Over The Horizons: 2025 Final Week Rolling Poll Roundup

 2PP Aggregate: 52.48 to ALP (-0.4 since Saturday)
With One Nation adjustment 51.85 to ALP
Rolling most recent released 2PP poll by each firm average 52.47 to ALP

All polls are believed to have released their final poll

If polls are accurate, Labor wins, probably with a modest majority (approx 80 seats)

If the normal range of polling to result relationships applies, Labor remains very likely to win, but majority status is touch and go

Historically, Labor has on average slightly underperformed when leading in final week polling

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Welcome to my rolling coverage of the final week of national polls.  I may write a separate article about seat polling if time permits though I'll mention some briefly in this piece.  The headline section will be continually updated with aggregate scores through to the end of the week, and the weekly reading graph will also be updated if anything much changes.  There will probaby be another roundup on Friday night or Saturday post the final Newspoll. On election night I will be doing live blogging at the Guardian and links will be posted here to the coverage when known.  

This week's title is taken from an old Chesscafe column where a German FIDE master called Stefan Bücker would take some bizarre looking chess opening like the Vulture or the North Sea Defence and analyse it in serious detail; such lines are "over the horizons" of normal chess.  In the last few weeks of this campaign a lot of polls have come out that have looked like something from very strange ends of the earth.  They're fun to analyse, but are they just far-off fantasy variations that will not actually occur?  Or does the old reality of how people vote not exist anymore?

What does it look like if, per Redbridge, there is a three and a half point swing to Labor in marginal seats?  (I'll give James Campbell a very big hint; it's not a hung parliament, it's the red team in the bar at 7:45 pm and the rest of us spending the night going "Bonner?  Is that actually a seat?")  What does it look like if, per DemosAU (but nobody else yet), the non-majors vote beats the highest scoring major by nine points - in how many seats would non-majors also beat both majors and how many wins for non-majors we had barely heard of would pop up?  (Just imagine that on the Briggs Triangle)  

What does it look like if, per a YouGov seat poll, an incumbent government comfortably wins an opposition seat (Braddon), on a margin of 8.0%?  (Historically no opposition seat outside the 2PP marginal range from the previous election has ever fallen - Fremantle 1913 on 4.5% had the largest margin and the handful of others that have fallen were on below 2.5% - but that's partly because first-term governments have always had overall swings against them.)  What does it look like, if per YouGov and Essential, One Nation doubles its 2022 vote without really doing anything much and hits double digits nationwide?  What does it look like if the Ninefax Greens polling stopped clock that has put them on 13, 13, 14, 14 in the past four elections actually gets one right and the Greens actually get 14%?  On the other hand, what does it look like if, per JWS, the flow of minor right preferences to Coalition suddenly jumps to 85%?

Normally I would just dismiss a lot of these things out of hand, but these are far from normal times (witness Canada where a once utterly dead government surged by 23 points in four months, and today got itself re-elected, though less resoundingly in the end than modellers expected).  Will this Saturday be a relatively normal Australian election night after everything, perhaps one with only a handful of seats changing hands, or will it be even weirder than 2022?  We'll find out soon enough.

Aggregation Details

Overall in my aggregate things haven't got worse for the Coalition in the last few days.  Perhaps the Trump factor receding from the issues mix has stopped the polling rot and made the election more about all the stuff it was always about, but there's not strong evidence of major improvement either.  Indeed of the four polls out this week that had recent precursors, three show very slight improvement for the Coalition while Morgan's substantial improvement is from a figure that no-one believed.  Since the previous edition we have seen:

* Last week's Newspoll at 52-48 for Labor, which I converted as 52.8 by 2022 preferences and aggregated as such.

* Last week's Morgan at 55.5-44.5 (Labor's best 2PP from anyone since August 2023), which I converted as 55.4 and aggregated as 52.8 (my aggregate adjusts heavily for Morgan's recent form being very favourable to Labor)

* Last week's YouGov at 53.5, which I converted as 55.0 and aggregated as 53.5 (YouGov has also been very strong for Labor lately.)

* The penultimate Newspoll this weekend at 52-48, which I converted as 52.3 and aggregated as such.

* The DemosAU poll at 52-48, which I converted as 53.0 and aggregated as such.  This is the poll that had Labor on 29%, Coalition on 31% and a massive boom for non-majors to a combined 40%, with the non-major vote unusually increasing when initially undecided voters were forced.  As noted above this had an effective lead for non-majors of 9 points; no other poll has had that lead above two points and no other poll had non-majors ahead at all til two and a half weeks ago.  So this poll is an outlier on the majors vs minors front.

* This week's Morgan at 53-47 (54-46 by last election preferences), which I converted at 53.6 to Labor and aggregated at 51.5.

* The declared final Essential at 49.6-45.6 by their "2PP+" method (the first time they have used decimals for it), which equates to 52.1-47.9 to ALP with undecided removed.  Two sets of primary figures were released, one in the usual form with undecided left in and one with undecided redistributed.  I converted these by 2022 preferences as 52.9 and 52.4 respectively, using the former for aggregation purposes because it's how Essential has published their data for previous polls.  As Essential has been slightly favourable to Labor by 2022 preferences this was aggregated at 52.4.

* The final Resolve at 53-47 by both respondent and last=election preferences; I converted this at 52.7 and aggregated it at 53.2 as Resolve has been quite bad for Labor recently.  

All up my aggregate is currently at 52.6, but this changes slightly on a daily basis as campaign weightings affect the estimate even when new polls are still coming in.  It is very similar this time to the average of pollster-released 2PPs which is currently at 52.3.  In 2022 my aggregate was substantially higher than the average of released 2PPs and the latter proved accurate, mainly because many polls were overestimating the Labor primary vote but then got saved from 2PP error by a preference shift.  

In my 2022 final week roundup I discussed the history of the "Labor Fail Factor" - when Labor is ahead in average final-weeks 2PP polling, it tends to slightly underperform.  That didn't happen on the 2PP average in 2022, but preference shifting in Labor's favour was a big part of the reason why it didn't.  Labor can't realistically go much further up in preference shifting terms so the only room for a similar cancel-out would be if Labor maintained its 2022 preference flows.

In seat terms

If the public polling is broadly right, an election with basically no 2PP swing would on average see Labor gain about 1-2 seats net from the Coalition.  This is because the Coalition has eight marginals on 2% or less to Labor's five, and Labor has expected personal vote advantages in ten of its own marginals while the Coalition in its marginals has advantages (on average smaller) in six but disadvantages in four.  Labor might also conceivably make small gains from the Greens and independents, but is also at risk of losing some seats to new crossbenchers.  Throw in uneven swing possibilities and the range of likely outcomes would be around the low 70s (a hung parliament but manageable) to the mid 80s which pretty much nobody expects (especially as, like the Coalition in 2019, Labor has been doing a lot of sandbagging and might not pick up full reward for a blowout).  As noted above, however, Labor historically tends to underperform a bit, leaders in final polling also tend on average to underperform, so if Labor can get 52 2PP or above that will be a good effort.  But even in, say, the mid-51s, they would have a realistic chance of a majority.  Those hoping for a blowout might take some succour from a whiff of herding that may be creeping into some of the final 2PP readings, though it is nothing like the level seen in 2019.  

The current public polling is such that even if there was a repeat of the 2019 3% 2PP polling error, the Coalition would still have to be lucky with the seat distribution to even manage a minority government.  We are hearing the usual stories that Coalition internal polling is different (these are remembered the one time in ten that the public polls are wrong and forgotten all the times the party saying that was simply losing) but the details of the supposedly different internal polls are very sketchy.  Sharri Markson on Sky News came out with a typical "hey you five-year old children watching this, the polls are wrong!" story that referenced preference shifting from 2022 but ignored the fact that few if any of the polls are still using purely 2022 preferences.  Newspoll adjusts the One Nation flow, Morgan and at least sometimes Resolve use respondent preferences alongside last-election, Freshwater uses respondent preferences, YouGov uses modified preference flows that are heavily respondent-based and Essential uses mostly respondent preferences.

Another line is that the public polls are right as to the 2PP but the Coalition is actually doing much better in certain types of seats, like outer suburban seats where there is a claim that their primary is holding up and the One Nation primary is increasing.  Interesting if it's happening - but the swing must be somewhere so if that's true the downside could be losses in inner city seats no-one is even talking about.  

