2025-07-03
An autopsy of the May 2025 federal election, with an explanation of how a shift to the “sensible centre” hurt the Greens
By Mark Brogan, Volunteer with The Greens (WA). Formerly ECU. Advocates on environment and heritage.
Time Machine: FED2022
In FED2022, the democracy sausage had been upended when Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party defeated Scott Morrison’s LNP with the worst First Preference (FP) vote count since the 1930s (32.6%). The 2022 election was also a watershed election for establishing Teal Independents as a force in Australian politics. Greens also did well in FED2022, quadrupling seats held in the House of Representatives (HoR) from one to four ‒ three in QLD and leader Adam Bandt’s seat in Melbourne. The Greens had arrived as a force in the house where governments are made and unmade.
If FED2022 had delivered a modest win for Labor, FED2025 was more resounding, delivering a lot more blood on the wattle. Some of it was leadership blood. In an outcome echoing the Canadian election the week before, the Liberal Party and Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, lost the election and his own seat of Dickson. Ouch. Damage to the Liberal Party itself was no less spectacular with the Libs having their worst electoral day out since 1943, being reduced in the HoR from 56 to 43 seats.[1] Importantly the losses were concentrated in inner and outer suburban seats, representing the moderate and more progressive elements of its Parliamentary representation. The result was nothing short of decapitation, depriving the Libs of the moderates it would need to lead itself out of the electoral wilderness. The Greens were not spared, losing their leader Adam Bandt in a tight contest in the seat of Melbourne. Greens also lost much of their foothold in QLD, losing the seats of Brisbane and Griffith to Labor and retaining only Ryan.
With the election in the rear view mirror, analysts and commentators have settled on a narrative. Under Dutton, the Libs ran a flawed campaign, weighed down by leadership shortcomings and policy mistakes on a range of issues. Standouts included the sacking of public servants, curtailment of the right to work from home and a place for nuclear power in Australia’s energy mix. Some analysts have argued that the Libs were complacent in the wake of the Voice Referendum defeat in 2023, wrongly seeing it as a voter verdict on Albanese’s first term. In the immediate aftermath, the election was also framed as involving a shift to the ‘sensible centre’, ground claimed by Labor. If the shift was real, it would explain losses by both the right leaning Liberals and the left leaning Greens. What happened and why?
Fear, loathing and the ‘sensible’ centre
The FED2025 election was a story in two parts. Part one was a phoney war that began in 2024 long before the election was formally declared. The battleground was clearly marked out during this period. The election would mainly be about the cost of living, housing crisis, energy transition and immigration, with occasional forays into health and crime. And so the two majors began counter punching. This was a period in which the Liberals were competitive, with a strong vibe that if Labor were to be re-elected, it would lead a minority government relying upon the Greens to pass legislation. And in the pantomime that is Australian politics, who would want that? What had been achieved by the minority Gillard Government a decade before with the support of the Greens and Independents had faded from memory. In its place the right leaning mainstream media did its best to stigmatize the very notion of minority government. Minority government would be unstable and lead to nasty things.
Both majors strategized the prospect of minority government to white ant the Greens and Independent vote. To the extent that voters needed to be encouraged to move to the centre, talk of a minority Labor Government that depended on the ‘radical’ Greens for survival became common place. And the polls were accommodating. A mid-February 2025 YouGov poll estimated at 78% the likelihood that neither party would reach the magic figure of 76 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives (HoR). And a month later the same poll found that that there was a 61% chance of neither party having an overall majority.[2]
But speculation about minority government was not the only thing going on. Early in the phoney war, Liberal rhetoric and policy direction began to be influenced by Trump and the belief that tactics used to defeat the 2023 Voice Referendum could be leveraged as part of the Liberal c
ampaign. Afterall, the Voice Referendum result pointed towards easy pickings from the cultural wars and all things un-Australian and ‘woke’. And in the spirit of Trump and DOGE, a new Liberal Government would address Government efficiency[3], sack public servants and put an end to working from home rights. Anti-voice campaigner, Jacinta Price, was so convinced that MAGA branding would be an asset in the campaign, she declared that a Liberal Nationals Government would work to ‘Make Australia Great Again’.[4]
But if a whiff of Trump had not been a problem before the campaign officially began on March 28, it quickly became one after the election had been declared. The ground had begun to shift with Trump’s berating of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky at the Oval Office in late February, but shifted decisively on April 2, when Trump declared Liberation Day imposing a baseline 10% universal import tariff on imported goods and higher rates on fifty-seven trading parties.[5] The US and Australian stock markets tanked and the prospect of the US pushing the world into economic recession loomed large. In short, Trump had initiated a world economic crisis. Voters were understandably nervous. What had seemed to Liberal strategists like a stroll in the park for the Liberals in early 2025, had become a much tighter contest. The impact of Trump can be seen in aggregated trends in the opinion polls. These trends are shown in Figure 1[6]:
And so it was that assumptions made early in the campaign by Liberal strategists began to unravel. When Albanese announced on 28 March that the election would be held on May 3, Trump was already a factor in the election working against the Liberals.
