Australian politics today is very different to what it was even ten years ago, but the shift in the partisan make-up of the country has been a story decades in the making. For today’s post I’m going to recount and update statistics about how Australia has shifted from a strong two-party system into the fragmented multi-party system we have today.
The story of the declining major party vote begins a long time ago, even though for much of this history the House of Representatives remained almost exclusively a contest between Labor and the Coalition parties (Liberal and Country/Nationals).
From the foundation of the Liberal Party in the 1940s until the mid 1950s, almost 100% of the vote was cast for these three parties. The splitting off of the Democratic Labor Party from Labor in 1954-55 began the process of decline, with the primary vote for the majors around 90% until the early 1980s.
The next big development was the rise of the Democrats in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as other parties like the Nuclear Disarmament Party in 1984.
The next big dip was in 1990, when there was a big vote for the Democrats and other minor parties, with green candidates having an impact for the first time.
The major party vote recovered somewhat, then reached a new low of just under 80% in 1998. This was the first election for One Nation.
The major party vote then recovered somewhat to a new peak in 2007. This was the point where the Democrats were finally wiped out, and the Greens had taken some of that vote but not quite reached the same heights. Since 2007, the decline has been steady and fast, from 85% in 2007 to 68% in 2022. The drop was particularly large between 2019 and 2022.
It is worth also looking at the red and blue lines. The share of the vote needed to win an election has been getting smaller and smaller, since both parties now have quite low primary votes and rely on a lot more preferences to win seats.
There was a silly argument before the last election where some commentators would say a majority Labor government wasn’t possible on a given primary vote because they had never done it before. But past elections had taken place in a context where far fewer pro-Labor preferences were available. Labor polled slightly worse on the primary vote in 2022 than they did in 2013, but one produced a landslide defeat while the other produced a narrow majority. What changes was the make-up of the remainder of the electorate. Labor’s defeat in 1975 saw them poll about 42% of the primary vote. At any time in my adult life such a primary vote would’ve given Labor a clear majority, and in more recent years would’ve likely been enough for a landslide.
The make-up of the minor party vote over time has shifted, but one big change in 2022 was the rise in the vote for independents.
This chart shows the primary vote share for independents since 1984, and the darker line is the primary vote for those who actually won their seat.
The primary vote peaked at just over 3% in 1993, but in 2022 reached 5.3%. Most independents have traditionally polled very little votes, and those who do well and win their seat barely register in the national figures. Even now, the ten independents elected in 2022 make up just over 2% of the national primary vote.
The House of Representatives electoral system means that votes for minor parties and independents only have an impact on the result when they are heavily concentrated in one seat. When they are spread around thinly, the race remains between Labor and the Coalition, with those minor party voters making their “real choice” when they decide how to rank the major parties.
Until relatively recently, there were very few seats where the minor parties or independents broke through. The AEC has a category they call “non-classic seats” where the 2CP is not between Labor and Coalition. Historically this includes cases where the two Coalition parties faced off against each other, but more recently it has usually been when a non-major candidate made it to the top two.
The number of non-classic seats began to take off in 2010, peaking at 17 in 2016 and again surging to 27 seats in 2022.
The trend looks even more dramatic when you look at the number of crossbenchers actually elected over time.
From 1949 until 1987, only one independent was elected to the House of Representatives, once.
Since 1990, there has always been at least one. There was a spike to five in 1996, and then it was steady at 5-6 from 2010 to 2019. But 2022 is off the charts at 16.
It’s hard to say how many non-classic seats we would expect in 2025. The recent MRPs have predicted either 22 or 26 non-classic seats, but surprises could come.
There are currently 15 crossbenchers running for re-election, with the abolition of North Sydney. There are also another 3 ex-Coalition members running as independents. It is likely that a majority of these members will be re-elected, but plenty of them are running in competitive seats. There are also other races that could potentially flip as crossbench seats too. It is entirely possible we could break records again in 2025.
But what about the overall minor party and independent vote? What do the polls say?
There is a lot of difficulty in using national polls to predict the vote for particular small parties, since pollsters don’t usually have the ability to list every possible minor party. Before nominations close, there can also be issues with asking about “independent” in seats with no prominent independent running, and other parties may not run everywhere.
So I’m just looking at the total “non-major party” vote in each poll as a share of the non-undecided vote. I have looked at the latest poll, the final 2022 poll, and the equivalent poll at this point in the 2022 campaign for three pollsters who were regularly conducting polls in both 2022 and 2025.
All three pollsters showed an increase in the minor vote between mid-April and the final polls in mid May. This may reflect differences in methodology between the polls before and after nominations close and it becomes possible to definitively include everyone in that seat.
Resolve slightly overstated the total minor vote in 2022, while Newspoll slightly understated it. Essential significantly understated the minor vote, thanks to both major parties having a higher vote than the actual result.
Comparing 2022 to 2025, Newspoll and Essential both have the minor vote higher than in 2022, while Resolve has it at the same level as the final 2022 poll, but slightly up on the polls at this point last cycle.
The most recent Newspoll had primary vote figures remarkably similar to the actual result in 2022, but that is slightly higher than the figures in the final Newspoll before that election.
Overall I think this is pointing to a slightly higher minor vote, but I don’t think it will keep growing at the speed we saw in 2022. At the local level, there may be more or less crossbench members elected – it won’t have that much to do with the cumulative national vote, but will be more about each individual race.