Is it possible that the public polling is in large part simply wrong and Freshwater (which has been finding very little primary vote movement and which is doing Liberal internals) is right?  Stranger things have happened but usually polls that diverge sharply from others on the reading of a party's support are wrong.  

Does Campaign Polling Underestimate "Momentum"?

I had a good question on Twitter about whether the reliability of polls is different in 2025 with Labor gaining in the campaign to 2019 when the Coalition was gaining.  Because polls tend to come out of field a few days out from polling day it's possible that if an already apparent trend continues, they mught underestimate it.  (A paradigm case of this is the 2024 UK election.)  The following is a summary of how polls stood in terms of movements to one side during the campaign and especially the final weeks:

1987: No clear momentum in late polling.  Final polls overestimated Labor.

1990: Momentum to Coalition Opposition, which was trailing.  Final polls underestimated the surging party.

1993: Momentum to ALP Government, which had been trailing.  Final polls underestimated the surging party.

1996: Momentum to ALP Government, which was trailing.  The momentum was an illusion.

1998: No clear momentum in late polling after some improvement by Coalition going into campaign. Final polls broadly accurate.

2001: Momentum to ALP Opposition, which was trailing.  Final polls broadly accurate.

2004: Momentum to Coalition government, which had been trailing slightly.  Final polls underestimated the surging party, result was a blowout.

2007: Momentum to Coalition government, which was trailing.  Final polls broadly accurate.

2010: No clear momentum in late polling. Final polls overestimated Labor.

2013: Momentum to Coalition opposition, which was ahead.  Final polls very accurate.

2016: Small momentum to Coalition government, which had been trailing slightly.  Final polls very accurate.

2019: Momentum to Coalition government, which was trailing.  Final polls underestimated surging party with momentum appearing to stop three weeks out with Coalition still behind.  Poll failure, Coalition won.

2022: Momentum to Coalition government, which was trailing.  Final polls broadly accurate.

What can be seen from the above is just what a weird one this one is.  Labor hasn't surged during a campaign since 2001.  In 2001 Labor surged from way behind in the wake of rally-round-the-flag polling following September 11, and was never going to win.  Labor surging while already ahead hasn't happened in the Newspoll era.  Overall when a party surges the polls are generally either accurate or underestimate the surging party, with 1996 the only clear exception.  However usually the surging side has been the Coalition.   

ON Preferencing Nonsense

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the media love nothing more than a hidden hand beatup about minor party preferences wizardry regarding which they have not sought expert input.  At this election rings are being run round the pack by Pauline Hanson (yep), who in a move mainly designed to troll Trumpet of Patriots for their how to vote card farce announced that One Nation would bump the Coalition up to 2 on nearly all its how to vote cards.  The move has reaped an unexpected reward with media sources claiming it is some major game-changer, ignoring the fact that One Nation recommended preferences to the Coalition above Labor in all but a handful of seats last election.  

What has been missed here (aside from the low follow rate on One Nation cards generally) is that the original 2025 cards, which are still up on the One Nation website where they haven't even bothered to overwrite them with the new ones, effectively preferenced the Coalition anyway.  A good example is the original card for Aston which has Libertarians second, Trumpet of Patriots third, Family First fourth and the Liberal candidate fifth.  None of those minor right parties nor One Nation will win Aston so a vote for One Nation following the original card is effectively a preference for the Liberal Party just as much as if the voter had voted 1 One Nation 2 Liberal or even just 1 Liberal.   

Hanson justified this decision with some nonsense about how if she preferenced Trumpet of Patriots, One Nation preferences would flow to ToP and ToP preferences could then flow to teals but of course each preference is only decided by the voter, and if One Nation preferences ON-ToP-Liberal-teal then the preference of a voter who follows their card will not flow from ToP to teals.  It is even possible though unlikely that by recommending the Liberals above ToP, One Nation could cause some ToP candidates to be unnecessarily knocked out before teal independents, releasing any preferences cast following the original ToP cards to flow to the teal when this otherwise wouldn't have occurred.  But the fact that Hanson's justification is nonsense isn't important to the success of her strategy because the media from Sky to SMH are not up to the task of pointing out when a preferencing claim is bulldust.  

Separately there are claims that JWS polling has found 80-90% preference flows from minor right parties to the Coalition in Whitlam, Werriwa and Ryan.  In the case of Whitlam the sample would have been about 100 minor right voters, and JWS has put out a lot of weird looking seat polling this election.  In the case of Werriwa, minor right parties attracted a masssive 22.7% of the vote there in 2022, but only 53% of that flowed to the Coalition - that suddenly jumps to 90%?  Not at all likely.

What I do think is interesting in all this is the increasing coziness of the Coalition with One Nation and whether it will in itself drive up the flow from One Nation to Coalition (and vice versa in the Senate) irrespective of the impact of HTV cards - especially if One Nation's apparent primary vote gains in late polling are at the expense of the Coalition anyway.  That could be a significant factor but for the time being we are still not seeing major differences between respondent preferences and last-election preferences in polling, the average difference across Resolve, Morgan and Essential being only 0.4% in this week, very low by the standards of this term.  

Betting

As noted in previous editions I like to keep an eye on how seat betting is going although it is not reliably predictive.  As of my checking of odds last night, there were only seven seats tipped to change hands - Labor to lose Aston and Gilmore to the Liberals, the Greens to lose Brisbane to Labor and Ryan to the LNP, and indies to lose Kooyong to the Liberals but pick up Cowper from the Nationals and Bradfield from the Liberals.  (Kooyong and Bradfield were tied in some markets.)  That made a total of 77 Labor favourites, 60 Coalition, 2 Greens and 11 others.  After adjustment for close seats the Coalition fared worse with expected figures of 76.5-58.3-3.2-12.  (This is very similar to the Australian Election Forecasts medians of 76-57-4-12). Labor is not yet favourite in any Coalition seat but eight have crept into the close seat range (Deakin, Dickson, Leichhardt, Canning, Moore, Sturt and Bass).  

As for the headlines Labor is now at about an implied 86% chance to form government, though that's around where they were in 2019 when they still lost.  "Type of government" odds continue to very slightly favour a Labor minority.  

There may be more I should include in this article but I have decided to put it out now as is and edit in anything else I want to add later.  New polls will be added as they arrive.  

Wednesday: Redbridge and Spectre

The final Redbridge national poll was a healthy 53-47 to Labor off primaries very similar to the recent Newspoll (Coalition down one point, Greens up one).  I converted this at 53.2 and aggregated it as such.  While some people are claiming Redbridge has become Labor-friendly on account of its marginal seat tracking poll I see no evidence of this in my house effect estimates over time for national polling.  James Campbell was again ridiculously in the tank for Labor not winning outright suggesting there would only be a "small chance" of them doing so - in reality they would probably increase their majority (my model has 82 seats).  

A new poll, Spectre Strategy run by Morgan James who until recently worked at Freshwater also came out with a 53-47 off primaries of Labor 31 Coalition 34 Greens 15 One Nation 10 others 11.  I don't think I should add polls that appear for the first time in the campaign to my aggregate but I will keep an eye on how this one goes in my accuracy assessments. 

Thursday: DemosAU, YouGov MRP, Freshwater

There is a surprise second DemosAU poll for Gazette News taken April 27-9 which has similarly weak major party primaries to the earlier one (ALP 29 L-NP 32) but has Labor on only 51-49 2PP.  (I got 51.8 by last election preferences but for this purpose I did not break out the Family First vote of 2% which probably knocks it down.)  

The final YouGov MRP based on data from April 1 to 29 is also out with a 52.9-47.1 2PP for Labor (which I got as 53.9 by 2022 preferences, aggregated at 52.5 as YouGov has been strong for Labor).  The seat projections have Labor gaining Menzies, Deakin, Moore, Sturt, Braddon (!), Bonner, Brisbane from the Greens, Banks and Bonner and only barely holding Dickson and Canning, with the Coalition recovering Aston but dropping (from the last election) Calare, Cowper, Bradfield, Monash and Wannon to indies - a result that would wipe out or greatly endanger most of their leadership contenders.  As usual there are attributes of the poll that are being met with raised eyebrows, including generally massive primary votes for leading teals (whether in parliament or not), and a very high Others vote for no apparent reason in Richmond.  Again, caution is needed that MRPs do not take account of personal votes for new members - in Menzies Labor is projected 0.3% ahead but all else equal sophomore effect would then get Keith Wolahan over the line (just).  

