in Adam Bandt’s seat of Melbourne.
In a statement, Bandt said:
Tonight, millions of people across the country have voted for the Greens – more than ever before in history.
More people than ever before backed the Greens’ big solutions for the housing, cost of living, and climate crisis.
Bandt congratulated Albanese on his win, and took some credit for Peter Dutton’s loss in his own seat.
The Greens leader also explained the loss of Brisbane (formerly held by Stephen Bates) and Griffith (formerly held by Max Chandler-Mather), blaming the Liberals.
The historic collapse in the Liberal vote has meant that Labor will win the seats of Griffith with Liberal preferences, and Brisbane too, even as our vote held firm.
He then paid tribute to Chandler-Mather and Bates:
There’s never been a first term MP who has had the impact Max Chandler-Mather has, putting the rental crisis in the spotlight, winning $3.5 billion for social housing, and feeding thousands out of his own pocket. This is not the last we’ve seen of him.
Stephen has been an incredible voice for Brisbane, and the millions of young people left behind by Labor and Liberal.
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