The end of the safe seat?
Why fewer seats are truly safe as independents and minor parties reach the final count
By Ben Raue, Electoral analyst
Australian politics has long been read through safe and marginal seats: a few close contests decide government while the rest loyally return the same party. Ben Raue tests that idea as the major parties lose ground. Winning candidates now rely far more on preferences, and in 2025 a quarter of all seats had an independent or minor party in the top two.
The number of marginal seats hasn’t grown: 46 seats were won by margins under 6% in 2025, the fewest since 2004. What has changed is where the risk sits. Non-classic contests are emerging mostly in seats that used to be safe, and independents take seats from far bigger margins than fall in Labor–Coalition races, so a large margin is no longer a guarantee.
The full report · 11 pages, with every chart.
Get the full reportWhat we found
1. There are no more marginal seats than there used to be
Counting seats with a final margin under 6% at each federal election, the number has been roughly steady since the 1990s and possibly drifting down. There were 46 in 2025, the fewest since 2004 and the second-fewest since the House was expanded in 1984; the elections with the most marginals were 1993, 1998 and 2013. About a third of 2025’s marginals weren’t Labor–Coalition contests, offset by a fall in classic marginals.
2. Non-classic contests are appearing in yesterday’s safe seats
Comparing today’s electorates with how they voted in 2007, only one seat that is now a non-classic contest gave Labor a two-party-preferred vote between 50% and 60% that year, though a third of the country did. The safe seats of the past have been the likeliest to embrace alternatives, while the most competitive marginals have mostly stayed Labor–Coalition contests.
3. Independents take seats from margins that look safe in a classic contest
Across 248 seats that changed hands between 1984 and 2025, classic Labor–Coalition seats that fell had slender margins: the average at each election never rose above 5%. For non-classic seats, mostly won by independents, the average was usually far higher, often over 10%. Independent challenges often arise where there was no prominent independent campaign before, reshuffling the primary vote enough to unseat a member on a substantial margin.
4. One Nation is turning Labor’s safe seats into marginals
At the 2026 South Australian election, the northern Adelaide seats of Elizabeth, Taylor and Light all ended up as marginal Labor seats, on margins of 1.6% to 4.5%. In 2022 they had been Labor’s third, fourth and ninth safest seats; now none is in its top thirty. Raue reads this as a sign that One Nation hasn’t simply inherited the old Liberal vote but draws a different mix of voters.
What’s in the report
- Introduction p. 3
- Defining “marginal” and “safe” p. 4
- Are there more marginals than there used to be? p. 6
- How the marginals have changed p. 7
- The independent and minor party factor p. 9
How we counted
A seat’s margin is how far the winner’s vote after preferences is above 50%, and seats are classed as marginal (under 6%), fairly safe (6–12%) or safe (over 12%), following categories Malcolm Mackerras set before the 1972 election. The brief counts marginal seats at each federal election (with a 10% cutoff as a check), counts non-classic seats, where the final count wasn’t Labor against the Coalition, from 1990 to 2025, ranks every seat in 2007 and 2025, and averages the margins of 248 seats that changed hands between 1984 and 2025.
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