The final Freshwater came out with a 51.5-48.5 2PP for Labor by respondent preferences, but for all the talk (including in the accompanying article) about One Nation prefs supposedly running at 80-90% in outer suburbia, that isn't any different to the 51.2 I get by respondent preferences (aggregated at 52.2 based on Freshwater's recent form).  The AFR's article discusses but doesn't provide a lot of details of a Freshwater model that puts Labor on 74 seats off that (my model has 77 classic seats).  

Friday: DemosAU, Newspoll, Morgan, YouGov

Because two DemosAUs in the final week are never enough there is a third one, with a 52-48 to Labor off more orthodox primaries with Labor 31 Coalition 33 (but non-majors still win the primary vote by 3, they won more substantially in the YouGov MRP).  Of some interest this poll had a Better PM breakdown that suggested that you can't herd angry cats with 21% of One Nation and 30% of TOP voters still preferring Albanese as PM, and plenty more undecided.  

Newspoll has come out with 52.5-47.5 to Labor, off primaries that I convert as 53.0 by 2022 preferences.  Albanese is net -10, Dutton net -28 and Albanese leads as Better PM by a modest 16 points.  Dutton's net-28 is the second worst Newspoll final leader netsat for any leader except Andrew Peacock 1990 (-37) but Peacock did win the 2PP.  

The final Morgan, like the last, is 53-47 to Labor by respondent prefs and 54-46 by previous election.  I got 53.4 by last-election (I suspect they have a greater independent share of others than last time) and aggregated it as 51.6 given Morgan's recent form (ie Morgan has been so strong for Labor in the campaign that my aggregate thinks this one like the one before is a bit lukewarm!)  

The final YouGov came out at 52.2-47.8 to Labor, but there is an issue with the primary votes, which sum to 98.8 (they should sum to within 0.1 or maybe 0.2 of 100).  The primary votes as published (ALP 31.1 L/NP 31.4 GRN 14.6 ON 8.5 IND 6.7 OTH 4 TOP 2.5) would also point to a very high 2PP for Labor (I get 54.4) so I wonder if the missing 1.2 is actually all Coalition {EDIT: It is others, so Others is 5.2]

Greens, One Nation and Trumpet of Patriots 2025 Reps How To Vote Cards

This article is mainly a resource page for studying the preference flows of the Greens, One Nation and Trumpet of Patriots after the election, following a similar one I did in 2022, and in order to compare with 2022.  I was going to do one for the Senate as well but at this stage I am only aware of the ALP varying its how to vote cards between seats in a state, and that only in seven seats (Macnamara, Goldstein, Hunter, Paterson, Capricornia, Flynn and Dawson) so for now I haven't bothered.  [EDIT: Greenway also, see comments.]

Before I start this article, I want to say this.  Some parties put out how to vote cards that do not list the parties with the candidate names.  It makes me want to see their registrations fired into the sun.  I'm busy and I've got articles to write and you - this means you One Nation, you Trumpet of Patriots, you Liberals and you Nationals - think it is acceptable for me to have to waste hours comparing lists of names with lists of candidates by party because you are too ashamed or too lazy to display which parties you are preferencing on your online how to vote cards.   In future I want display of party names on how to vote cards to be required by law.  Grrrr.  Kudos to Labor and the Greens for doing the right thing by our democracy here.

 It is often difficult to find how-to-vote card material online after elections, but where a party's recommendations vary between seats, it can be useful for getting a handle on how many of that party's voters copied the card.  It's not always that simple, because (for instance) an independent who the Greens choose to recommend preferences to is usually one their supporters would have liked anyway.  Also preference flows tend to be stronger to a major party where that major party's primary vote support is stronger, so when a party adopts anti-incumbent preferencing the impact of it can only be seen by comparing with the same seats at previous elections where they did something different.  

I should add the usual disclaimer that most voters don't actually copy how-to-vote cards, the main purpose of which is helping low-information voters to cast a formal vote.  For minor parties it appears to be around 10-15% of their voters in the Reps and it is generally even lower in the Senate.  However the UAP in Victoria had a surprisingly high 16.7% Senate follow rate in 2022, so it's possible their Reps follow rate in that state would have been high for a minor party.  Usually, not only do minor party voters think for themselves, but they're less likely to see the card in the first place.  Palmer parties have often got around this by hiring booth handout staff but the enthusiasm rate of such staff varies.  

I should add the strong disclaimer that how to vote cards are only recommendations.  No matter where a party puts another party on the card, the voters for that party decide where to send their preferences.  

Additions and corrections welcome.

Greens

Last election the Greens bizarrely issued an open how to vote card in Clark but otherwise recommended preferences to Labor ahead of the Coalition in every seat.  (Clark being the place that my funny little electorate is, the open HTV literally had a 0.0% impact on the Greens' 2PP preference flow there.)

My interest with the Greens is in which possibly significant independents they put ahead of Labor and which they don't.  For the purposes of this article I define possibly significant as all of group 1 in this article, plus Wilkie, Le, Gee, Penfold, Broadbent, Goodenough, Wilkie, Ouf, Basyouny and Moslih, and also Sharkie (technically not an independent but .  This is not to say all of these are competitive, just that they are ones I've especially got an eye on.

Of the group 1 (teal-type, mostly C200-funded) independents the Greens have recommended preferences to all above Labor except for the seats of Sturt, Jagajaga, Forrest, Moore and Riverina. (Edit: and Curtin which I didn't check because what they do there is irrelevant.) In Riverina they have preferenced a different non-Climate 200 independent, Barbara Baikie, then Labor, then Jenny Rolfe.  They've also recommended preferences to Wilkie, Sharkie and the three listed Muslim vote indies.  They;ve put all of Gee, Penfold and Le between Labor and Liberal, and they've put Goodenough and Broadbent below the Coalition.

In some seats the Greens have included other parties like Animal Justice, Legalise Cannabis and Victorian Socialists above the independents and/or Labor; I expect these parties to be excluded before the Greens.  For all the hype about the Greens "breaking up" with Labor in retaliation for Labor's open HTV in Macnamara, the fact is that the Greens have done about the same thing as they did in 2022 in terms of generally putting teals ahead of Labor.  

Election day update: On election day the Greens have been handing out an open HTV in Deakin in reprisal for Labor not preferencing them in Macnamara.

One Nation

This election One Nation nominated candidates for 147 seats (all except the 3 ACT seats).  Last election they ran in all seats except Kennedy and the now abolished Higgins, but they did not campaign on behalf of their Banks candidate who mistakenly nominated in two seats.  

In 2022 One Nation recommended preferences to Labor above the Coalition in Bass, Cook, Franklin, Goldstein, Lyons, Sturt and Clark (though in Clark the preference went to Andrew Wilkie first).  There were also some other seats where I could not verify what their HTV was.

There have been widespread references to One Nation pulping how-to-vote cards and issuing new ones that elevate Coalition candidates to position 2 but the One Nation website has yet to reflect the reported changes and continues, for instance, to show Peter Dutton at number 4.  So I am reluctant to use the website as a source.  It appears that in general One Nation has adopted the ordering Coalition-Labor-Teal-Green and I am not aware of any exceptions to that.  The online version has Russell Broadbent in Monash above the Coalition.  The online Fowler card is currently missing.  

Trumpet of Patriots

Overall what Trumpet of Patriots has done with their recommendations is much less hostile to Labor than in 2022, which will help Labor if ToP get any votes and these cards have any follow rate at all.  And if ToP don't get any votes, that's good for Labor's preference flows as well.  Trumpet of Patriots has made noises about putting the majors last but their how to vote cards even after repairs do not consistently reflect that.  Depending on what sort of vote ToP actually get in the seats they are running in, it's possible their HTV behaviour and choice of seats to run in could actually be worth half a point or so in Labor's favour compared to what they did in 2022, which is one of the reasons I'm sceptical of a large preference shift to the Coalition this election.

