Brisbane (Key Seat) Federal Election 2025 Results

Existing since Federation, Brisbane has generally been a Labor seat and former members include Manfred Cross (1961-75, 1980-90) and Arch Bevis (1990-2010).

The political complexion of the seat was changed by a redistribution ahead of the 2010 election. The eastern boundary of the seat moved beyond Breakfast Creek for the first time in many years, bringing into Brisbane strong Liberal voting areas around Ascot and Hamilton and cutting more than 2% from the Labor margin.

The Brisbane contest in 2010 was won by Teresa Gambaro, who had previously been MHR for Petrie 1996-2007. She defeated Labor member Arch Bevis with a 5.7% swing.

Gambaro increased her margin in 2013 before retiring in 2016. The contest to replace her provided a first for national politics with both major party candidates being openly gay candidates. The winner was the LNP's Trevor Evans who was re-elected in 2019 before being defeated in 2022. But as outlined below, his defeat did not benefit Labor, Brisbane instead being won by Greens candidate Stephen Bates.

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

Brisbane's three-way contest in 2022 highlights the difficulty of using one number to describe the marginality of a seat. The final preference count in 2022 saw the Greens win with a margin of 3.7% versus the LNP. The alternate two-party preferred count would have produced a Labor margin of 4.4% versus the LNP, Green preference flowing more strongly to Labor than the reverse. On both counts Brisbane reduced to a clear left-right contest with the left in a majority, but the final count was preceded by an undercard event between Labor and the Greens to finish second. Once in second place, either party could go on to defeat the LNP on the other party's preferences.

On first preferences in 2022, the LNP led with 37.7%, Labor second on 27.25%, the Greens on 27.24%, the gap between the two parties just 11 votes. There was another 7.8% of the vote split across four candidates. The distribution of these candidates favoured the LNP and Greens. When only three candidates remained in the count, the LNP led with 41.5%, the Greens second on 30.1% and Labor third on 28.4%. The gap between second and third was just 1,809 votes or just 1.7%.

Which provides a third estimated margin for Brisbane. Based on the three-candidate preferred count, a swing from the Greens to Labor of just 0.9% would be enough to see Labor finish second and win the seat on Greens preferences. But who finishes second would become irrelevant if there were an overall swing from Labor and the Greens to the LNP of 4.4%.

Brisbane has always been based on the CBD and surrounding suburbs, but its boundaries to the north, west and south have regularly changed. Between 1996 and 2001 the electorate crossed the Brisbane River to include South Brisbane and West End. More commonly Brisbane has extended to the west and north, but by how far varying from election to election.

Below is a map of Brisbane's boundaries over the last three decades. Until the 2010 election, the electorate's eastern boundary did not cross Breakfast Creek. Since 2010, the Gateway Motorway and Kedron Brook have been the eastern and northern boundaries for Brisbane, bringing into the electorate traditional Liberal voting suburbs including Ascot, Hamilton, Hendra and Clayfield.



Extending Brisbane's boundaries east lopped two percentage points from Labor's margin based on 2007 results, helping defeat Arch Bevis in the backlash against Labor at the 2010 election. The change itself wasn't enough to cost Labor the seat, but it gave Brisbane a bluer hue.

That's shown by the graph below. The 2010 boundary change narrowed the gap between Labor results in Brisbane and state-wide. Brisbane has since tracked closer to the state trend, even being below Labor's state vote in 2016 before Brisbane record one of the few Queensland swings to Labor at the 2019 election. This was followed by a much bigger swing against the LNP in 2022. The 2025 election will reveal whether there has been a change in underlying party support in Brisbane, not unlike the Liberal loss of support to 'teal' independents in other capitals.

Results 1983-2022

As the map of polling place results below shows, there is a political divide in Brisbane along an imaginary line from the mouth of Breakfast Creek to the motorway interchange at Wooloowin. To the east is solid Liberal voting territory, to the west Greens and Labor voting country. Only one polling place to the west recorded a Liberal majority, and none to the east recorded a Greens majority.

The Greens recorded two-candidate preferred majorities at 27 of the 36 polling places on a wide spread of results, the Green vote rising from 32.0% at St Johns Anglican Church Hall in Hendra to 70.6% at the Holy Trinity Church in Fortitude Valley.


(Click on polling place for results)

Looking at Brisbane's two party preferred history overlooks an important shift in first preference support by party. Between 2007 and 2022, Labor's two-party preferred support dipped by 11%, but its first preference decline was a more precipitous 18%. The beneficiary of Labor's primary vote decline has been the Greens, whose support doubled in the same period from 11.8% to 27.2%.

Comparing first preference vote support can be complicated by the presence of other parties and candidates. The chart below gets around this problem by plotting results since 2004 at the final exclusion point in the distribution of preferences, the so-called three-candidate preferred (3CP) count between the LNP, Labor and the Greens.

The chart highlights the three-party nature of the Brisbane contest. The LNP reached a majority of the 3CP vote between 2013 and 2019, but when its vote fell to 41.5% in 2022, the winner was determined by which of Labor and the Greens finished second in the 3CP race.

Results 1983-2022

The big shift from Labor to the Greens happened in 2010, assisted by the electoral boundaries shifting east as described earlier. But since then the Green 3CP vote has risen, narrowing the gap with Labor to 1.7% in 2019 before finally reaching second place and going on to win on Labor preferences in 2025.

The 3CP chart outlines clearly the point made elsewhere on this page about the nature of the contest in Brisbane. The seat is a marginal left-right contest, and a good vote for the LNP results in it winning Brisbane. But if the LNP's first preference vote is not strong enough, the battle for Brisbane is determined by the undercard event between Labor and the Greens to finish second before the final exclusion on preferences.