During the phoney war in January 2025, opinion polls had been buoyant for the Liberals showing a 2PP vote between 51 and 53%.[7] In the wake of ‘Liberation Day’, this lead had evaporated with the Liberal 2PP preferred vote estimated by Roy Morgan as low 46.5%.[8] Dutton adjusted by avoiding overt endorsement of Trump policies, speaking out in support of Zelensky, and in favour of an independent defence posture. But there was no erasing Trump’s fingerprints from the Liberal campaign blue print. Fear and loathing of a Trumpian future had taken hold in the Australian electorate.
A Q+A/YouGov poll released on 25 April 2025, a week before election day, showed that seven out of ten people surveyed were concerned that Donald Trump would make them worse off financially.[9] A significant proportion of Australians (43 per cent) are also worried the stock market slides could turn into a medium to long-term economic depression. Coupled with policy reversals and missteps, by election day on May 3, the Dutton campaign’s channelling of Trump, MAGA and Project 2025, had left it in serious trouble.
Early on election night, it was clear that Australian voters had done what their Canadian counterparts had done a week before, re-elected an incumbent centrist government that six months earlier had been on the ropes. With the amplification of the preferential system it took only a 2.3% 2PP swing to Labor to deliver a thumping thirty-eight (38) seat majority in the HoR.
Were Greens collateral damage in the move to the centre?
In FED2025, the HoR Greens footholds in QLD and VIC, were largely lost, with Ryan only surviving the Labor surge. But it was no rout. The Greens primary vote showed only a modest -0.1% decline compared with FED2022. In the Senate, the party recorded a slightly higher swing, -0.94%, but lost no seats.[10] But proportionality, is not a hallmark of the Australian commentariat. Our political hard heads were in furious agreement that Greens had a shocker in FED2025. They were too far to the left, had been obstructionist to the Albanese Government and in any movement to the centre, were just as likely to be road kill as the Libs.
Rightly, the modest nature of the decline in Greens FP vote overall should have suggested more cautious assessment of the party’s traction with Australian voters in FED2025. A more sober assessment of Greens fortunes in FED2025 would acknowledge not only the impact of a shift to the centre, but also how the shift was amplified by money, a pile on by the major parties in Greens held seats, re-distribution and Liberal/One Nation preferencing.
Tropes and the Advance Australia campaign to take down the Greens
While the Greens vote largely held up nationally, targeted well-resourced anti-Greens campaigns in the handful of seats held by the Greens took its toll. The campaign to take down the Greens in key HoR seats was a pile on from Labor, the Liberals and third-party affiliated groups. The role and importance of third-party campaigns, which did not field candidates of their own, is a contested issue in election analysis. In political strategy, the role of un-branded fellow travellers is to add reach and credibility to the messaging of the mainstream parties. Of the third-party shock troops, Advance Front and Centre (aka Advance) has attracted most attention, because of its resourcing and high-profile targeted campaigns in Greens held seats.[11]
Founded in 2018 with a charter explicitly rooted in the culture wars, Advance packaged its messaging in tried and tested tropes. Advance would “fight for mainstream Australian values” and fight all things woke.[12] Its first significant political success came with the Voice Referendum where it played a lead role in the ‘No’ campaign, claiming some 42 million views of its TikTok videos. Advance’s success in the Voice Referendum provided it with an infrastructure and organisational springboard that would enable it to be a factor in FED2025. All it needed was money.
