Turnout: 91.89%
About this election
The 2019 Australian federal election was held on Saturday 18 May 2019 to elect all 151 members of the House of Representatives and 40 of the 76 senators. It is remembered as the "miracle" election: almost every opinion poll for three years had pointed to a comfortable Labor victory, yet the Liberal–National Coalition, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, was returned with an increased majority. Morrison had taken over only nine months earlier after the party-room coup against Malcolm Turnbull, and his come-from-behind win was one of the great upsets in Australian electoral history. Labor leader Bill Shorten resigned the same night.
The House is elected from single-member electorates by compulsory, full-preference instant-runoff voting; the chamber had grown to 151 seats following a redistribution that added a seat in Victoria. As always, the decisive measure was the two-party-preferred vote between Labor and the Coalition after preferences. The number of seats needed for a majority was 76. The simultaneous half-Senate election (40 seats) is covered on the companion Senate page.
Labor went to the election with an unusually detailed and ambitious policy platform: action on climate change, the curtailing of negative-gearing and franking-credit tax concessions, and large spending commitments. The Coalition, by contrast, ran a disciplined, narrowly focused campaign centred on economic management, lower taxes and the risks of Labor's agenda, summed up in Morrison's pitch about "the quiet Australians" and a "fair go for those who have a go". The campaign played out very differently across the country, and a late swing in Queensland — fuelled in part by the Adani coal-mine controversy and resources-sector jobs — proved decisive.
The Coalition won 77 seats to Labor's 68, with the Greens holding their single seat (Melbourne), Katter's Australian Party and Centre Alliance one each, and independents taking three. On first preferences the Coalition led with 41.44% to Labor's 33.34% and the Greens' 10.40%, and the two-party-preferred result was 51.53% to 48.47% — a small but crucial swing toward the government. Clive Palmer's United Australia Party spent heavily on advertising but won no seats, while Pauline Hanson's One Nation polled 3.08%. Labor's primary vote of 33.34% was historically low and prompted deep soul-searching about why its policy-heavy platform had failed.
The headline story was Queensland, where the Coalition won 23 of 30 seats and Labor's vote collapsed across the resource-dependent regions — the swing there alone effectively decided the election. The Coalition also held Western Australia, while Labor remained dominant in Victoria and competitive in New South Wales. The map above shows the party that won the most seats in each state and territory; the contrast between Queensland and the southern states is stark.
Morrison's unexpected victory cemented his authority over the Liberal Party and gave the Coalition a third term. His government would soon be tested by the catastrophic 2019–20 bushfires and then the COVID-19 pandemic, both of which dominated the 46th Parliament. For Labor, the defeat triggered a formal review and the election of Anthony Albanese as leader, who would steer the party to a more cautious, "small target" strategy at the next election in 2022.
Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) — official tally room results at results.aec.gov.au.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.