Which way will the pendulum swing in the election battle?

Electoral politics always boils down to a simple numbers game. Here are the key seats needed for either side to claim victory.

WA Premier Mark McGowan (left) and Prime Minister Scott Morrison are seen arriving for a press conference in Perth, Thursday, March 17, 2022. (AAP Image/Richard Wainwright)

The closer we get to the election the more we’ll see the major party leaders focusing their attention on key marginal seats: those they hope to win off the other side and those they need to retain to form government.

Electoral politics always boils down to a simple numbers game. For the most part it will be Scott Morrison on the defensive trying to hang on to seats Labor is targeting. However, because his majority is wafer thin, for the Coalition to have any hope of holding on to government it needs to go after some marginal Labor seats.

At the top of that list is the seat of Gilmore on the south coast of NSW. Former state minister Andrew Constance is attempting to move into federal politics, despite making scathing comments about the Prime Minister’s response to the bushfires two years ago.

The magic number for Labor to govern in its own right is 77 seats. If it gets to 75 it also wins because it is very hard to imagine Adam Bandt or Andrew Wilkie supporting a Coalition government.

Anthony Albanese might be able to lead a minority government with even fewer seats, but that would require the support of independents occupying traditional conservative seats, which is no certainty.

Labor starts the campaign with 69 seats, assuming you give it the newly created Victorian seat of Hawke, projected to be a safe Labor win. That leaves Labor needing to net eight seats on polling day to form majority government, six to govern with the support of the Greens and Wilkie. Remember these figures.

It is important to note that if the current polling is replicated on election day a seat-by-seat analysis becomes all but meaningless.

The most recent Newspoll had the opposition ahead 55-45 per cent on the two-party vote. That would mean a move is afoot and seats not currently on Labor’s radar would fall its way. It also could mean the primary votes of Liberals in safer seats fall low enough to put them at risk from independent challenges.

Late in the campaign such a blowout result would see the Opposition Leader visiting seats much further up the electoral pendulum. Morrison would stop visiting ultra-marginal seats, instead campaigning in safer electorates at risk as the Coalition attempted to save the furniture for next time.

However, if the polls tighten, as they usually (but not always) do, the pathway to victory for the opposition becomes narrower. Which is why hard heads within Labor aren’t getting ahead of themselves. They know the risks a campaign presents, alongside the mother of all scare campaigns.

Working our way around the country, there are nine seats Labor regards as the lowest hanging fruit: Flynn, Brisbane and Longman in Queensland; Reid in NSW; Chisholm in Victoria; Bass in Tasmania; Boothby in South Australia; and Swan and Pearce in Western Australia.

As long as Labor holds Gilmore it can afford to fall short in one of these contests and still form majority government; for example, win just two of the three seats it’s targeting in Queensland but pick up all the others around the country.

Four of the nine seats mentioned are occupied by retiring government MPs. Swan at 3.2 per cent is the most marginal WA seat and coupled with the retirement of Steve Irons looks lost for the Liberals.

Boothby and Flynn become much harder to retain because of retiring MPs. Flynn, however, is held with an 8.7 per cent margin – a large amount of electoral fat that could help save it for the government. But Labor has preselected an excellent candidate. Boothby is very marginal at 1.4 per cent, but it is a traditional Liberal seat, which means support is not as soft as it can be in swing seats. Nicolle Flint faced a vicious (and sexist) campaign last time, a major reason she isn’t putting herself through another one.

Pearce at 5.2 per cent will be a tough hold for the Liberals because of the controversies surrounding outgoing member and former attorney-general Christian Porter. But his retirement probably gives the new Liberal candidate a better chance of retaining the seat for the government than if Porter had sought re-election.

The remaining two Queensland seats of Longman and Brisbane are held with margins of 3.3 per cent and 4.9 per cent respectively. Longman’s margin makes it appear the more vulnerable of the two; however, its demographics suits Morrison’s persona much more than Brisbane’s and the floods may make holding Brisbane that much tougher for the Prime Minister.

The Tasmanian seat of Bass (0.4 per cent) and the Victorian seat of Chisholm (0.5 per cent) are the two most marginal Coalition seats anywhere in the country.

It was a miracle the Liberals held Chisholm last time; if they do so again the Coalition will secure a fourth term. It is a must win for Labor. Bass is a traditional swing seat and the closeness of the margin suggests it’s a likely Liberal loss even if Morrison retains the prime ministership.

But Bridget Archer having defied the Prime Minister in support of a federal corruption watchdog and over religious discrimination laws could hang on with a strong personal following. How ironic would it be if her willingness to thumb her nose at Morrison got him re-elected?

Reid in NSW is a traditional Labor seat first won by the Liberals back in 2013 when Craig Laundy entered parliament. It was a surprise hold by Fiona Martin in 2019 when Laundy retired. Labor expects to pick it up this time and I can’t find too many Liberals who are hopeful of retaining it.

Conservatives are hopeful Morrison can do what John Howard did in 1998 and win the election with less than 50 per cent of the popular vote, holding on in the seats that matter. Howard won the 1998 election with just 48.9 per cent of the two-party vote, sandbagging enough key marginal seats to retain a surprisingly healthy majority. But Morrison starts this campaign with far fewer seats than Howard going into the 1998 campaign, dramatically increasing the degree of difficulty for his re-election.

When you run through the seats it becomes easier to see why Labor is nervous it may fall short of victory if the move isn’t on. That said, on any calculation it’s hard to find enough seats for Morrison to again govern with a majority. For that to happen he’ll need to pick Albanese apart the way Howard did Mark Latham in 2004. But Albanese is certainly no Latham.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.