Coalition victory in Melbourne seat of Chisholm hands Morrison majority government

The Liberal Party has retained the eastern Melbourne seat of Chisholm with the electoral authority calling the result on Tuesday afternoon to hand a clear majority to Scott Morrison's re-elected Coalition government.

Gladys Liu has won the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, giving Scott Morrison the 76 seats he needs for a Parliamentary majority.Credit: AAP

The Prime Minister now has 76 seats in Parliament's lower house, and his party is leading the count in two other seats Bass in Tasmania and Macquarie in NSW, putting a total of 78 seats well in sight.

The Liberal Party's candidate Gladys Liu took the seat of Chisholm after trailing her Labor challenger Jennifer Yang in early counting.

Ms Liu, who declined to comment on Tuesday afternoon, is now on 50.74 per cent of the two-party preferred vote to Ms Yang's 49.26, with the Liberal about 1200 votes ahead.

She is the first female Chinese-Australian migrant elected to Federal Parliament. Born in Hong Kong, Ms Liu won a scholarship to study speech therapy in Melbourne in 1985.

Sarah Henderson campaigning on election day.Credit: Paul Jeffers

The triumph in Chisholm, a seat the Liberals were not expected to hold, leaves Labor with only two gains from its opponents in Victoria, the seats of Corangamite and Dunkley, where the Coalition started from behind after boundary changes made them notionally Labor.

It is a disappointing outcome for the Labor party which hoped to win four seats in the state in Saturday's poll.

The Liberal Party also comfortably held another outer suburban seat targeted by Labor, La Trobe, one of several electorates where government MPs increased their majorities against expectations.

The Liberals look to have lost the coastal Victorian seat of Corangamite, with Sarah Henderson trailing her Labor opponent Libby Coker by nearly 3000 votes.

As Labor continued to reel from Saturday's defeat, key Victorian Labor strategist Kosmos Samaras warned his colleagues that they faced the same fate as the Queensland ALP unless they reconnected with their traditional working class base in Melbourne's outer suburbs.

"At this election, Labor lost votes in blue collar suburbs," Mr Samaras wrote in a Facebook post.

"It had swings against it in established outer suburbs of Melton, Werribee, Craigieburn. The south-west, west and north-west of Melbourne is slowing turning into a Queensland. I'm not making this up, go and have a look at the primary votes within these areas over the last 20 years."

Mr Samaras said the reasons for losing ground among traditional Labor support were "complex".

"The reasons why these communities are steadily moving away from Labor are not because of one election campaign," Mr Samaras wrote.

"They are complex, which includes culture, self-identity and how the broad Left projects itself upon them.

"Working class people did vote for Labor at this election. But a growing number of them are not and the multi-generational attrition is catching up with us.

"If we do not address it, Queensland will become the whole country."