Bass (Key Seat) Federal Election 2025 Results

Bass has existed since Federation, and is named after George Bass, the first European to discover that Tasmania was separated from the mainland by the Strait that bears his name. The state's indigenous population occupied the island long before rising sea levels created the strait around 8,000 years ago.

Seats are often categorised as 'marginal' or 'key', but over the last three decades, Bass has carved out its own category as an 'ejector' seat. At 10 federal elections between 1993 and 2019, only one sitting member for Bass was re-elected, and the seat has changed party status eight times. Current MP Bridget Archer broke with history by winning re-election in 2022, but it is fair to conclude that Bass is not a good seat for career politicians.

Bass is forever bookmarked in Australia political history for a 1975 by-election. The seat had been represented by Labor's Lance Barnard since 1954 and he served as Deputy Prime Minister in the first term of the Whitlam government. He resigned in 1975 and was appointed Ambassador to Sweden, and the subsequent June 1975 by-election produced a 13.8% swing against Labor. In an era when opinion polls were infrequent, the result exposed the growing unpopularity of the Whitlam government and portended Labor's electoral fate in December 1975.

Succeeding Barnard was Kevin Newman (1975-84), who served as a Minister in the Fraser government. His wife Jocelyn later served as a Senator and a Minister in the Howard government, while their son Campbell went on to serve as Queensland Premier 2012-15. Kevin Newman retired at the 1984 election.

Liberal Warwick Smith was first elected in 1984, a time when the Franklin Dam issue boosted Liberal support in the Tasmania. Smith rose through Liberal ranks in Canberra but in 1993 became the highest profile victim of John Hewson's Fightback! package. He lost to Labor's Sylvia Smith by just 40 votes at the 1993 election, the starting point for Bass' record of defeating sitting members.

Warwick Smith returned to defeat Sylvia Smith on the election of the Howard government in 1996, and served as Minister for Communications in the first Howard government before again being narrowly defeated in 1998, losing in another squeaker to Labor's Michelle O'Byrne by 78 votes. O'Byrne's re-election in 2001 broke the defeated member sequence but only for one election. O'Byrne was defeated in 2004 in the backlash against Mark Latham's forest policy announcement. Her conqueror, Michael Ferguson, was then defeated as the Rudd government was elected to office in 2007. Both O'Byrne and Ferguson have since been elected to the Tasmanian Parliament to represent Bass, O'Byrne in 2006 and Ferguson in 2010. Both remain as state members for Bass, and both have served as senior ministers in state government.

Labor's Jodie Campbell was elected at the 2007 election, but retired at the 2010 election after personal and political difficulties during her term. Labor's Geoff Lyons was easily elected at the 2010 election, gaining a swing of 5.7% and taking Bass out of the marginal category. However, he was to be another one-term member, defeated by Liberal Andrew Nikolic, who went on to face defeat himself on the narrow re-election of the Turnbull government in 2016.

Rinse and repeat for new Labor MHR Ross Hart in 2019 when Bass provided one of the stepping stones on the Morrison government's narrow path to re-election. Hart returned as candidate in 2022 but first term Liberal member Bridget Archer overcame the Bass hoodoo by winning re-election with an increased majority.

(Victories by a party of government are indicated by thick coloured underlining.)

Tasmania's northern seats of Bass and Braddon have long been more Liberal leaning than Tasmania as a whole. This is shown for Bass by the blue line of Liberal two-party preferred vote being consistently above the grey dashed line of state Liberal two-party preferred vote. With Tasmania being a Labor-leaning state, Bass being above the state Liberal vote puts it closer to the national two-party preferred result, shown by the orange dashed line.

Since the Franklin Dam issues washed out of Tasmanian voting patterns in the early 1990s, Bass has sat closer to the national two-party vote than the Tasmanian two-party vote, with the exception of deviations to the state trend in 2010 and 2016. This interplay between Bass sitting near the national trend and the swings and roundabouts of Tasmanian voting trends explains why Bass changes party at so many elections.

Results 1983-2022

The Liberal Party recorded a majority of the two-party preferred vote in 34 of the 55 polling places used in 2019 on a wide range of results, rising from 35.2% at Inveresk Primary School in northern Launceston, to 70.6% at Winnaleah Memorial Hall in the state's north-east corner.


(Click on polling place for results)