A deeply divided Australia has found common ground in a shared feeling of complete exhaustion brought on by the federal election, before its even been fucking called.
Part of me just wants it over. My inner pessimist worries that the LNP will get in (either majority or minority) and wreck a whole lot of things. My inner optimist says that enough Australians see through the LNP’s BS to at least give us a Labor minority government.
Personally, my hope is for a Labor minority gov with the Greens as a junior coalition member. It feels like Albo et al. have been pushing towards the right, fearful of their single-seat majority and haven’t effected much real change in policy. Whereas with a push from the Greens they might actually do something tangible to solve this fucking housing crisis.
Greens get a steady 15-20% percent of voters just about everywhere around the nation (except Melbourne where it’s higher). Not enough to win a seat, but enough that their preferences are extremely valuable. But Greens have nobody else to give those preferences to - at the end of the day the Liberal party is less compatible to Green policies than Labor is.
It would actually be a strong signal one election for those preferences to go somewhere else. Labor won’t get elected without those preferences - but they seem to take them for granted. One Nation do it from time to time and they only get 2-5% of the vote. Some elections, they give their preferences to the non-sitting member (Liberal candidate if sitting member was Labor/Labor if the sitting member was Liberal). One election, it was enough to tip the balance.
15-20% of the vote is plenty enough to get representation in the senate, of course.
Greens need a re-brand. They are seen by older voters as one-trick ponies. Caring solely about the environment and not having any policies on anything else. That’s not true of course, but their marketing sucks. If they could actually articulate their positions to voters somehow, I think far more voters would realise they align with Green policies.
Greens get a steady 15-20% percent of voters just about everywhere around the nation
I had a look at the 2022 election (yes, 3 year outdated) and in every state and territory except ACT, they had 10-14% in House of Reps and 10-14% in Senate except WA and Tasmania.
This doesn’t contradict what you said, I believe there is a notable trend towards the Greens. Although Wikipedia’s summary of 2025 election polling suggests around 13-14% (Lib-Nat have taken a dive after Trump’s inauguration, with the support split almost equally between Labor, Greens and Other parties)
But Greens have nobody else to give those preferences to
Do you mean Greens voters? Or the Greens writing their how-to-vote cards? Voters gives their preference, not a party. [edit: I didn’t know that preference swapping was only reformed in 2016]
I don’t know about Tasmania, but 2022 in WA was an anomaly. That was the year where WA voted in only two Liberal candidates and three National. The voters were very angry at the LNP because they kept telling the nation that our closed borders were not doing anything to protect us from the pandemic and criticising us. Meanwhile, WA rode out 2020-2022 mostly unaffected by Covid.
Politics of that era aside, you can’t rely on 2022 data for WA. We have already seen a bit of a correction. The LNP likely have 15 seats, now (they’re still counting votes and some of the seats are on a knife-edge).
Good point, thanks for the context. The 2025 state election is probably an solid read on how they might vote federally.
I’m not really sure about that.
Labor had another decisive state government victory last month. However, I don’t think federal Labor will enjoy the support it received from Western Australian’s last time round.
WA is ultimately a conservative electorate. We will never be as progressive as Victoria and NSW.
You’re correct that WA votes last federal election were a response to the covid measures. It really did feel as though the rest of Australia was kind of making fun of us, particularly the federal LNP government we had at that time.
This time round is back to business as usual. Not as decisive as covid, but a strong driver will be the live export sheep thing.
We used to export a lot of live sheep. Labor banned the practice. A lot of farmers lost a whole lot of money as sheep were suddenly worthless and things haven’t really improved in that regard. Here in Regional WA there’s a whole lot of “keep the sheep” signs outside people’s houses and on bumper stickers et cetera.
I don’t really see it as a preference issue. Greens are likely to lose their Queensland seats at the coming election, but they have a good chance of winning Melbourne Ports, Cooper and Wills in Victoria. Four seats is a lot of bargaining power if both parties fall short of a majority.
My hope is actually that the Liberals, in those three seats, preference Greens over Labor to try and pull some seats away from them. Their preferences alone would handily get Greens over the line.
I don’t really see it as a preference issue.
Just about every election (well, not at the moment in WA ha!) comes down to preferences.
Their preferences alone would handily get Greens over the line.
See? You actually agree that preferences make a big difference. The issue is that the Liberal party would prefer to see a Labor candidate in a seat over a Green party member. So, if they saw a possibility that the Greens might take a seat, they wouldn’t give Green their preferences.
The biggest problem I see for the Greens is that Labor has no incentive to actually court Green preferences. They assume Greens will always preference them over Liberal, because they always have. They can take those preferences for granted.
Y’all know the voter sets the preferences on their ballet, not the party right?
Of course I do. 😀
But the parties give out those “how to vote” cards at every ballot point for a reason: most voters use them. Which means that the party does set the preferences.
You still changed the topics from seats won and forming a minority government, to preferences and whether Greens vote total will help Labor win the election. It’s not a gotcha that I mentioned preferences when you are the one that brought it up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The biggest problem I see for the Greens is that Labor has no incentive to actually court Green preferences. They assume Greens will always preference them over Liberal, because they always have. They can take those preferences for granted.
This is completely irrelevant in seats where the two party preferred comes down to Greens vs Labor. Which is what I was talking about.
That’s only a scenario that plays out in a few Melbourne seats. It isn’t a thing for most of the nation. So, I didn’t consider that. Sorry.
That’s what’s so funny - the election campaign hasn’t even started. 😁
I think Albo probably wanted to call it for early April, immediately after the successful Western Australian result. But then Cyclone Alfred hit and it would have been bad politically to call it then. Now he has to deliver a budget before the election, which completely changes the calculus.
