Australia’s political landscape: Spring 2024

The contest for the next election is getting tighter. Resurgent support for the Coalition is resulting in significant predicted seat gains for the right-of-centre parties in the House of Representatives, largely at the expense of Labor.

• The Liberal-National parties are now well placed to win at least nine seats from Labor, particularly around Sydney and Melbourne: Gilmore, Paterson, Bennelong, Aston, Robertson, and Macarthur; along with Lyons, Lingiari and Bullwinkel.

• In contrast, Labor only looks competitive in two Coalition-held seats: Sturt and Casey.

• While the Coalition is looking to make significant gains in the outer suburbs and regional areas, their vote has increased by less in the inner and middle suburbs, with fewer expected gains in these areas.

• This electoral geography makes it difficult for the Coalition to win a majority in the House of Representatives, but makes it very competitive for minority government.

• It is estimated the Coalition would win between 64 and 78 seats in the House of Representatives if an election were held now, compared with a range of 59 to 71 seats for Labor; with an 82 per cent probability the Coalition parties will be the largest bloc in parliament

• The crossbench looks set to remain similar in size, or to shrink slightly, with between three and five Greens MPs elected and seven and 13 Independent or minor party candidates.

A minority government is the most likely outcome: a greater than 98 per cent probability neither party will have a House of Representatives majority, and slightly less than a two per cent chance of a Coalition majority. The probability of a Labor majority is now approaching zero.

About this research

• These results are estimates from a model-based approach called Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification (MRP), fit to data from a survey of 4,909 Australian voters conducted between 29 October and 20 November, 2024. Electorate-level results have average 95 per cent confidence intervals of 7.3 per cent for the Coalition vote share, 6.4 per cent for Labor, 6.1 per cent for the Greens and 8.1 per cent for all other parties and candidates.

• The MRP works by sharing information across electorates, with voters assumed to behave in a related way to other voters with shared characteristics in similar divisions. While we expect the model to be broadly accurate, these estimates may miss idiosyncratic electorates that behave substantially differently from similar divisions.

• Estimates are based on the finalised electoral boundaries for NSW, VIC and WA. Previous waves of the MRP have been updated based on these new boundaries.

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