Information on UAP (effectively now Trumpet of Patriots) HTVs was elusive in 2022.  This election they have a how to vote presence online but they are only running in 100 seats while the UAP ran in all 151 in 2022.  Also TOP have already changed many cards after a controversy over them preferencing teals that saw one candidate quit and others criticise the party publicly.

The seats where TOP are not running are as follows:

Labor: Canberra, Fenner, Bean, Blaxland, Cunningham, Kingsford-Smith, Macarthur, Macquarie, McMahon, Shortland, Sydney, Lingiari, Solomon, Franklin, Ballarat, Bendigo, Cooper, Corio, Dunkley, Fraser, Gellibrand, Gippsland, Gorton, Hawke, Holt, Hotham, Isaacs, Jagajaga, Lalor,  Macnamara, Maribyrnong, McEwen, Wills, Brand, Bullwinkel, Burt, Fremantle, Hasluck, Pearce, Perth, Swan, Tangney

IND: Fowler, Wentworth, Clark, Indi, Curtin

Coalition: Riverina, Canning

Greens: Melbourne

In 2022 it was hard to find complete information about the UAP how to votes but they mostly recommended the Coalition ahead of Labor.  Reported exceptions that were not debunked included all WA incumbents, Banks, Cook and Dickson, Maranoa and also Cooper and Griffith (the latter two attempts to blunt the Greens).  

At this election ToP has adopted an incumbents-last policy for the major parties, Greens and now teals (and Rebekha Sharkie too) though for whatever reason they don't apply it in Bennelong where the Liberals are last in a Labor-held notionally Liberal seat.  Some people have claimed they got confused by notional status but if so this is not the case in Menzies where they have put Keith Wolahan last.  They initially claimed they were putting the majors last in general but this was nonsense on their original HTV cards and is still nonsense in some (and especially so for the Tasmanian Senate where they have included both majors on their card and omitted One Nation).  

In the Coalition seats outside WA and but for the exceptions listed above, the Coalition has now gone from being above to below Labor on the TOP card - that's 50 seats.  There are 37 seats where Labor appears to have gone from being carded against to there not being a TOP candidate, and there are two where the Coalition has had the same fortune.  There are four seats where Labor appears to have gone from benefiting from the UAP card to there not being a TOP candidate.  

When ToP revamped their preference cards, they shunted Labor down from second to between the Liberals and the Greens in Griffith and above only the Liberals and the Greens in Ryan, but kept them in fourth in Brisbane (also above the Liberals and Greens).  In general their new cards put non-incumbent majors above teals above the incumbent major (who is usually last).  In Calare where the incumbent (Gee) is a defector they have recommended the incumbent party from the previous election (Nationals) second, with Gee above both majors and Kate Hook.  In Moore where the incumbent (Goodenough) is a defector they have effectively preferenced Goodenough and put the incumbent party from the previous election (Liberals) ahead of Labor.  In Monash where the incumbent (Broadbent) is a defector they have preferenced Broadbent and put the notionally incumbent party (Liberal) last below even the teal candidate.  Whether what they put on their website changes in the next five seconds, or resembles what they actually hand out, who can say.  Chaos!

In Paterson ToP have effectively preferenced Penfold. 

So What's The Deal With Macnamara 2025?

I don't normally do articles about specific seats outside of my home state in federal leadups, but this one is a very special case.  The seat of Macnamara has seen excitement in the post-count at two of the last three federal elections.  First there was 2016, when Labor always looked most likely to retain but there was both a narrow margin to the Greens to make the final two and a narrow margin to the Liberals after doing so.  But that was just an entree to 2022 where the seat hung in the balance for over a week.  In this case the Liberals had no hope of victory but Labor needed to beat either the Liberals or the Greens at the three-candidate point to win the seat.  All three parties were astonishingly close at the tipping point and Labor's Josh Burns survived by just 594 votes.  The 2025 campaign for Macnamara again sees an unclear exclusion order which is leading to some strategic voting arguments.  One of them isn't very good.

The seat of Macnamara has become a commentariat obsession since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, soon followed by Israel's ongoing invasion of Gaza.  Attributing blame for and condemning these events is outside the scope of this article; if anyone must know my views, ask me somewhere else.  The resulting Gaza/antisemitism issues set is seen as extremely significant in Macnamara where 10% of residents describe their religion as Judaism.  Some others would be ethnically Jewish without self-describing as religious.  Given that there has been a rise in strong criticisms of Israel and also in antisemitic behaviour (the two are far from always the same thing) since October 2023 the line has been that Jewish voters will turn heavily away from the Greens for their pro-Gaza position.

Legislative Council 2025: Pembroke

PEMBROKE (2022 margin ALP vs Lib 13.3%)

Slightly delayed by a three-week bump to avoid a clash with the federal election, the Tasmanian Legislative Council elections will be upon us soon enough and I need to get cracking on my Pembroke guide because the fur is flying and things are gettin dirrrrty!  Recently I released my usual survey of the Council's voting patterns.  Link to Nelson guide is here and link to Montgomery here.  Nominations close on May 1.  There will be live coverage of all three seats here on the night of May 24 and as required through the postcount.

The current numbers in the Council are four Liberal, three Labor, one Green and seven independents, with the independents ranging fairly evenly across the political spectrum.  Labor gives up one vote on the floor and in the committee stages because it holds the Presidency, and as a result there are currently fine balances between major party and other MLCs (6-8 on the floor) and party and non-party MLCs (7-7 on the floor).  The balance between the major parties could be interesting if Labor actually opposes anything, but in the last year that happened only twice, leading me to classify the party's voting pattern as "Right" for the first time ever.  

This year sees a vacancy for the retirement of Leonie Hiscutt (Liberal), the first defence for left-wing independent Meg Webb, and the subject of this article, the first defence for Labor's Luke Edmunds.

Seat Profile

Pembroke (see map) is a small suburban seat that falls entirely within the City of Clarence on Hobart's eastern shore, and within the state and federal electorates of Franklin.  The electorate extends from Tranmere in the south to Geilston Bay in the north.  At the 2024 state election, the Liberals polled 34.7% in booths in Pembroke (this includes the Rosny prepoll which would have had some voters from other parts of Franklin), Labor 28.7%, Greens 17.1%, ex-Labor independent David O'Byrne 10.4% and the Lambie Network 4.4%.  The Greens for the second election running got into the low 20s in Montagu Bay and the Lindisfarne booths, and their vote in the seat increased despite increased non-major competition, so it's not a bad area for them.  

The two most distinctive booths in Pembroke are Warrane (blue-collar and strong for Labor/O'Byrne) and Tranmere (wealthy and strong for the Liberals).  Overall the seat is left of the state average, as indicated by its higher Greens vote and what would have been a higher Labor vote without the enforced estrangement of O'Byrne.  At federal level Pembroke is very strongly pro-Labor (watch this space to see if it remained so sometime in May).

Pembroke at LegCo level has been a swing seat that was held by both major parties back and forth in the last 35 years, with a brief independent interruption, but in recent times it has been stronger for Labor.  For a while the major parties took it in turns to hold Pembroke comfortably, suggesting that the personal appeal of specific major party candidates (Peter McKay and Vanessa Goodwin for the Liberals, Allison Ritchie and Jo Siejka for Labor) had a lot to do with it.  The seat has had a large number of mid-term resignations and hence has gone to the polls often in recent decades. Most recently in 2022, Siejka resigned to move interstate but Labor romped it in with a 4.7% 2PP swing to them in a field unusually lacking in high-profile independents.  

Incumbent

Labor's Luke Edmunds (party page, Facebook, candidacy announcement) is defending Pembroke after winning it in the above-mentioned by-election.  ALP members do not usually seek party endorsement for local council elections in Tasmania, and thus Edmunds was elected to Clarence Council at his first attempt in 2018 as an independent, despite being a staffer for then-leader and now federal Lyons candidate Rebecca White at the time.  In this attempt he was ninth with 4.2% of the primary vote.  He was not all that well known statewide when preselected for the by-election but his campaign was much quicker out of the blocks than his rivals and focused successfully on cost of living issues including electricity prices and the government's waste levy; Edmunds thrashed the Liberal candidate Gregory Brown 63.3-36.7.  Prior to politics Edmunds was a journalist, described as a "freelance sports journalist" on a now deleted Twitter profile.  He is also a renter and has highlighted rental issues in his campaigns.  Edmunds is frequently in the news; I found dozens of articles from the last six months, often involving the proposed AFL stadium in the presently high profile role of Shadow Minister for Sports and Events; his other portfolios are Finance and Racing.  He appears to be a solid basic issues campaigner for the party and has had a successful first half-term.  Edmunds lives in the electorate.

