Greens leader Adam Bandt is likely to narrowly avoid becoming the second party leader to lose their seat in 24 hours, but poor results in key electorates have diminished the progressive group badly in the lower house.

The Greens face the prospect of entering the next parliament with its only lower house MP being Bandt, although he was still an outside chance of joining the party’s housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather and his Queensland colleague Stephen Bates in handing their seats back to Labor.