The 2025 Federal Election: Battleground Tasmania

This is an image of a voter placing their white ballot paper into an electoral commission box.

9 April 2025

In this edition, two of our resident political scientists dig into the 2022 election campaign and explore what it can teach us about the current race, and why preference votes might be more powerful than they appear.

From salmon to stadiums, from health to housing, there’s no shortage of big issues for Tasmanians to wrestle with during the federal election campaign. Nationally, the polls have been improving for the government, but most outlets are predicting a hung parliament driven by a modest swing against Labor. This outcome would continue the broader trends of decreasing party loyalty and voters turning away from the two major parties – making preference flows more important than ever in deciding the winner in each seat.

Authors

Richard Eccleston

Robert Hortle

Preferential voting isn’t just about who gets the most primary votes – it’s about how preferences are distributed when no candidate secures a majority of the vote. After the first count, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is excluded. Their ballots are then redistributed to the next candidate listed on each voter’s ballot paper. This process continues until one candidate has more than 50% of the votes. For more on how preferential voting works, check out this explanation from the AEC and this visual overview from the PEO.
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Over the past few elections, increasingly complex preference flows have determined who represents Tasmanians in Canberra. To help understand this, we’ve created a chart for each Tasmanian electorate that shows how preferences moved through each round of vote counting at the 2022 Federal Election. These charts help us see how voters allocated their preferences and what it might mean in 2025.
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Bass

Bass is a curious one this time around. On paper, it’s one of the most marginal seats in the country – long considered an ‘ejector seat’ where MPs rarely last more than one term. But Bridget Archer (LIB), managed to break that pattern in 2022, holding the seat despite a national swing against her party. She got over the line thanks to a strong primary vote (39.7%), and just enough preferences from the Jacquie Lambie Network (JLN) and the Greens. Her success came from her authenticity and willingness to stick to her values, even when that meant going against her party. With a likely national swing against Labor and her opponent Jess Teesdale (ALP) still building her profile, Archer is in a strong position to hang on to her seat.

Wildcard: The JLN vote. The party won 6.7% of first preferences in Bass in 2022, but won’t be fielding any lower house candidates in 2025 following its troubles in state parliament. The chart below shows that JLN preferences

were split fairly evenly between the Liberals (35.1%), Labor (34.3%), and the Greens (30.6%) last time. So, where JLN voters send their primary vote – and cast their preferences – could swing the result.

Source: The Australia Electoral Commission

Braddon

In simpler times, we might have written this one off as a Liberal hold and moved on. But incumbent MP Gavin Pearce is retiring, and his low-profile replacement (Mal Hingston, LIB) will be running against Anne Urquhart (ALP), a Labor Senator from Devonport with 13 years’ experience in Federal politics. Urquhart should be able to improve on the abysmal 22.5% primary vote that Labor received in 2022 – but even with her strong local profile, overcoming the current 8% two-party preferred margin will be very tough.

Wildcard: The ‘anti-salmon’ vote. In 2022, anti-salmon farming Craig Garland (IND) secured 7.9% of the vote. When he was eventually excluded, nearly half of his preferences (48.6%) went to the JLN. With no JLN candidate and Garland now in state parliament, those votes are back in play. The major parties both support salmon farming in Macquarie Harbor, so the anti-salmon vote is likely to drift toward the Greens. Ironically, this would end up

helping Labor, who picked up just over 44% of Greens preferences in 2022.

Source: The Australia Electoral Commission

Clark

Andrew Wilkie (IND) has held Clark since he first won the seat in 2010. And while there were whispers he might retire at this election, the prospect of once again being an influential cross-bencher in a hung parliament proved too tempting. Despite a small swing against him in 2022, Wilkie’s 45.5% primary vote and 20.8% margin make the chances of anyone unseating him in 2025 extremely low. The real intrigue (much like in 2010) is what he can secure for Clark and Tasmania in the event of a minority government. As one of the most experienced members of the growing crossbench, Wilkie could play a vital role in the next parliament.

Wildcard: This year, nada. No wildness. But longer-term, when Wilkie finally decides to hang up the pig costume, expect a scramble. The Greens will surely be eyeing one of the most progressive seats in the country. However, if state independent Kristy Johnston decides to step up (backed by Wilkie) she'd be a formidable contender.