Alarmed by polls early in the campaign suggesting a hung Parliament in which Greens would hold the balance of power, the right-wing backers of Australia’s conservative parties responded. Investigative journalist, Jason Koutsoukis claims that Advance had a $15.6 million election war chest, making it the richest non-party group in the FED2025 election.[13] According to the Guardian, Advance[14] spent $1.7 million of this war chest on social media advertising in the campaign, of which $240,000 targeted the Greens priority seats of Brisbane, Macnamara, Griffith, Ryan and Wills. In the wake of the result, Advance claimed responsibility for the defeat of the Greens in lower house seats:
“We have destroyed the Greens. In every seat we targeted, the Greens have suffered terminal declines in their primary votes.[15]”
But as the shadows of Trump and MAGA loomed ever larger over the campaign, Advance’s war on woke and it’s extremism became a problem child for the Liberal campaign. Already under strain from growing voter disaffection with all things Trump, Libs did not need the Advance loud hailer and its dog whistling on all things woke. For a party that had embraced elements of Trumpism in its rhetoric and policy positions, Advance’s jackboot campaigning was high risk. In the rush to the sensible centre in a time of uncertainty, brand recognition of the Liberals as a centrist party, already weak, could suffer further. And if fear and loathing of Trump seriously took hold, the Advance campaign could backfire, working to shift Liberal votes to Labor. In seats with Teal candidates, it would also shift votes from Liberals candidates to Teal candidates. The effect of these FP votes lost to Labor, would be amplified by Liberals preferencing of Labor ahead of the Greens. And this is what happened.
In Brisbane, Greens candidate Stephen Bates suffered a -1.4% swing on First Preference (FP) votes and finished third on primaries. The FP contest was won by the Liberal/National candidate. However, the Liberal FP vote was down, -3.4% on the FED2022 result. Labor finished second with a swing from the Greens and Liberal/Nationals of +4.9%. Greens preferences went to Labor. On the 2CP vote the Labor candidate, Madonna Jarrett, won from the Liberal/National candidate 59% to 41%.[16] In Griffith, Greens candidate Max Chandler-Mather finished second on FP votes to the Labor candidate suffering a -2.9% swing. But it did not go to the Liberal Party which experienced a -4.2% swing. Labor won the FP count with a 5.6% swing and went on to win the 2CP vote on Liberal and One Nation preferences.[17]
Liberal and One Nation preferencing was also a factor in the defeat of Greens leader Adam Bandt. In Melbourne, Bandt finished first on primaries suffering a -5.3% swing. Labor was the main beneficiary with a +5.7 % swing. Labor finished second on primaries and went on to win the 2CP vote 53% to 47% on Liberal and One Nation Preferences.[18] In Melbourne, Bandt had also been disadvantaged by a re-distribution that shifted Green votes out of the electorate and brought in Liberal votes.[19]
In summary, the data show that in lost HoR seats, swings to the ‘sensible centre’ (Labor) on FP votes were amplified by Liberal and One Nation preferencing of Labor, leading to substantial 2CP Labor majorities. In QLD, the only Greens candidate to survive the swing to Labor was in Ryan. Unlike Griffith, Brisbane and Melbourne, Greens held on to Ryan with a swing (-1.2%) by finishing second and going on to win the seat on Labor preferences. Ryan was the only seat where Labor preferencing worked to the benefit of an incumbent Green.
Writing for Crikey, Cam Wilson argues that while Advance may have succeeded in taking down the Greens in Queensland, in national terms, its campaign backfired by amplifying the Labor majority.[20] Writing in the Guardian, Henry Belot and Sarah Basford Canales, draw similar conclusions. Referencing internal Liberal sources, they found that while Advance’s extreme messaging likely fired up its base, it alienated persuadable voters who switched to the sensible centre option of Labor.[21] In seats with Teal candidates, extreme messaging likely also benefited Teals candidates by driving persuadable voters from mainstream conservatism into the Teal camp.
