‘Only one direction’: Glaring sign Albo and Dutton are in real trouble

Australians are growing more and more fed up – and a bombshell analysis proves we’re planning to do something extraordinary.

ANALYSIS

In the decades since Australian federal politics coalesced around the Coalition and Labor shortly after World War II, the two major parties have been in the ascendancy the overwhelming majority of the time.

But in more recent times, that has gradually faded – up to the point that some pollsters have the Coalition and Labor receiving less than two-thirds of the electorate’s primary votes at this year’s federal election.

While the major parties have seen drops in their share of the primary vote before, this reduction in performance at the ballot box is increasingly translating into lower house seats being lost to minor parties and independents.

As late as the 1998 election, just one independent was elected to federal parliament.

In the years that followed, the numbers of independent and minor party candidates elected would ebb and flow, eventually reaching six at the 2019 election.

The major’s share over time

If we cast our gaze back 50 years to the 1975 federal election between the Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and the Coalition opposition led by Malcolm Fraser, the two major parties collectively won 95.9 per cent of the primary first preference votes for the lower house.

Over the next 50 years, the share of the first preference lower house votes flowing to the major parties would change multiple times.

However, since the 2010 election, the major party share of the vote has gone in only one direction – down.

The election that changed everything

When the nation went to the polls for the 2022 federal election, it delivered an unprecedented result – the election of 16 Members of Parliament who were independents or from the minor parties.

The Coalition lost eight seats, to independents and the Greens.

On the other side of the major party divide, Labor lost one seat to independent Dai Le and another to the Greens.

When the nation went to the polls for the 2022 federal election, it delivered an unprecedented result. Source: Australian Federal Parliament

After more than a century of independent and minor party MPs holding a number of seats in the low to mid-single digits, seemingly all of a sudden, it wouldn’t need to be an election that went right down to the wire to deliver a hung parliament and require the major parties to work with the crossbench in order to form government.

To put the shift into perspective, if we were to magically take away the seats the Coalition and Labor have lost to independents since the 1984 election, seven of the last 14 elections would have resulted in hung parliaments, rather than the one election that did historically, in 2010.

The kingmakers

With polling so close and such a large crossbench, a minority government is the odds on favourite outcome from the bookies.

Things aren’t looking great for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture: Fia Walsh

Or Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Currently, a minority government is paying $1.40, with either major party governing in their own right out at $2.50.

According to a seat-by-seat polling analysis done by YouGov earlier this month based on surveying over 40,000 respondents, the median estimate was for the Coalition to emerge with 73 seats and Labor with 66.

This would put both parties below the 76 seat threshold required for majority government. Overall, YouGov’s range of projections had Labor on 59 to 72 seats and the Coalition on 65 to 80 seats.

With polling so close and such a large crossbench, a minority government is the odds on favourite outcome from the bookies.

Of the remaining 11 seats, it’s projected that the Greens will win one, with the remainder going to other minor parties or independents.

But if, as they say, “A week in politics is a long time”, then the more than two months remaining until the last possible election date may be an eternity.

While a hung parliament is not an unprecedented event, even in relatively recent history, it is possible that whichever major party forms government will need significantly more support than the four crossbenchers the Gillard government needed in order to govern.

The path to power

For both of the major parties, the loss of what were once considered safe seats has made the electoral maths for majority government all the more challenging.

In the world of politics, nothing is ever certain. Picture: Brett Hartwig

While current polling suggests that some of the seats lost at the last election are increasingly likely to be regained, accurate single seat polling can be notoriously tough and there are more prospective independent challengers on the horizon in a growing number of seats held by the major parties.

In the world of politics, nothing is ever certain, and even parties written off as being consigned to the political wilderness have swiftly risen back to the forefront.

That being said, in a world that poses significantly more challenges to the growth in household outcomes than that of decades past, the major parties have their work cut out for them convincing the electorate that they are best suited to steer the nation through these difficult waters and that they should be given the privilege of majority government.

Tarric Brooker is a freelance journalist and social commentator | @AvidCommentator