Challengers (4) 

Allison Ritchie ( candidacy announcement, Facebook) is the current Deputy Mayor of Clarence and was also MLC for this seat from 2001 to 2009.  Ritchie, initially a Labor member from her mid-teens, won Pembroke in 2001 at age 26, the youngest MLC ever elected, unseating incumbent MLC and Clarence Mayor Cathy Edwards 53.8-46.2 in a race where Edwards suffered from holding dual roles (no longer allowed).  Ritchie easily retained Pembroke in 2007 with a 42.7% primary vote against a modest field of mostly local council independents.  In late 2008 Ritchie briefly served as Minister for Planning and Workplace Relations but resigned this ministry after two months for health reasons.  In June 2009 she attracted controversy over the appointments of family members in her office and shortly thereafter resigned the seat as well citing health and family wellbeing reasons.  The Auditor-General's report on the nepotism controversy was very critical of Ritchie but found the appointments broke no rules, essentially because there were no relevant rules to break.  This was discussed in detail in my 2013 LegCo guide which also discussed lazy media reporting and some Wikipedia fun and games around that time.  

Ritchie soon quit the ALP but in 2013 recontested the seat she had resigned from against the Liberals' Vanessa Goodwin who had won the by-election.  The late Dr Goodwin was a popular local member and won on primaries; the two-candidate margin would probably have been around 55-45, about the best that I thought Ritchie could do in the circumstances.  She was next seen later that year as director of (but not a candidate for) the Tasmanian Nationals, a strange little rabble that was briefly a part of the federal National Party before being disaffiliated, whereupon it ran in the 2014 state election anyway with a spectacular lack of success.   Ritchie herself was to do much better when she entered local politics at the 2022 Clarence City Council election.  Running on a ticket with now-Mayor and Franklin federal candidate Brendan Blomeley, she bolted onto Council (fourth elected) and won the vacant Deputy Mayoralty (54-46 vs Wendy Kennedy) defeating five incumbent councillors for the position.  (That said, the most popular councillors were running for Mayor).

Ritchie has several community involvements including as General Manager of Hobart PCYC, as former President of Boxing Tasmania, and as founding member of a lobby group called People Protecting Children.  She is also director of a family farm at Runnymede,  As a Clarence Councillor, Ritchie was most notably in the news when she alongside only Emma Goyne (a recent One Nation candidate) voted for a motion concerning alleged COVID vaccine DNA contamination.  The motion is one of a raft of such motions around the nation to be premised on a report by Dr David Speicher that has been labelled as misinformation by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. I have not yet examined Ritchie's voting patterns on Clarence Council in detail - at a quick flick through the last year or so of minutes she rather often voted alongside Mayor Blomeley (who I previously identified as on the "right" side of the council) on contested motions, but not always; I found five or so other exceptions.  Clarence Council is not very factionalised and such groupings as exist cut across major party membership lines.  Ritchie's campaign is endorsed by Goyne and former Mayor Doug Chipman among others.  Ritchie's website includes a postal address, which she owns, within the electorate, but it is unknown to me whether or how often she lives there.  

Tony Mulder is another Clarence Councillor and former MLC for adjacent Rumney (2011-2017).  Mulder is a former Police Commander who ran for the Liberals in Franklin in 2010, coming reasonably close to winning.  In Rumney he ran against Labor's trouble-plagued Lin Thorp as an "independent liberal" (apparently because the Liberals could not decide whether to endorse him or someone else) and won the seat 53.2-46.8.  However he only lasted one curmudgeonly small-l liberal non-conformist term before being ousted by Labor's Sarah Lovell 52.3-47.7.  Since then Mulder has been a serial state election candidate, contesting Prosser 2018, Pembroke 2019 and Rumney 2023 all without making the final two, and making very little impact in Franklin 2024.  The first of these tilts got him removed from the Liberal Party for running against their candidate.  At council level though he has held his seat from 2005 except for his years in the Legislative Council, and in 2022 he topped the councillor poll and lost the mayoralty to Blomeley very narrowly (49.2-50.8).  In the previous term of Clarence council I rated his voting pattern as "centre (slightly left)".  Mulder is an old fashioned campaigner and in this case the first evidence he was running was not an announcement but the appearance of his endlessly recycled signs.  He is on good enough terms with his opponent Edmunds that in this term they paired up in a recent sailing race.  He lives at Howrah, within Pembroke.  

Carly Allen (Facebook, candidacy announcement) is the endorsed Tasmanian Greens candidate.  Allen is a graphic designer (including of past Greens pamphlets!) and also a marketing and events manager and musician/composer/singer-songwriter.  She also works in a family food business.  Allen lives within the electorate.  She is a new Greens candidate but long time supporter.  Allen has cited her experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK last year as a motivating factor for campaigning, including on health issues.  She briefly worked in Nick McKim's office near the end of the Giddings ALP/Green government years and has also been a publisher and magazine designer in the UAE.  

Steve Loring (Twitter, Instagram) is the endorsed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers candidate.  He is a real estate agent with Roberts, Lions Club member and NDIS support worker.  As at the 2024 Sorell Council by-election (in which he ran fourth out of five on the Councillor ballot) Loring lived in Carlton River, outside Pembroke. He has worked as a Community Development Manager in remote communities in the NT.  

Not Running

The Liberals stated in early March that they would not contest Pembroke, in which they have lost heavily at their last three attempts, as they are focusing on Nelson and Montgomery.  It is the first time since 2007 that the party has not run.  An intending independent candidate Adam Colrain did not nominate.

Issues

1. AFL Stadium: The AFL stadium proposed for Macquarie Point on the other side of the river has become more prominent again during the Pembroke campaign with news that the government intends to pass legislation to override the Project of State Significance process that would otherwise report in September.  For this they would currently need the votes of Labor plus two independents.  This follows news that Dr Nicholas Gruen, author of an independent report into the stadium, met with project opponents prior to terms of reference being finalised and did not inform the government immediately when amending disclosure reporting to disclose this.  That news was seized on by the government to claim the existing process is compromised.   In the wake of the federal election the government gave opponents ammunition in return by dropping the $375 million public spending cap.  

In dismissing a call for the stadium to be put to a referendum,  Edmunds (who supports the stadium) said Tasmanians have already voted on the stadium in the 2024 state election.  But in fact the majority of voters backed parties or candidates who didn't support the government's position, and the fact that the government is still there has a lot to do with Labor refusing to attempt to form government with other parties and independents it could have found to prefer its 2024 position (of attempting to renegotiate and requiring crowd support to be demonstrated). The 2024 election was not a mandate for the government's position to any clear extent beyond Labor still letting the government be there.

The Greens are opposed to the stadium at its present location and Allen says that we do not need a new stadium at all.   Mulder (see candidate responses here) has previously supported the stadium but stated he is also open to the "Stadium 2.0" proposal which the government has now rejected, and that he is "increasingly frustrated by the failure to take advice or respond to criticism of the project and flip flopping on process".  Ritchie supports the team and stadium in principle but says that "The Government will need to detail the full cost, the impact on the State budget and provide assurance all the concerns raised by the Tasmanian Planning Commission will be addressed."  The Shooters Fishers and Farmers support a plebiscite (called a "referendum" in Tasmania) on the proposal and Loring says he would not vote for the stadium.  Franklin overall is the one state electorate where support and opposition for the stadium are roughly equal.  

2. Privatisation: While there is no government candidate in this by-election and no apparent opportunity to vote for the government's position, asset sales are on the agenda with Labor and Ritchie vying for the high ground.  Edmunds has criticised government plans to sell Metro and the MAIB while Ritchie is promising to introduce legislation for a REFERENDUM OF THE PEOPLE no less prior to any asset sales.

3. Renting:  Renters' issues have been mentioned on the campaign trail by several candidates.  Edmunds has an edge on the field here because he actually still is a renter, but this hasn't deterred Loring from supporting laws that would allow tenants to sign for one year with an option for extending for a further two.  (This policy is another interesting sign of the Shooters, Fishers + Farmers Tas expanding into what are often considered left areas.)  Ritchie supports "review of rental increases and property maintenance for public housing tenants"; at this stage I'm not entirely sure what that's about. She also supports banning foreign investors from buying houses and land.  