Source: The Australia Electoral Commission

Franklin

Here’s another interesting one. Julie Collins (ALP) looks safe on the surface – she’s held Franklin since 2007 and is now the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry since being shuffled out of the housing portfolio due to a perceived lack of impact. But dig a little deeper and the waters are murkier. Collins’ primary vote dropped to 36.7% in 2022, leaving her heavily reliant on preferences from the Greens. With salmon farming shaping up as a key election battleground, and Labor’s somewhat confused pro-salmon stance, her vote could fall further. That opens the door for a strong challenge from outside the major parties.

Enter stage left: former ABC journalist and anti-salmon campaigner Peter George (IND). And enter stage right: Brendan Blomeley (IND), Mayor of Clarence City and a former Liberal who left the party on acrimonious terms during the 2024 state election. Add to that Owen Fitzgerald (GRN), just 19 years old and one of the youngest candidates running this year, and you’ve got a volatile mix.

Fitzgerald and George will be fighting over the same votes, while there will be bitter competition between Blomeley and Josh Garvin (LIB) that might split the conservative vote. All this may in fact help Collins hold on. It’s hard to see many preferences from the Greens and Peter George flow to the Liberals, so the experienced Labor minister is likely to scrape through in the final preference distributions.

‍Wildcard: Could Peter George pull a Wilkie? He would need to stay in front of the Greens to secure their preferences, then over take the Liberal candidate and hope Liberal voters preference him over Labor. It seems a long shot given that his pro-environment platform is likely to put off both Liberals and blue-collar Labor voters. Then again, concerns about the impact of aquaculture on Franklin’s beautiful waterways cuts across traditional political lines. That makes him worth watching.

Source: The Australia Electoral Commission

Lyons

Here it is, one of the most marginal seats in the country. Brian Mitchell (ALP) held Lyons by just 0.9% in 2022, but he won’t be contesting this election. Mitchell has made way for Rebecca White, who led Tasmanian Labor to three straight state election defeats. If that doesn’t sound like a winning CV, consider White’s very strong primary vote, where she easily tops the poll in Lyons in state elections (21.1% in 2024). Importantly, there was high ‘leakage’ from her primaries, meaning that voters who gave her their first preference didn’t necessarily allocate the rest of their preferences to Labor. This suggests that White is popular in and of herself, rather than because of her party affiliation, and draws support from across the spectrum.

The Liberals are again running Susie Bower, who was somewhat unlucky to lose in 2022 after winning a healthy 37.2% of the primary vote. She’s remained in campaign mode ever since.
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Wildcard: The narrative battle over White replacing Mitchell. The Liberals are framing her as a celebrity candidate who is parachuting in to take over from a hard-working incumbent. Labor is positioning her as the future of the party and a potential cabinet minister. The seat may well be decided by which story sticks.

Source: The Australia Electoral Commission

Preference whispering?

One clear pattern from our charts is that preferences take time to flow to either major party. Look at Lyons, for example. When minor parties such as the Animal Justice Party, United Australia Party, and One Nation are excluded, their preferences mostly go to another minor party (see below). It’s not until the Greens preferences are shared out and the field has slimmed down that one of the major gets more than half of the preferences on offer.

Preference flows for non-major parties in Lyons, 2022 Federal Election.

This dynamic is consistent across the state. It shows that people aren’t just giving their first preference to a minor party or independent as a form of protest, then dutifully giving a major party their second preference. Instead, they are often deliberately putting both major parties at the bottom of the list. And that doesn’t bode well for fans of majority government.

With a hung parliament on the cards, Tasmania could once again punch above its weight. The outcomes in Bass, Braddon, Lyons, and Franklin will be key to deciding which major party gets closest to a majority. And, if we end up with a hung parliament, Andrew Wilkie could play a crucial role in determining which party has the opportunity to govern in minority.

Tasmania may only send five Members of the House of Representatives to Canberra, but each seat is a miniature version of the national story: declining trust in major parties; rising support for independents and minor parties; and the emergence of issues that defy the traditional ‘left-right’ divide.

The 2025 Federal Election: Battleground Tasmania

Authors

Bass

Braddon

Clark

Franklin

Lyons

Preference whispering?

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