The Monday Experts have had a field day in the aftermath of the 2025 Australian federal election. With much furrowing of brows and sage nodding, these would-be entrail readers have blamed everything from Donald Trump’s supposedly malign influence to the Liberals’ failure to pander to silly middle-class women’s boutique fancies.
In fact, the reality is both more mundane and more epochal. Firstly, as Good Oil’s Stephen Berry writes, it’s the plain, boring, stuff of the electoral cycle. John Howard won in a landslide in 2004 but was wiped out (losing his own seat) in 2007. That landslide win for Labor came within two cross-benchers of becoming just the second one-term government in nearly a century.
Secondly, the coalition’s campaign set a new benchmark in clueless incompetence.
Finally, and more importantly for Labor as much as the coalition, the election was the result of an epochal shift in voting patterns: the collapse of the two-party system. People didn’t vote for Labor in droves (less than one-third voted Labor), but they didn’t vote for the coalition in droves, either. Indeed, the difference in both parties’ primary votes was miniscule: just 2.6 per cent. In 2004, the coalition lead Labor by over nine per cent. In 2007, the Labor lead was just over five per cent.
At the May 3 election, primary vote support for the two major parties fell to just 63 per cent. At the 2007 election, held the year before the global financial crisis, more than 83 per cent of voters backed either Labor or the coalition.
Smaller primary vote differences are translating to disproportionately huge two-party-preferred victories. Because more voters are turning to minor parties.
Why, though, if voters are turning to minor parties, aren’t minor parties becoming majors? Why aren’t we seeing the rise of a Reform, or AfD, style party? Why did the previously largest minor party, the Greens, lose three of their four lower house seats?
Because, while one-fifth of voters have shrugged off the two-party straitjacket, their votes are too diffused for any one minor party to rise up as a third-party challenger. This is especially true on the conservative side of the spectrum: while One Nation picked up votes (nearly twice as much as coalition partner the Nationals), similar swings went to Family First and Trumpet of Patriots. Smaller votes went to Katter’s Australia Party, Australian Christians, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, and so on. In fact, the melange of conservative minor parties totalled at least 12 per cent of the vote.
Which naturally leads to the question of why voters are walking away from the major parties?
Poor wage growth and higher energy costs have contributed to the shift away from Australia’s major political parties since the global financial crisis, new research reveals, with warnings that support for populist right-wing candidates will grow unless the financial needs of poorer people are addressed.
Note the left-elite frettings about ‘populist’ candidates. Once again, we are reminded that ‘populist’ means nothing more than popular ideas which are disapproved by the elite.
This parlays straight into one of the biggest reasons the coalition lost: bewilderingly, they failed almost completely to hammer Labor on its biggest weaknesses.
Three new academic studies to be released on Thursday suggest the coalition under Peter Dutton failed to capitalise on discontent around the state of the economy and power prices that otherwise would have hurt the electoral chances of Labor and Anthony Albanese.
Compiled by researchers out of the Melbourne Institute, one study found “energy-poor households” were 1.4 times more likely to vote for right-wing populist candidates or independents. Energy poverty was also likely to reduce support for Labor by 3.7 percentage points.
There we go again: ‘right-wing populist’. Oddly, I’ve never read the Greens referred to as ‘left-wing populists’.
Economist Kushneel Prakash, one of the authors of the report on energy poverty, said there was a link between energy poverty – the inability to pay for basic services such as heating and cooling – and voting patterns.
He said up to 14 per cent of the population were facing energy poverty, with this group having an 8 percentage point lower chance of supporting the major parties.
Labor was at particular risk as people often identified it with renewable energy sources, which were considered more expensive than traditional forms of energy.
“Considered more expensive”? No, they are more expensive.
A separate study on the link between economic dissatisfaction and voting patterns since the financial crisis also suggests people are increasingly fed up with the major parties.
Based on monthly consumer sentiment surveys, it found voters with negative economic expectations were more likely to back minor parties or independents, with this link growing since the mid-2010s. The Westpac-Melbourne Institute monthly measure of consumer confidence released this week showed a lift in May, but pessimists continue to outnumber optimists.
Dissatisfied younger voters had moved to the Greens while older cohorts were shifting their allegiances to other minor parties and independents.
Except that the Greens’ vote fell, while right-leaning minors’ votes increased.
Reading the Age’s pearl-clutching Jeremiad, one thing is clear: the peasants are revolting and the elites are terrified that they’ll find a charismatic leader to unite behind and storm the Canberra Bastille.