Conclusions
In FED2025, review of polling trends before and during the campaign shows association with the events in the Trump Presidency that negatively impacted Australian voter sentiment. Flirtations with Trump and MAGA ideas before and early in the campaign left the Liberals exposed to voter fear and loathing over a dystopian, Trumpian future. However, association is not causality. Disaggregating the Trump effect from a poor Liberal campaign, wrong policy calls and backflips is no easy task on the available data. But the chaos of Donald Trump, particularly the economic chaos after "liberation day" on 7 April seems to have weighed on voters’ minds.
Labor was the main beneficiary of the decline in the Liberal vote and benefited further from the Liberal decision to preference them ahead of the Greens. Green losses in Queensland and Victoria, were mainly on the back of FP votes that moved from Liberal to Labor and Liberal and One Nation preferencing of Labor ahead of the Greens. This election was different from FED2022 where Greens seats won in QLD were won based on Labor preferences, with the Liberal National candidate finishing first on FP votes. The rule of thumb that when Labor does well, Greens take a bath, was consistent with FED2025.
Labor’s national FP vote was +2.0% better than FED2022, but at 34.6% of the FP vote, nothing to write home about. Labor had won another term with an absurdly low FP vote. Amplified and distorted by the preferential system, this modest result translated into a landslide win ‒ 94 seats out of 150 or 62.7%. Independents were also winners successfully defending most seats from FED2022 and with a significantly increased share of the national vote. As Anthony Green points out, the election marked another chapter in the story of the erosion of the two-party system. In FED2025, the aggregated vote of the majors for the first time came in under two thirds of the total FP vote.[22]
The intrusion of global instability and Trump into the FED2025 campaign favoured the incumbent Labor Government in much the same way as these factors had worked in Canada the week before. Since the election, the unfolding of more of the Trump MAGA agenda has brought further decline in the fortunes of the populist right. Whilst Greens were harmed by the shift to centre that brought Labor victory in Greens seats in Queensland and Victoria, analysis shows that the targeting of Greens seats by major parties, redistributions and Liberal preferences, played the more important role.
FED2025 pitted Greens progressivism against the fire power of Labor, Liberals and their proxies in a contest where anxious voters opted for the haven afforded by the incumbent Labor government. As Adam Bandt remarked in conceding defeat in the seat of Melbourne, some voters made a conscious decision that Albanese and Labor would offer the best protection against a dystopian future. In so doing, they repudiated the relevance of American style right wing populism to the Australian experience. At a fork in the road, the Australian electorate had rejected right wing extremism. Something to be encouraged about.
A sense of inevitability existed around Greens losing ground in the election that FED2025 turned out to be. In the wake of the shift to the centre and Greens losses, we see the predictable speculation about Greens politics being too radical for the Australian electorate and the need for change. But if Max Chandler-Mather hadn’t spoken out for renters, who in Australian politics would have? And if Greens hadn’t stood against the war crime that is the deliberate bombing and starving of a civilian population in Gaza, who would have? The position taken on Gaza has attracted most criticism. But as Sawan Madina points out in his ‘open letter’ to the Greens published in John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal, there is no middle ground on the starving of a civilian population and genocide:
“How can calls to stop the deliberate starving of children be labelled extreme? What does taking a moderate stance on ethnic cleansing and genocide look like? The stance of one major party was not a surprise and is not worth commenting on. But from the other party we expected better. Sadly, for us, but more importantly for the Palestinians under the raining bombs, all we got was inaction wrapped in hollow words. One day, when the bombs have stopped falling and political biographies are being written, and party elders are being interviewed, the world will hear how they spoke up, in private. Cabinet solidarity and all that. As Omar El Akkad says, “One day everyone will have always been against this”. You, The Greens, should be proud that you have continued to raise your voices for the Palestinians, at the time it mattered.[23]”
How we should respond to Gaza, should not be seen merely as a question of statecraft and foreign policy, but also as a moral question. Something that goes to the heart of what is to be human and to act in a manner that shows respect and commitment to the value of human life. In this sense, the look away position of the two major parties speaks to a moral void in Australian politics. A vacuum at its core. The vacuum also encompasses big ideas on the environment, social justice and climate and the courage to pursue them. Of the existing parties, Greens consistently present as the party most likely to fill this void. If FED2025, administered tough love, there is still much of which Greens can be proud.