4. Development: Pembroke campaigns often have a strong overlap with Clarence Council local politics and this one is no different.   Allan has highlighted solidarity with local residents who have fought proposed developments including Kangaroo Bay, Rosny Hill and the AFL High Performance Centre (gone to Kingborough).  Ritchie has also said she will support skyline protection and opposes "moves by Labor and Liberal to remove the rights of communities to have a say on development", referring I think to the government's Development Assessments Panels proposal which went nowhere in November after no MLCs outside the major parties liked it - a second attempt is now being made on that proposal.  

Other campaign issues will be added.

Campaign

The campaign has been notable for Labor's use of negative campaigning against Ritchie, via a flier that mimics design elements of Ritchie's own flier and asks "Is this someone you can trust?"  (In linking to a Twitter image of the flier this article does not assert that Labor's attacks are accurate as stated, only that they have been made and should be recorded as part of coverage of the campaign).  The flier highlights an image of Ritchie with Eric Abetz as evidence she has "cosied up to Liberals", but the image is her appearing with Mayor Blomeley at the launch of Abetz's electorate office.  (Here's an image of her with Peter George; is she thereby "cosying up" to tealoid independents too?) It also attacks her support for the above-mentioned DNA contamination motion, the findings of the Auditor-General's report, and claims she lives "30 minutes outside the Eastern Shore" (a reference to the Runnymede farm - but see above).  Labor has dodged Section 196 (see below) by putting this out before the writs are issued.  Ritchie says she is pursuing legal action over the flier, claiming authorisation and image copyright issues.  The fliers were reportedly quickly pulled at the behest of Franklin federal incumbent Julie Collins, having had a limited circulation.  Collins is in a major fight to retain her seat and could do without the possible brand damage of a negative campaign by her party.  

Ritchie's campaign is quite politically amorphous.  Overall I would describe it as populist in tone, but it touches on at least as many populist left talking points (in a communitarian sense at least) as right.  Overall though it feels like she wants to wrap Pembroke in cotton wool and protect it from the nasty world outside.   

Other notes on the campaign, which I have little time to pay attention to but will try, may be noted from time to time.

Prospects

On past form the only opponent Labor would be nervous about here is Allison Ritchie.  They should  have the others covered easily.  Ritchie has had plenty of controversies, but she is also quite high-profile and touches a lot of political bases.  The question is how many voters has she turned off along the way.  In 2022 Labor got 84% of Greens preferences vs the Liberals in Pembroke, among the strongest flows seen in a LegCo election, and I doubt they will get anything near that vs Ritchie this time.  This said, Labor incumbents have a great record in Legislative Council elections, with Thorp the only officially endorsed ALP incumbent to lose in the last 40 years.  

Liberal voters do not have a candidate here; will they support Ritchie at least on preferences out of tribal dislike of Labor (some will vote for Mulder too) or will they back in the stadium and reward Labor for its recent stance of barely opposing anything?     

Negative campaiging (as Labor has been doing) has a long history of failure in Legislative Council contests.  This was especially notable in this seat when ageist Liberal attacks on Doug Chipman in 2017 (the subject of a later apology) backfired to the extent of a dismal preference flow from Chipman when the Liberals barely made the top two over him.  That's probably not an issue this time around as Ritchie could well make the top two, or if she does not Labor should have much too big a lead.

It's possible Labor will have a large primary vote lead approaching 2007, but overall there is potential for this to be closer than their recent Pembroke towellings of the Liberals.  Anything above 55-45 to Labor would be fine.  

Section 196

This site strongly supports urgent and unconditional reform of Section 196 of the Tasmanian Electoral Act, which makes it an offence to name or depict a candidate in material deemed to be an "advertisement, "how to vote" card, handbill, pamphlet, poster or notice"  without that candidate's consent.  This section as it stands is highly likely to be federally unconstitutional, and its application to material on the internet is so obscure that the law became an utter laughingstock in the recent state election when the TEC asked Juice Media to modify a mock advertisement.  A sensible reform would be to restrict Section 196 to how-to-vote cards.  A less preferable but still useful reform would be to cease applying Section 196 to the internet.  The views of parties and candidates on this matter will be noted here where known and candidates are welcome to advise me of their views:

* Labor and the Greens support restricting Section 196 to how-to-vote cards.  The Greens have been outspoken on the issue after being subject to a takedown notice in the 2020 Huon campaign, which they successfully resisted. 

Poll Roundup: Coalition In Freefall

2PP Aggregate: 52.3 to ALP (+1.2 in two weeks)
With One Nation adjustment (optional) 51.7 to ALP
If polls are accurate, Labor would win if everyone voted now, with a slim majority or close to it

(Figures above updated for YouGov)

The election has started already (people are now voting by post, even if the Greens HTV website doesn't seem aware of that) and the Coalition campaign appears to be in big trouble.  The polling swing back to Labor that started in late January and became more noticeable in late February has accelerated in the past two weeks and Labor is now polling majority government numbers from several pollsters.  It's too early to be confident that that will be the result, since elections are on average closer than even the final polls have it, but what we are seeing at the moment is a polling meltdown.  The Coalition primary vote is plummeting, and while this may yet turn around or be underestimated they now face the reverse version of Labor's problem during Labor's long decline last year.  There will be a bottom to this somewhere but no-one yet knows if this is it or where it might be.  By the time an underdog effect kicks in (if it does) will it be too late?

How To Make Best Use Of Your 2025 Senate Vote

 People are starting to vote already (by post) so I thought I'd get a revised version of this guide up for this year.  It is again largely copied from the previous one but I have again made some minor changes and dropped some no longer relevant content.   Many regular readers of the site will already be aware of many of the points below.  I hope the main part of the post will also be useful, however, for those who want to know what advice to give less politically engaged (or more easily confused) voters.  I will vote below the line and number every square, and I'm sure many other readers will too (at least in the smaller states!), but not everyone is up for that.

Under the system introduced in 2016, voters determine where their preferences go - there is no longer any "group ticket voting" in which if you vote for one party, your preference automatically flows next to another.  Voters have great flexibility - they can vote above the line (in which case they are asked to number at least six boxes) or below the line (in which case they are asked to number at least twelve).  Voters who vote below the line are no longer forced to number all the boxes.  

Many social media accounts have been claiming that you need to vote below the line to stop parties from sending your preferences somewhere you don't like, or to "control your preferences".  It isn't true! That said, voting below the line does give you control at individual candidate level if that's something you consider important - at the cost of being more effort.  

The freedom of the new system is fantastic, but it's still taking some getting used to, and most voters are not using their vote in the most effective way they could.  If you don't have time to use your vote effectively and just want to get out of the polling box as fast as you like, that's fine, that's up to you.  But not making the best use of your vote might end up helping a party you can't stand beat one you are merely disappointed by.  This guide tells you how to avoid that, if you want to.   

Here I give some answers to the sorts of questions people are asking or likely to ask about the system.  At the bottom there is a section on tactical voting for advanced players only.  The vast majority of readers should stop when they get to that point.

Don't confuse the Reps and Senate voting rules

The House of Representatives (green ballot paper) is the smaller ballot paper with candidate names down the page in a single line.  On the House of Reps ballot paper, number every box.  If you apply the Senate above the line rules on the House of Reps ballot, and vote 1-6 and stop, then if there are 8 or more Reps candidates in your seat, your vote will be informal.  It is only for the Senate (large white ballot paper) that you can number some of the squares and stop.  Sounds simple, but I have evidence that in those seats with 8 or more Reps candidates - which is half the seats in 2025 - quite a few voters (nearly 1% in 2019, lower in 2022) are invalidating their Reps vote specifically by confusing it with the Senate.

(NB A House of Reps ballot paper with only one square left blank is saved under the savings provisions, but I don't recommend voting this way as there is no point to it. Number all the Reps boxes.)

Should I vote above the line or below the line in the Senate?

