The Low Impact Of Independent Preferences In Labor's 2025 Federal Win

At the 2025 federal election, more votes that were 1 One Nation or 1 Trumpet of Patriots (combined) finished up with Labor candidates as preferences than votes that were 1 Independent!

Among the various forms of whinging and nonsense I continue to see on social media about the election result, one of the commonest is that Labor were elected on "Greens and teal preference deals".  

Labor were, of course, ahead on primaries in 86 seats and would have won in any system (though well short of a majority without single-seat electorates) but the blaming of teals for the strength of their win reflects some limitations of looking at overall preference flows instead of examining the results seat by seat.

If one looks at the overall 2PP flow by party it appears that independents (particularly teals) were a huge contributor to the size of Labor's 2PP win and so must have had a lot to do with them winning so many seats.  After Labor's 5.35 million primaries and 1.67 million preferences from the Greens, independents (756K preferences) are easily the third biggest contributor, way ahead of the minority of preferences assigned to Labor from One Nation candidates (253K).

But this is deceptive because a lot of Independent votes were cast in the 17 divisions where Labor failed to make the final two, or the six divisions where Labor made the final two against an independent.  There were a further 12 divisions where Labor made the final two against the Greens, Centre Alliance or One Nation, so in these cases an independent vote that flowed to them as 2PP may not have actually reached them.

The overall indicative 2PP flow from indepedents was according to the AEC 756,196 to 369,855.  This is likely to in fact be a slight underestimate of the flow to Labor based on the AEC's estimation methods for Bradfield.  

However this is where independent votes actually ended up in the preference distributions in each seat:

Remained with original independent 619564 (55.0%)

Labor 294426 (26.2%)

Coalition 168775 (15.0%)

Different independent 35153 (3.1%)

Greens 7217 (0.6%)

KAP 916 (0.1%)

So although Labor got a 386K legup over the Coalition from independents in the indicative 2PP, only 130,651 of that gain actually reached them (and some of that did so in seats where the Coalition were already out).  It's also worth noting that in seats that finished as classic seats, the independent to Labor flow was only 63.5%.  It was as high as 69.4% on a 2PP basis in those seats where 2PP did not determine the result - mostly these were votes for independents whose preferences never went anywhere.

And, as noted above, the number of independent preferences that actually reached Labor (294426) is easily exceeded by the combined number that actually reached them from One Nation (244177) and Trumpet of Patriots (98934).  That is although the number of independent preferences that notionally reached Labor on the 2PP is more than twice as many as for these parties - because most of those notional preferences to Labor never went anywhere.  And it is although the overall 2PP preference flows from these parties (25.5% and 36.2%) were mostly not to Labor.  

In a seat sense, there were two seats where Labor won and would not have won had preferences from a specific independent split 50-50, this however being up from the 2022 figure for the same thing which was none at all.  These seats were Menzies and Solomon.  In the case of Menzies however the preferences came from a former Labor candidate Stella Yee, who was not identified with the teal movement.  This leaves Solomon where the preferences of Climate 200 endorsed candidate Phil Scott saved Labor from losing the seat.  But that's not to even say Labor holding the seat had anything to do with Scott running. Had he not run many of those voters would have voted Labor, or Greens with preferences to Labor, anyway, and it could well be Labor would have still held it.  

In fact the number of seats where Labor won but would have lost had teal voter preferences split 50-50 is and smaller than that for the Liberal Party (both Wills and Melbourne would have been won by the Greens with an even split of Liberal preferences).  There were fourteen seats (including both Menzies and Solomon) where Labor would have lost had Green voter preferences split 50-50 and five where some combination of multiple candidates including the Greens splitting 50-50 would have caused them to lose.  However it should be clear enough by now that nothing either party could have possibly done in the 2025 campaign would have stopped Green voters preferring Labor.  And furthermore, most Labor seat wins where they would have lost had Greens preferences split 50-50 are simply a result of Green voter choices not "preference deals", given that only about 15% of Greens voters follow how to vote cards and this number would probably have been more like 2% if the Greens had decided to preference a Dutton-led Coalition.  Something else to note here is that there were also seven Coalition winners who would have lost had preferences from some individual party or some combination of parties not helped them.  

There were a number of cases - mainly just because there were more teal-type candidates running than in 2022 (when teal preferences were only seen in about one seat where Labor won) - where independent preferences significantly fattened Labor's margin in a seat.  The most notable was Dickson, where Labor made a larger net gain off the preferences of Ellie Smith (IND) that they did from the Greens.  But even had Labor made no gain off Smith they would have still beaten Peter Dutton by 4405 votes anyway.  (The massive 82% flow from Smith is comical in view of Labor complaining about her not recommending preferences to anyone).  

Those banging on about "teal preference deals" often ignore the fact that teal independents (like the Smith example just cited) often refuse to recommend preferences to anyone anyway.  As with the 2022 election, what went on with teals in 2025 was a distraction to the Coalition and a sideshow to the mechanics of the election result.