Federal election turnout down as informal vote rises

The voter turnout in the 2025 federal election at 90.67 per cent is the second lowest in 100 years with 1.6 million eligible voters opting not to vote.

Voting in the Melbourne teal seat of Kooyong on May 3. A low turnout and high informal vote nationally coincided with historically low primary votes for Labor and the Coalition. Picture: David Crosling

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

The voter turnout in the 2025 federal election at 90.67 per cent is the second lowest in 100 years with 1.6 million eligible voters opting not to vote in the May 3 federal election.

Of the 18 million eligible people enrolled to vote in a federal election only 16.4 million voted and almost one million of those votes were ruled as informal.

The only federal election with a lower voter turnout since the introduction of compulsory voting in 1925 was the Covid-affected 2022 election in which only 89.8 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot.

The general decline in the number of eligible Australians casting a vote followed the 2013 election – in which Tony Abbott defeated Kevin Rudd – having a 93.23 per cent turnout.

The rate of informal votes of 5.6 per cent for the 2025 election is also the highest informal vote in the past 10 years.

The low turnout and high informal vote coincided with historically low primary votes for Labor and the Coalition.

Compulsory voting was introduced in 1925 after the voter turnout in federal elections had dropped to just 78.3 per cent. After compulsory voting was enacted turnout jumped to 91.38 in 1925 and 96.3 per cent in 1943.

Although Australia, one of 13 democracies with compulsory voting, has a relatively high rate of voting, there has been a general decline in federal voting and a rise in informal voting since the 1990s.

As the Australian Electoral Commission is finalising vote counting for the 2025 election it is clear the trend to lower turnouts and higher informal voting is continuing.

The AEC has reported that while the past two elections have had historically low votes Australia still has a high level of voting on an international scale, particularly when all eligible voters, not just those enrolled to vote, are considered.

The AEC has also reported an increase in people enrolling to vote, especially among those aged 18 to 25 years.

But it is clear that while more people are enrolling to vote fewer are actually casting a ballot and more are voting incorrectly.

Voting was down in South Australia and Tasmania, and informal votes were disproportionately high in NSW and the Northern Territory.

NSW, which had 4.7 million votes cast, had the highest level of informal voting at 8 per cent – 419,000 votes – compared with Victoria’s 4.24 per cent – 179,000 – informal votes out of four million cast.

The AEC reported a hotspot of informal voting in the western suburbs of Sydney and attributed the higher levels of informal voting in western Sydney to high migrant populations where there was “low English language proficiency”.

In the two electorates which had 13 candidates – Riverina in southern NSW and Calwell in Melbourne’s northern suburbs – the informal vote rates were 11 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.

In the vast NT seat of Lingiari – held by Labor’s Marion Scrymgour – there was a voter turnout of only 62 per cent, down from 66.8 per cent at the 2022 election, with about 47,800 people voting.

But an informal vote in Lingiari of 4.5 per cent – about 2000 votes – meant the formal vote was set to be about 45,000.

The AEC said the low turnout in Lingiari was despite a large campaign to boost voter enrolment and could have been affected by the late wet season rains, the electoral boundary shift to the neighbouring Darwin-based seat of Solomon, political motivation and “societal factors”.

Low voter turnouts were more often in outer regional seats, such as Durack in Western Australia and Leichhardt and Kennedy in Queensland.

The AEC launched an inquiry on Friday into reports of a 50 per cent informal vote at a small booth in the NSW seat of Cowper where local residents said they believed they had been misled about filling in the ballot.

It is compulsory to enrol to vote for people over 18 who have been living in a place for more than a month and there can be a fine for failing to vote.