Introduction

The 2018 Victorian state election was held on Saturday 24 November 2018. This quick guide provides an overview of the results from the election for the Legislative Assembly (lower house) and the Legislative Council (upper house), early voting rates and participation rates.

The election was for all of Victoria's 88 Legislative Assembly seats and 40 Legislative Council seats. The lower house seats elect a single member by full preferential voting, and the upper house is divided into eight regions, each of which selects five members using single transferrable vote with group voting tickets.

Background

The Electoral Act 2002 (Vic.) requires that elections be held every four years on the last Saturday in November.

The previous Victorian state election was held on 29 November 2014 and saw Labor, led by Daniel Andrews, defeat the Coalition government after a single term. The 2014 election is discussed in a previous Parliamentary Library publication.

Early voting

Early voting continued to be a feature of Victorian elections, with slightly less than half of all voters casting an early vote on election day. The number and percentage of each type of votes is set out in Table 1 below. Pre-poll votes, which are early and postal votes, constituted 44.6 per cent of all votes in the election.

Table 1: Types of votes

Source: Parliamentary Library analysis of Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) data

The rate of early voting varied between electorates, with three districts (St Albans, South-West Coast and Ovens Valley) recording more than 50 per cent of all votes as early votes. Figures 1 and 2 below compare the relevant rates of early voting across districts at the election.

Figure 1: Early voting rates in Legislative Assembly seats

Source: Parliamentary Library analysis of VEC data

Figure 2: Early voting rates in metropolitan Legislative Assembly seats

Source: Parliamentary Library analysis of VEC data

Results

The turnout rate for the election was 91.22 per cent of the 4,139,326 voters enrolled at the close of polls.[1]

The Australian Labor Party (ALP), led by Premier Daniel Andrews, was returned to office with 55 of the 88 Legislative Assembly seats—approaching two-thirds of the Assembly.

The seat of Ripon was initially called for the Labor candidate on the election night; however, following a recount by the Victorian Electoral Commission, the Liberal candidate was declared the winner by a margin of 15 votes.

Legislative Assembly

The final seat tally for the Legislative Assembly is set out in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Seats by party

Source: Parliamentary Library analysis of VEC data

The overall state-wide first preferences votes cast for each party for the Legislative Assembly are set out in Table 3 below.

Table 3: First preference votes by party

Source: Parliamentary Library analysis of VEC data

The informality rate for the Legislative Assembly vote was 5.86 per cent.

The results for each seat are available from the VEC website or by request from the Parliamentary Library.

The geographic distribution of the winning seats is set out in figures 3 and 4 below.

Figure 3: Winning party in Legislative Assembly seats

Source: Parliamentary Library analysis of VEC data

Figure 4: Winning party in metropolitan Legislative Assembly seats

Source: Parliamentary Library analysis of VEC data

Legislative Council

A total of 3,731,191 votes were cast for the Legislative Council, of which 3,583,478 were formal (96.04 per cent) and 147,713 were informal (3.96 per cent).

Each of the eight Legislative Council regions elects five members, meaning that the quota for election is one sixth of the total vote in the region (the regions each have an enrolment of around 500,000 voters).

The ALP won 18 of the 40 Legislative Council seats, with the Liberals and Nationals winning 19. Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party (DHJP) was the most successful non-major party, with three seats, followed by the Liberal Democrats (LDP) with two, and the Animal Justice Party (AJP), Greens, Reason, Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (SFF), Sustainable Australia and Transport Matters parties each winning one seat.

The overall state-wide first preferences votes cast for each party for the Legislative Council, and the Council seats won by party, are set out in Table 4 below.

Table 4: State-wide first preference vote and Legislative Council seats by party

Victoria is one of only two Australian jurisdictions that still use group voting tickets in elections (the other being Western Australia). Extensive preference trading between small parties led to small parties winning the final seat in each region on very small primary votes.

The details of the Legislative Council results by region are in Appendix 1.

Andrews ministry

Table 5 below sets out the new Andrews ministry as appointed by the Governor of Victoria on 29 November 2018.

Table 5: Ministry appointed on 29 November 2018

Source: premier.vic.gov.au website

Appendix 1: Legislative Council results by region

All data in this Appendix is from Parliamentary Library analysis of VEC election results data.

Eastern Metropolitan Region

Eastern Victoria Region

Northern Metropolitan Region

Northern Victoria Region

South-Eastern Metropolitan Region

Southern Metropolitan Region

Western Metropolitan Region

Western Victoria Region

Appendix 2: Party names and abbreviations

• References

  [1].   All reported results are from the Parliamentary Library’s analysis of the published results from the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC), and include the finalised recount results from Ripon District.

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