[1] Australian Broadcasting Corporation. (2025). Federal Election 2025- Australia Votes. Retrieved from:- https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025
[2] Shepherd, T. (2025). All signs point to a hung parliament: what does this mean, and what should crossbenchers do? The Guardian 30 March 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/mar/30/australian-elect…
[3] Shortis, E. (2025). Donald Trump has cast a long shadow over the Australian Election. Will it prove decisive? The Conversation. May 1, 2025. Retrieved from:- https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-has-cast-a-long-shadow-over-th…
[4] Chrysanthos, N and Knott, M. (2025). Jacinta Price pledges to ‘make Australia great again’. WAToday. April 12 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/federal/jacinta-price-pledges-to-ma…
[5] Wikipedia. n.d. First 100 Days of Donald Trump’s Second Presidency. Retrieved from: https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/federal/jacinta-price-pledges-to-ma… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_100_days_of_Donald_Trump%27s_second…
[6] Wikipedia. n.d. Opinion polling for the 2025 Australian Federal Election. Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2025_Australian_federal_election
[7] ibid
[8] ibid
[9] Whittaker, A. (2025). US independence day? Poll shows Australians radical shift over Trump, economy. ABC News. Retrieved from:- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-27/yougov-poll-united-states-allian…
[10] Wikipedia. (2025). 225 Federal Election. Retrieved from:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Australian_Senate_election
[11] Advance Front and Centre. (2025). Election Live Blog. Retrieved from: https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/election-live-blog
[12] Advanced Front and Centre. n.d. Our beliefs. Retrieved from:- https://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/story
[13] Koutsoukis, J. (2025). Inside story: Advance ‘siphoned’ Liberal resources. The Saturday Paper, 31 May 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2025/05/31/inside-sto…
[14] Basford Canales, S. & Belot H. (2025). We have destroyed the Greens: third party groups spent millions on ads to influence Australian voters. Some claim it worked. The Guardian, 10 May 2025. Retrieved from:- https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/10/third-party-grou…
[15] Basford Canales, S. and Belot, H. (2025). Op.cit.
[16] Poll Bludger (2025). Federal Election 2025 Results: Brisbane. Retrieved from: https://pollbludger.net/fed2025/Results/HR.htm?s=Brisbane
[17] Poll Bludger (2025). Federal Election 2025 Results: Griffith. Retrieved from: https://pollbludger.net/fed2025/Results/HR.htm?s=Griffith
[18] Poll Bludger (2025). Federal Election 2025 Results: Melbourne. Retrieved from: https://pollbludger.net/fed2025/Results/HR.htm?s=Melbourne
[19] Evershed E, Nicholas, J. and Ball., A. (2025). What went wrong for the Greens in the Australian election? Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/jun/02/what-went-w…
[20] Wilson, C. (2025). How Advance’s anti-Greens campaign backfired and helped elect a progressive Parliament. Crikey. 9 May 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/05/09/advance-greens-campaign-labor-sena…
[21] Belot, H. and Basford Canales, S. (2025). Advance director says ‘bed-wetting anonymous Liberals’ trying to blame others after bitter election defeat. The guardian. 20 May 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/20/liberal-party-questions-election-impact-of-advance-australia-ntwnfb?CMP=share_btn_url
[22] Green, A. (2025). FED2025 – Four Graphs on Labor’s Landslide Victory. Retrieved from:- https://antonygreen.com.au/fed2025-four-graphs-on-labors-landslide-vict…
[23] Madina, S. (2025). An open letter to The Greens. John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal. 14 May 2025. Retrieved from: https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/05/an-open-letter-to-the-greens/
Header Photo: People lining up to vote for the 2025 federal election at Merri-bek Primary School in the Electorate of Wills. Image courtesy of David Redfearn1
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]