The key Sydney seats: the winners and the one fight everyone is watching

Eleven seats and 11 very different outcomes in an election that has changed the political landscape of Australia, and been dubbed by political insiders and experts as a Labor landslide. Here is the state of play across the key seats in Sydney and NSW.

Banks

Liberal frontbencher David Coleman is another high-profile casualty after he suffered a significant swing against him in his Sydney seat of Banks.

In an electorate that Labor and Liberal strategists both saw as one they could claim, Coleman suffered a 7.3 per cent primary vote swing against him, as Labor candidate Zhi Soon enjoyed strong preference flows.

Zhi Soon campaigning with Anthony Albanese.Credit: Getty Images

Soon, who experienced only a 0.8 per cent increase on the party’s primary vote, snatched the seat from the longstanding Liberal MP with a 6.6 per cent swing towards him.

Banks runs across the inner ring of Sydney’s southern suburbs and has been held by the Liberals since Tony Abbott’s thumping 2013 victory. Soon migrated with his family from Malaysia as a child.

Bennelong

Sitting Labor MP Jerome Laxale has held on to the knife-edge seat of Bennelong on Sydney’s lower north shore, fending off Liberal candidate Scott Yung with a hefty swing towards Labor, despite a boundary redraw that tightened the race.

“Tonight, everyone, we’ve made history,” Laxale told a jubilant crowd at The Ranch in North Ryde on Saturday night.

“What we’ve achieved here in Bennelong on our new boundaries is pretty exceptional. I think what we’ve seen is a complete rejection of Peter Dutton and the Liberals.”

Labor’s Jerome Laxale at his election-night party after he retained the Sydney seat of Bennelong.Credit: Janie Barrett

Laxale, a former Ryde mayor, was elected in 2022 and held the seat on a 1 per cent margin. That was only the second time Labor had claimed victory in the long-time Liberal stronghold – once held by former prime minister John Howard – in seven decades. But the boundary redraw that abolished the seat of North Sydney shifted Bennelong east, turning it into a notionally Liberal seat with a wafer-thin margin of 0.04 per cent.

Yung has come under scrutiny for his campaign finance record during his 2019 state election run.

Bradfield

Teal candidate Nicolette Boele is narrowly ahead in the polling. If Boele wins Bradfield, independent candidates will hold five Sydney seats – the same tally as the Liberal Party in the city.

On election night she stopped short of claiming the seat of Bradfield, insisting it was too close to call. Whatever the outcome, Boele told her supporters on election night, “we have made Australian political history”.

In 2022, the independent narrowly lost the North Shore seat to Liberal MP Paul Fletcher, who didn’t contest the 2025 election following a redistribution and amid polling which showed he was on track to lose.

Boele, who has maintained an electorate office and styled herself as Bradfield’s shadow member, built strong grassroots support in the blue ribbon seat. It’s been a tight race between Boele and Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian, a senior executive at a global technology company.

Nicolette Boele speaks at her election party in Artarmon on Saturday night.Credit: Wolter Peeters

If Boele wins the seat she will join fellow teal MPs Sophie Scamps (Mackellar), Zali Stegall (Warringah) and Allegra Spender (Wentworth) on the crossbench.

Fowler

Independent Dai Le has retained the western Sydney seat of Fowler, despite Labor’s best efforts to win back what was once considered a safe slice of its heartland.

It remained a tight throughout the night against Labor’s Tu Le, reflecting a keenly fought contest that at times descended into ugliness. Supporters of Dai Le’s campaign accused Labor of “spreading lies”, spending $1 million on the seat, and of “borderline bullying”.

Independent Dai Le celebrates with supporters after winning Fowler.Credit: Sitthixay Ditthavong

Tu Le, a local, was former MP Chris Hayes’ first choice to contest the seat back in 2022. Labor instead controversially parachuted in Kristina Keneally, only to subsequently lose the seat.

Fowler was won by former councillor Dai Le in 2022 by a slight 1.1 per cent margin. She became one of the first independents to win a seat in Labor’s traditional heartland of western Sydney.

Sitting close to the centre of Sydney’s west, Fowler is home to many diverse communities, including large Vietnamese and Iraqi diasporas. And that was reflected in the campaign, which featured two candidates from Vietnamese backgrounds, and was fought and won almost exclusively on local issues.

Gilmore

The seat of Gilmore, on the NSW South Coast, was one of the most at-risk Labor seats. Incumbent Fiona Phillips was defending a 373-vote margin against Liberal Andrew Constance.

In the previous election, Constance, a high-profile former state member for Bega, overcame Coalition infighting during preselection to secure a 2.5 per cent swing towards him, even as the Coalition suffered a 5.3 per cent drift the other way.

He came within a hair’s breadth of winning. In the end, Phillips won by the aforementioned 373 votes in a seat declared days after election day, securing the party’s 77th seat and delighting Anthony Albanese, who was able to form a majority government as a result.

Labor MP Fiona Phillips has held on to the ultra-marginal seat of Gilmore.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

This time around Phillips win was more comprehensive but there was another complication. Kate Dezarnaulds, a businesswoman from Berry who won the support of Climate 200, threw her hat in the ring, making Gilmore one of the few seats in the nation where a teal independent ran against an incumbent Labor MP.

