2025 federal election: the results
How Labor won its biggest majority since the war on a primary vote under 35%
By Ben Raue, Electoral analyst
Labor was re-elected in May 2025 with its biggest majority since the Second World War, while the Coalition was reduced to its smallest seat count since 1943 and Peter Dutton lost his seat. Ben Raue looked at the results as the count stood on 14 May: the scale of the win, where seats changed hands, and what the new Senate would look like.
The landslide rested on a narrow base. Labor’s primary vote of 34.7% was by far its lowest at a winning election, the Coalition’s 32.1% was its lowest since the Liberal Party was founded, and minor parties and independents out-polled a major party for the first time. In the Senate, the Greens looked set to hold the sole balance of power.
The defeat also changed the Coalition’s shape. With its 2025 losses concentrated in the outer suburbs, it was left holding mostly rural and regional seats, with a party room further to the right and more removed from the marginal seats it would need to win back.
The full report · 12 pages, with every chart.
Get the full reportWhat we found
1. Labor was on track for its biggest share of seats since the Second World War
With 93 seats won and one more likely, Labor was on 94, a gain of 17, while the Coalition was on 44, down 14. That share of the House would beat Tony Abbott’s 2013 win and match the Howard government’s 1996 seat count, though not the Coalition’s victories of 1966, 1975 or 1977. Labor’s two-party-preferred vote, 54.8% at the time of writing and expected to settle closer to 54%, was its highest since the war.
2. Minor parties and independents out-polled a major party for the first time
The Greens, One Nation, independents and other parties together took more of the vote than the Coalition’s 32.1%, yet the crossbench shrank from sixteen seats to twelve. Labor’s 34.7% was by far its lowest primary vote at a winning election, and the Coalition’s was lower than any Labor primary vote since the Second World War.
3. The Coalition’s losses moved to the outer suburbs and fell on the Liberals
Where 2022 cost the Coalition inner-city seats, its further losses in 2025 were concentrated in outer metropolitan electorates, leaving it mostly holding rural and regional seats. Labor picked up seven seats in Queensland and won both northern Tasmanian seats on the biggest swing in the country, and Peter Dutton lost Dickson to Labor’s Ali France. Between 2013 and 2025 the Liberals’ seats across both houses fell from 102 to 54, while the Nationals’ went from 21 to 20.
4. The Greens were set to hold the sole balance of power in the Senate
With the centre-left vote up and the minor right-wing vote split, the Coalition had no chance of a third Senate seat in any state, and One Nation was placed to take the third right-wing seat in most. Labor led in three of the four close races it was contesting, and winning any one would give a clear Labor–Greens majority. Raue expected a Coalition government elected in 2028 to face a hostile Senate in its first term.
What’s in the report
- Seat and primary vote tables for every party, with swings
- Charts of seat share, two-party-preferred and major party votes since 1949
- Every seat that changed hands and every retiring MP, with their successors
- The Senate race state by state, and the likely shape of the Senate to 2028
How we counted
Results are as counted in the days after the election. The seat totals include seats where a party was likely to win, and the seat-share chart uses the count at 11am on Tuesday 13 May, assuming 94 Labor, 44 Coalition and 12 crossbench seats. The national two-party-preferred figure of 54.8% left out the 30 electorates where the count was not between Labor and the Coalition; including them was expected to bring it closer to 54%. Senate seat splits count Labor, the Greens and the Democrats as left and the Coalition, One Nation and other right-wing parties as right, with 2025 based on who was leading.
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