You should vote below the line in the Senate if any of the following apply to you:

1. You wish to vote for a range of candidates across party lines, rather than just putting all the parties in order of preference.  You might be the sort of person who will really like some candidates from a given party and really dislike others (perhaps because of their positions on social issues), or you might want to preference candidates with a certain background, or who you know, whatever party they're running for.  Voters who want to separate the Liberal and National Parties, or put one entirely ahead of the other, in NSW and Victoria where they run on joint tickets are another example of this.  

2. You are happy to keep your vote within party lines, but you want to put the candidates for some parties you vote for in a different order to the order their party lists them in. For instance you like a party but think it should have put someone else on the top of its ticket or higher on its ticket.  Some voters also vote BTL to juggle the order within their chosen major party for strategic voting reasons (as discussed in the strategic voting section at the bottom.)

3. You wish to vote for an ungrouped candidate (an independent or a sole candidate for a party, who does not have a party box above their name) or preference one or more ungrouped candidates higher than some other candidates or parties.  These candidates appear on the far right of the ballot paper.  Be aware that ungrouped candidates are usually completely uncompetitive as they cannot get above-the-line preferences, so if putting the ungrouped candidates ahead of a nasty party is your only reason for voting below the line, you may well be wasting your time.  

4. You want the satisfaction of putting a particular candidate last even if it means numbering three times as many boxes!  I've given this one its own section this year.  Be aware that if the candidate you detest is #1 for a major party ticket in a state (as distinct from territory) that they are going to win anyway so putting them last will not in reality make any difference compared to voting above the line and putting their party last.  In most cases that's also the case if they are #2 on a major party ticket, but not always.

If none of those apply, voting above the line is easier.

If voting below the line, be extra careful with votes 1-6

If you vote below the line, you'll be asked to number 12 boxes and should ideally number more.  However, if voting below the line make really sure you have put one and only one candidate number 1, one and only one candidate number 2 (etc) up to 6.  If you omit any of the numbers 1-6 when voting below the line your vote won't count. (At least one Tasmanian voter in 2016 numbered every box but skipped the number 6, so their vote was disallowed.) If you double any of the numbers 1-6 when voting below the line, your vote won't count.  If you make a mistake after number 6, however, your vote will still count up to the point where you made that mistake.  Remember, if you make a mistake while voting at a booth, you can ask for another ballot paper.  (Also, don't use zeros or negative numbers for candidates you dislike - this can cause your vote to not be counted.)

Be extra careful if you like to number a few boxes then number backwards from the bottom up.  It's very easy to skip a number then end up with two 5s.  If you like to do this sort of thing, best to practice at home first.

You might think this sounds simple.  It's amazing how many people still manage to stuff it up.

Write clearly!

Whether you're voting above the line or below, I recommend writing as clearly as possible.  The reason for this is that ballots are scanned using computer character recognition that is verified by humans, but the humans work very fast to get the count done in time.  An audit of Senate ballot entry accuracy found that there are some errors in this process, more than I'd ideally like.  The risk of error is lower if you write clearly.

So I should just number 6 boxes above the line or 12 below?

You can, but I strongly encourage you to number more if you want your vote to be the best it can! Whether you are voting above the line or below the line, the more squares you number, the more powerful your vote potentially becomes. 

If anybody - even an electoral official - tells you that voting for more than six above the line or more than twelve below will make your vote invalid, then that is wrong.  AEC booth workers should be instructing voters to vote "at least" 1-6 above or "at least" 1-12 below.  

If anybody tells you that preferences beyond 6 above the line or 12 below can't matter, that is also wrong.  Depending on how you vote, it may well be that later preferences never have any impact, but if your first six parties above the line are not very popular, there's a big chance that other parties you include beyond six could get your vote at full value after your top six are excluded.

I've numbered, say, 14 boxes and I don't like any of the other parties/candidates.  Should I stop now?

You certainly can, but it's more effective to keep going.  One of the most important messages in the system is that while you can stop when you run out of parties that you like, this may result in a candidate you strongly dislike beating a candidate who you think is the lesser evil.  Just voting for the parties you think are OK and then stopping is not making the best use of your vote. 

A lot of voters - especially a lot of idealistic left or right flank voters - are a bit silly about this and worry that if they preference a party they dislike they may help it win.  Well yes, but your preference can only ever reach that party if the only other parties left in the contest are the ones you have preferenced behind it or not at all! If that's the case then someone from that list is going to win a seat, whether you decide to help the lesser evils beat the greater evils or not. 

To make best use of your vote, you should only stop when one of the following happens:

1. You could not care less which of the remaining candidates wins (assuming that at least one is elected).

2. You so strongly dislike all the remaining candidates that you feel morally opposed to even helping them beat each other.  Be aware that this could help the worst of them beat one who, while still terrible from your perspective, is not the worst.

3. Although you actually dislike one of the remaining parties less than one or more of the others, you want to exhaust your vote in protest to encourage that party to listen to your concerns.  (To make your point effectively, I suggest you send that party a message after the election telling them you did this and why, since they won't be able to work it out from your vote.)

Of course, some voters just "don't have the time" to number more than the minimum number of squares, or reckon it's not worth the effort for the sake of one vote.  Completely fine.  It's up to you whether voting effectively is a real priority for you or not.  I'm just suggesting what you should do if it is.

I want to vote above the line for Party X but they've done a preference deal with Party Y and I don't want my preferences to go to Party Y, at least not ahead of Party Z.

They won't.  Preference "deals" involve recommendations by parties to their voters only.  Your preferences above the line can only go to Party Y if you choose to preference Party Y yourself, and only in the position in your order that you put them.  You can vote for party X then direct preferences to whatever other parties in whatever order you like.  If you put party Y well down on the list, then your preference can only help Party Y beat any parties you have ranked even lower down or anyone you have left blank (this includes the ungrouped candidates).  Any "preference deals" your party has done, or any preferences they give on their how-to-vote card, have no impact on your vote unless you follow that card yourself.   

I want to vote below the line for a candidate, and I want to put a certain party last, but I don't want to number several dozen boxes.  Is there a shortcut?

In the 2016 edition I said there was: bear in mind that the great majority of minor party tickets have no chance at all of getting more than one seat in any given state.  So there is no need for you to send your preferences to all the candidates for every micro-party, just the lead candidate will do.  Make sure you still preference up to the top four candidates from the bigger parties if doing this though (except the party you are putting last) and just to be on the safe side you might want to include second candidates for the Greens and One Nation.

However, that was before Section 44 started to bite.  The small risk you do take if you leave out the minor candidates is that if a candidate for one of these parties wins, and if that candidate is then disqualified, your vote might be less effective in the special count to replace them.  So if you want to be sure of keeping your vote effective if there's a special count, then the very best thing is to number all of the boxes.   

Can I vote above and below the line?

There is not much point in voting both above and below the line. Under the old system voters sometimes voted both above and below the line so that if they made a mistake below the line their vote above the line would still be counted.  This still applies, but it's so much easier to just make sure you don't make a mistake in the first six numbers if you vote below the line.

Also (and this is one to watch for when telling confused relatives how to vote!) do not cast a vote that crosses the line (eg a 1 above the line, then a 2 below, then a 3 below, a 4 above etc).  At best this will cause your vote to exhaust very quickly and at worst it will not count at all.

If you vote formally both above and below the line then your below the line vote counts and your above the line vote is ignored.  But there have been cases of voters making their vote less powerful in this way by making their vote exhaust faster.  

This is all confusing! I just want to do what my party wants!

That's up to you.  If your party is popular and you are voting at a booth, your party will probably hand out how-to-vote cards that tell you how they suggest you vote in the Senate.  If you are voting for a little-known party, you may need to check their website to see what they recommend (if anything). 

Be aware that it is possible your party will deal with parties you do not agree with and hence recommend you give preferences to someone who you would not actually like.  

The big drawback with following a how to vote card is that your party wants to keep the message simple and hence will probably only recommend six boxes above the line.  But such a vote is more likely to exhaust (or at least to have part of its value exhaust.)  If you're voting for a major party, your party may, for instance, leave both the other major party and One Nation off its card.  If you want to preference the other major party ahead of One Nation, then you will have to keep going and number at least one more box than your party recommends.

I've heard that I can just vote 1 above the line and stop and my vote will still be counted!