The seat is a mixed bag of demographics with retirees, public servants, defence force workers and medium-sized towns like Batemans Bay, Ulladulla and Nowra.

Hughes

Labor has stormed home in the southern Sydney seat of Hughes, overturning 20 years of Liberal rule.

Labor candidate and former political adviser David Moncrieff delivered a stunning 12 per cent swing on his primary vote, consigning incumbent MP Jenny Ware to a single term in parliament.

With nearly two-thirds of the vote counted, Moncrieff was tracking a 7.5 per cent swing once preferences were factored in, making him the first Labor MP in the seat since John Howard was first elected in 1996.

Federal Labor candidate for the seat of Hughes, David Moncrieff, was an unexpected victor.Credit: Facebook

While the seat was on a 3.5 per cent margin, almost no one had Hughes as a seat to watch prior to Saturday. But with the Liberals’ primary vote falling 4.5 per cent, Moncrieff’s first preferences overtook Ware.

The 380-square-kilometre electorate takes in swaths of southwestern Sydney all the way through to the Sutherland Shire, including Engadine, Heathcoate and Sutherland.

Mackellar

Teal independent Sophie Scamps has retained her northern beaches seat of Mackellar, increasing her hold on the once safe Liberal seat.

The NSW Liberals had seen Mackellar as their best hope to seize back a teal seat, preselecting former RSL NSW president James Brown as their candidate.

Independent member Dr Sophie Scamps claimed the seat of Mackellar.Credit: James Brickwood.

Scamps, a northern beaches GP, won Mackellar in 2022 as part of a backlash against the Morrison government which led to her being joined on the crossbench by other teal candidates including Allegra Spender (Wentworth), Zali Steggall (Warringah) and Kylea Tink (North Sydney, which has since been abolished).

Parramatta

Labor’s Andrew Charlton has retained the western Sydney seat of Parramatta, increasing his margin by 9 per cent as of Saturday night.

Charlton won the seat by only 3.7 per cent at the last election, despite being parachuted in after long-time Labor MP Julie Owens retired. Owens held the seat between 2004 and 2022, and there were fears it would fall to the Coalition.

But Charlton’s strong result means the seat has shifted back into safe territory for Labor, with Liberal candidate Katie Mullens unable to loosen Charlton’s grip.

Labor’s Andrew Charlton holds on to the seat of Parramatta.Credit: Thomas Wielecki

Parramatta is one of the most culturally diverse seats in the country. At the most recent census, more than 70 per cent of residents reported that both their parents were born overseas, compared with the national average of 36.7 per cent.

That diversity formed a core part of Charlton’s campaign, which sought the support of the region’s large Indian, Lebanese and Chinese communities.

Robertson

On the Central Coast, Labor MP Gordon Reid significantly increased his margin in the seat of Robertson after the primary vote of Liberal candidate Lucy Wicks collapsed.

The seat stretches from Patonga to Wamberal on the northern part of the Central Coast. It was an electorate the Coalition felt could respond strongly to Liberal leader Peter Dutton’s political message.

Dr Gordon Reid has increased his margin in the seat of Robertson.Credit: Fairfax Media

But Wicks’ primary vote fell by 10 per cent, with Reid picking up a 7 per cent increase.

The result is a stunning repudiation of the Coalition’s message in a part of NSW it should have been winning. On election night, Reid celebrated with party faithful at the Ettalong RSL.

Wentworth

Teal MP Allegra Spender easily retained the Sydney seat of Wentworth against Liberal challenger Ro Knox, underscoring the embattled party’s challenge in retaking its once safe harbourside strongholds.

Wentworth, the seat formerly held by ex-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull until 2018, fell to Spender at the 2022 election off the back of voter dissatisfaction with the major parties and intense dislike of Scott Morrison.

The seat, which takes in some of Sydney’s most exclusive and expensive suburbs, was considered an unlikely gain for the Liberal Party, which was more focused on winning back Mackellar on Sydney’s North Shore from the teals.

Independent candidate for Wentworth Allegra Spender votes at Clovelly Surf Life Saving Club.Credit: Kate Geraghty

At the 2022 poll, Spender took the seat with 54.2 per cent of the vote on a two-candidate-preferred basis compared to Liberal Dave Sharma’s 45.8 per cent. Sharma has since joined the Senate.

Spender has been pushing the major parties to adopt sweeping tax reforms and advocating for further action on climate change.

Werriwa

Labor MP Anne Stanley has held on to her seat of Werriwa in the face of a well-resourced and mobilised Liberal campaign.

Celebrating in the Mercure Hotel, part of the Liverpool Catholic Club, Stanley’s supporters were in a celebratory mood on election night as early results showed she had enjoyed a small, two-party-preferred swing towards her.

The results were sufficient for NSW Labor secretary Dominic Offner to call the result for Stanley, phoning her around 8pm to congratulate her on the result.

In Sydney’s southwest, Liberal hopefuls begun to fill Sahrati, a restaurant and shisha bar in Liverpool, around 7pm, eager to see candidate Sam Kayal knock off Stanley.

Labor’s Anne Stanley, with her son, holds the seat of Werriwa.Credit: SMH

After furiously campaigning until dusk fell, Kayal arrived at the venue to loud cheers. Liverpool mayor Ned Mannoun was one notable Liberal figure in attendance, and played host for early arrivers.