Labor's landslide victory obscures a disturbing trend for the major parties

Labor took the glory in last weekend's election, but beneath the surface an ongoing trend in how Australia votes has quietly carried on.

The major parties' primary vote has, once again, fallen.

In fact, there is a strong chance that the combined independent and minor party vote will beat one of the major parties for the first time in seven decades.

On a simple two-sided political axis, most seats swung left towards Labor last Saturday.

But if we look at the result in three dimensions instead, we see yet another shift away from the two big parties.

This triangle can help us see it in action.

It's a charming little equilateral beauty, isn't it?

There's a Labor corner, a Coalition corner, and a corner for everyone else, and we can plot seats on the triangle according to the primary vote for each of those groups.

For example, if a seat has a high Labor primary vote, like the prime minister's seat of Grayndler, it'll be well into the red corner.

(If you're confused, you can read a longer walkthrough of how the chart works.)

Here's where the total national vote sits on the chart for 2025 — you can see it's within the Labor triangle because they won the largest share of the first preference vote.

And it's coloured red because Labor won the election.

What's a little harder to see immediately is that the dot is also closer to the grey "other" corner than it is to the blue Coalition corner.

That's because this election, for the first time since the creation of the Liberal Party in 1944, the combined independent and minor party vote looks likely to beat a major party.

On the latest count, the Coalition got 32.2 per cent of the primary vote.

Minor parties and independents received 33.1 per cent.

What this means, unless the Coalition manages to bridge the gap in final counting, is that more people marked their ballot with a 1 next to an independent or minor party than did so for a Liberal or Nationals candidate.

The "other" vote is a couple of percentage points higher than it was last time, in 2022…

… more than double what it was in the 2007 election …

… and nearly eight times what it was 50 years ago, in 1975.

Let's expand out 1975's national vote to see the result in every single seat.

Back then, nearly everyone voted for a major party, so all the seats were bunched along the triangle's lower edge.

It was only much more recently you'd see seats starting to reliably appear in the grey zone at the top of the triangle, where "other" votes dominate.

We're about to show you the results in every seat in this election, but to set the scene, here's a reminder of the 2022 results.

Three years ago, there were 24 seats in the top section of the triangle.

That's 24 seats in which the primary vote for minor parties and independents beat both Labor and the Coalition.

Now we'll show you the results from last weekend.

Even more seats have shifted upward.

On the latest count, there are 32 seats in the top section of the triangle, eight more than last election.

(The triangle icons represent seats where the winner is still in doubt)

Those 32 include three long-term members of parliament who now hold very safe seats: Andrew Wilkie in Clark, Bob Katter in Kennedy and Helen Haines in Indi.

When Wilkie first won his seat in 2010, it was a surprise to everyone — he won from third place after getting a very favourable flow of preferences.

Now, he holds one of the safest seats in the country.

On the triangle we can also see how individual seats like Wilkie's have moved over time.

Here's where it was on the triangle in 2007, when it was held by Labor. (Back then it was called Denison.)

Wilkie won it in 2010 for the first time.

And here's how, over six elections, Wilkie has turned what was once a safe Labor seat into the safest independent seat in the country.

This election, we've seen more seats shoot upwards.

Labor's managed to hold off a strong challenge in WA's Fremantle, where the independent vote surged.

Here, fewer people put a "1" next to Labor than put a "1" next to independents and minor parties, although the government has managed to keep the seat on preferences.

In the ACT, the seat of Bean went down to the wire, but Labor just held on against to independent Jessie Price.

These seats now sit much closer to the centre of the triangle.

And Labor has had other scares too.

Take a look at how Blaxland and Watson, in Sydney's south and south-west, have moved.

They were, and still are, safe Labor seats.

But in both of them, independents campaigning against the government's response to the war in Gaza have eaten into Labor's primary vote.

Another seat that's shifted in a big way is Calwell.

But that large "other" vote is spread across a lot of candidates and it's very unclear who will win.

Labor is facing more serious challenges from independents and minor parties than it did three years ago.

But compared to the Coalition side, the red side of the triangle is still looking a bit sturdier.

On top of the seats it lost three years ago, the conservatives have had to fight back a slew of new challengers.

It has mostly been successful this time.

But going into the future, it has a fair few seats that look vulnerable.

On the latest count, there are nine blue seats and eight red seats inside this grey area, where the Coalition and Labor have been beaten on primaries by the "other" vote but managed to win on preferences.

This segment of the triangle shows us which MPs might well be looking over their shoulder in the future.

The Coalition members for Wannon and Cowper have successfully fended off challenges from independents in this election.

But their seats have both moved up the triangle.

Take a look at how the seat of McPherson on the Gold Coast has been drifting upward since 2007.

This election the sitting LNP member Karen Andrews retired, and a new independent Erchana Murray-Bartlett gained 14 per cent of the vote.

Not enough to win, but enough to push the seat into the grey region.

In other seats there is a strong "other" vote, but there's not a lot of agreement on who the preferred "other" candidate is.

Take Michael McCormack's seat of Riverina for example, where about 41 per cent of the vote has been split between 11 independents and minor party candidates, ranging the full breadth of the political spectrum.

There is a glimmer of hope for the major parties though.

It is possible for them to win seats back from the independents and minor parties.

Because while the national vote for independents and minor parties has gone up, the crossbench hasn't really grown.

In fact, once all the results are known, it will probably have shrunk compared to last election's result.

Independent Zoe Daniel in Goldstein has been defeated, returning one teal seat to Liberal hands.

Another teal, Monique Ryan, was also locked in a very tight battle with the Liberals, but held on to secure Kooyong.

The Greens leader Adam Bandt lost his seat, despite leading on primary votes.

A swing against him and toward Labor, coupled with an electoral redistribution that saw Labor-leaning areas moved into the seat, saw him defeated after five terms in parliament.

Here's the constellation that Melbourne has created as it has travelled across our triangle universe since 2007.

With its latest little move back towards Labor's corner, it looks rather like the Big Dipper, right?

The bad news didn’t end there for The Greens: they’ve lost two of their Brisbane seats as well.

They've only held onto one of their lower house seats: Ryan.

Here's how they've shifted on the triangle.

As these results show, the rising vote for others doesn't mean hung parliaments are a certainty going forward.

Landslide victories are absolutely still possible.

And when they get them, it's easier for major parties to ignore their slowly declining primary votes.

But this upward movement on the triangle hasn't stopped.

That means in the future, if election results are closer than this one, the chances of a hung parliament will remain strong.

It's something the major parties ignore at their peril.

Credits

• Reporting: Casey Briggs
• Design: Ben Spraggon
• Development: Simon Elvery and Julian Fell
• Editing and production: Matt Liddy and Cristen Tilley