That's true, but only to a degree.  If you do this (disobeying the official instructions) then your vote will only count for the party you've voted for.  Once all that party's candidates are elected or excluded, your vote will exhaust and will play no further role in the election.  It might make sense to vote this way (despite what the instructions say) if you only like one party and couldn't care less about any of the others, but really if that's your view you should learn more about the different parties.  You will almost certainly find some of them appeal to you more than others.

I've heard that I can just vote 1 below the line and stop and my vote will still be counted!

That's not true.  Such a vote would be informal.  If you vote below the line you need at least the numbers 1 to 6, once and once only each, for your vote to be counted at all.  It is better to follow the instructions and vote for at least 12.

This party I've never heard of has a cool-sounding name.  Should I vote for it or preference it?

That's up to you, but again I suggest being cautious about parties you don't know much about.  Their name may misrepresent what they are really on about, or some of their candidates may go off on a completely different track if they're elected.  

If you don't have time to research parties before voting, then the best place to put parties you've never heard of is somewhere between the ones you moderately dislike and the ones you really cannot stand.  If you don't dislike any parties, best to put the ones you've never heard of at the end.

There are some blank boxes above the line in my state.  What are they, printing errors?  Doesn't look right.  Can I put numbers in those?

Blank boxes above the line (this year in NSW and Vic only) are the above the line boxes for candidates who run together as a group but who are not endorsed by any registered party.  A number in their box works the same way as a number in any other above the line box.  You can see who the candidates that box applies to are as they are listed below the box.  Yes you can number these boxes.  If you hear someone say that you can't, please show them this article.  (At this election there are very few such cases, most of them involving the unregistered Socialist Equality Party).  

Should I vote using ticks and crosses?

You should vote in the Senate using numbers only.  Ticks and crosses in the Senate are converted to ones, meaning that a ballot paper with more than one tick or cross, or with a tick and a 1 (for example) won't be counted.  Ticks and crosses in the House of Representatives are informal.    (EDIT: This entry originally referenced Trumpet of Patriots having a logo with a tick in a circle but Trumpet of Patriots appear to have elected not to actually use their logo.  The logo was used by the Federation Party, which became ToP, last election.

Do you have a video on this?

I don't, but the Vic-Tas branch of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia do (from the 2016 election).  I'm not associated with them, and I don't agree with all of it (they're very anti-above-the-line, but under the new system above-the-line voters have a greatly increased amount of control over their preferences, even if slightly less than below-the-line voters).  But on the whole it's OK and does at least explain why people should keep filling in boxes, and not just stop when they reach the minimum.

The AEC has many excellent short videos on aspects of the voting system.

I reviewed Topher Field's marbles video, which is popular in right wing minor party circles, here.  

Are there tools to help planning my vote, especially below the line?

Depending on where you live, there may be a lot of parties on the Senate ballot, as a large number of micro-parties with no chance of winning are still running anyway.  (The number of party groups has come down again from last time in all states though.)  If you want to vote below the line and go more or less all the way, you may want to prepare your ballot beforehand so you have something to take to the booth and copy.

A few sites that may help you to vote below the line (if you want to) are likely to emerge and I will list them here as I become aware of them but only once they appear to be up to speed for the 2025 election:

clueyvoter

donkeyvotie.org: for above the line voting only, includes party reviews that are quite funny though in some places inaccurate.

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That concludes the simple questions (but feel free to ask me more in comments; you may want to check the comments from 2016 or 2019 or 2022 to see if your question was already covered).  On to the tricky, slightly naughty bit!  The bit below the line is rated Wonk Factor 3/5 and is mainly for serious election and voting system junkies.

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Tactical Voting

Strong disclaimer: If you have read this section and are not sure that you completely understand it, please ignore it and pretend you never read it.

Most voting systems are prone to tactical voting of some kind; indeed, in some it's necessary.  Under the first-past-the-post system in the UK it is often necessary for voters to vote tactically for their second or third preference party to ensure their vote isn't "wasted".  In the 2018 Wentworth by-election, many left-wing voters voted 1 for Kerryn Phelps because she was more capable of winning from second than Labor was.  In 2022 a similar thing happened in several seats with "teals". Our preferential systems are much fairer than first-past-the-post, of course, but there are still ways of voting that can make your vote less than optimally powerful, and ways to get around that if you want.

In this case I am not arguing that voters should vote tactically - I'm just explaining how they can do it if they want to.  The ethical decision involved (since voting tactically effectively reduces the value of other voters' votes) is up to them. 

Here is a good example.  A voter really likes two candidates.  One is on top of a major party ticket, the other is in a lowly position and considered in danger of not winning.  They slightly prefer the first candidate, but might it actually be worth voting 1 for the second and 2 for the first instead?

Generally, the answer is yes, but only if not everyone does it, since if everyone did it then the first candidate wouldn't be so safe anymore.  However, it's a fact that not everyone will do it, and you can rely on the party vote being high enough at this election that top-of-the-ticket major party candidates in states will definitely win.

The one reliable principle of tactical voting I recommend to those who really want to do it is do not vote 1 for any candidate who you know or suspect will get elected more or less straightaway.  Generally a strategic voter would therefore avoid a 1 vote for the top major party candidate in a state, in many cases the second major party candidate as well.  Voting below the line and starting at the bottom of your preferred party ticket - if you're a major party voter - is a common trick.  Another one is to vote 1 for the second candidate (just to be really safe) of an agreeable micro-party which has no chance of winning at all, and then number the rest of the squares as you would normally. (The downside of this method is that your originally preferred party misses out on a few dollars of public funding.  For people who think no parties should be funded, that's a benefit.)

You can also do this above-the-line if you want to, under the new system.  Instead of voting 1 for any party that will poll more than 14.3% of the primary vote, you can deliberately give your 1 vote to a micro-party with absolutely no hope of winning and your second preference to your preferred party (then continue numbering parties in order).    Your vote will flow at full value to the candidate from your party who is most likely to be fighting for the final seat.  However, this does get a bit risky, because if too many people do it and select the same obviously hopeless micro-party, that micro-party might someday actually win!

Here's the mechanics behind all this.  If you vote 1 for someone who is going to be elected right off the bat, you are giving them a vote they do not need.  A portion of your vote is in effect left behind with them when their surplus is passed on, and your ballot paper in effect carries on to other candidates at a reduced value.  (In some cases its value may be reduced to zero, through "loss due to fractions".)  However, your vote also slightly increases the total passed-on value of all your chosen candidate's other votes.  Effectively, 1 vote is still passed on, but instead of it being your vote at full value, it's a mishmash of your vote and bits of the vote of everyone else who voted for the same person.

This can make a big difference if you're voting across party lines.  In some cases, voting 1 for a very popular candidate and then 2 for someone from a different party could actually harm the candidate you put second! (Note: don't do this deliberately to try to harm an opposing candidate, since you can harm them more then by just voting as you normally would.)

Advanced players may like to engage in a form of "preference-running" in which they try to strategise their vote so that it never gets caught with anyone who is elected until right at the end, and stays in the hunt at full value.  It is actually really hard to pull this off, because multi-seat elections are so unpredictable.  It often involves making difficult decisions about whether you would rather be sure of your vote reaching a favoured candidate, or take some risk of it not doing so to greatly increase the chance of another candidate you like (or the chance of defeating one who you want to lose).  This sort of thing is so easy to misunderstand that I am not going to publicly give any advice on how to do it. Please don't ask. 

Those interested in some real examples of the principle I recommend should see this old Tasmanian Times article (wonk factor 4/5).  That article covers the Hare-Clark system as used in Tasmanian state elections.  There is a slight difference with the Senate system in that in the Senate, if your vote reaches someone who is elected with a quota at a later count, part of the value of your vote will be passed on (though often not very much).

The 2025 election raises fewer obvious tactical voting arguments than 2022.  In 2025 there was a need for voters to understand tactical voting in the ACT and for Green voters to defect to David Pocock to make sure he got over them and could win, but he got over them easily and will now do so again barring a mass return to the Greens among his voters 

The Greens are potentially easy victims of tactical voting arguments.  They seem likely to win one seat in all states (especially their strong states of Vic, WA, Tas) but are no real chance of winning two anywhere.  Therefore it may be better for a strategic voter who is undecided between the Greens and any other party to put that other party (if it's a minor party) or that other party's third candidate (if it's a major party) ahead of the Greens in the hope of best defeating whoever else is fighting for the final seat.  

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