The 2025 Australian federal election will be remembered for both the scale of Labor’s victory and the implosion of the Liberal and National Party Coalition whose leader, Peter Dutton, lost his own seat. Together, they almost guarantee Labor at least another six years in power, while raising serious doubt about the long-term viability of an aging Liberal Party now at war with itself.

As counting continues, it appears the Anthony Albanese-led Labor Party will end up with about 54.8 percent of the two-party preferred vote, which represents a swing towards it of 2.7 percent since 2022. Much of this was down to the flow of second and third voting preferences, which added 20 percentage points to Labor’s modest primary vote of 34.7 percent. By contrast, the flow of preferences only added about thirteen percentage points to the Coalition’s disastrous 32.3 percent of the primary vote, which for the first time is lower than that achieved by minor parties and independents. 

The lack of proportionality in Australia’s electoral system will mean that these numbers translate into an overwhelming Labor majority in Australia’s 150 seat House of Representatives. Labor will go from the 77 seats it won at the last election, to a currently projected 93, while the Coalition will drop from 58 seats to the low-to-mid 40s, with the remainder going to minor parties and independents.

Labor also increased its representation in the 76 seat Senate where 40 seats were up for re-election, going from 24 to 28 seats. This will simplify its task of negotiating the passage of legislation through this house, as support from the 11 Greens Senators will be sufficient to achieve the 39 votes needed to pass new laws.

As well as the scale of Labor’s victory, the geographical diversity of its dominance was also noteworthy. Labor increased its primary vote in every state, and especially so in Tasmania, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. It leaves the Coalition largely bereft of representation in all of Australia’s capital cities, winning only seven or eight metropolitan seats across the entire country – a development whose significance cannot be overstated.  

The explanation for a result that has dumbfounded commentators has many elements. The Trump presidency clearly cast a long shadow over the election. As late as March, the polling organisation YouGov had given Labor a three percent chance of being able to form majority government after the election. Days later, and one month out from the election, Trump unfurled his ‘liberation day’ tariffs. The effects were immediate. As the economic and political perturbations spread around the world, Labor’s prospects steadily improved, as reflected in all major polls which, by early May, were projecting a decisive Labor victory.

But that victory was not exclusively, and perhaps not even mainly, down to Trump alone. Peter Dutton had made it easier for Labor to cast the Coalition as Trumpism-lite, by repeatedly genuflecting in the direction of the American president. In February, Dutton had described Trump as a ‘big thinker’, in response to the latter’s musings about ethnically cleansing millions of Palestinians from Gaza. He had already announced that controversial right-wing Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price would be the minister for government efficiency under a Dutton government, which had obvious resonances with the Elon Musk-led DOGE in the United States. The parallels were confirmed when Price used the words ‘Make Australia Great Again’ at a supporter’s event in Perth, with Dutton standing alongside her.

With the shadow of Trump stalking him, the campaign itself could not have been worse for Dutton and the Coalition. His signature policies of building nuclear power plants, reducing the number of public servants, and cutting the excise tax on petrol for twelve months, failed to attract much support, even among many of his own supporters. Moreover, his chaotic policy backflips – such as on the wildly unpopular ambition to wind back working from home – gave every impression of a politician out of his depth and leading a party that was unfit to govern.

This contrasted with Labor’s highly disciplined political messaging and the apparent steadiness of purpose of its leader. While Anthony Albanese is not the most charismatic and dynamic of political leaders, in this campaign he inhabited a reassuring persona that spoke effectively to both the needs of the moment and the mainstream of the electorate that he was courting. In this, there were echoes of John Howard’s unthreatening ‘relaxed and comfortable’ winning electoral formula of a previous generation. Albanese won votes and preferences away from the Greens on his left, and many more from the Liberal Party on his right. Most of all, Albanese’s triumph was a repudiation of the kind of hard-hearted, anti-immigrant, culture war right-wing populism increasingly represented by his conservative opponent.    

Beyond the contingencies of the campaign, there are deeper structural reasons for the result. It has long been recognised that the Coalition has problems in attracting women, young people and those who are renting. Political polling prior to the election suggested that these problems were being magnified. After the election, preliminary analysis shows that electorates that skewed heavily toward young people and renters overwhelmingly rejected the Coalition, making it increasingly difficult for conservative politics to be competitive in the sorts of areas where these constituencies predominate.

The obvious lesson for the Coalition, and especially the Liberal Party, is that it needs to reposition more to the centre. This is unlikely to occur, however, because of the absence of a credible centrist leader, and because there are now even fewer parliamentary moderates than there were before. This strengthens the policy hand of conservatives in the Liberal Party, as does the proportionally greater representation of the National Party within the Coalition. The Nationals look likely to retain their ten existing seats in a greatly shrunken joint party room, which will likely see them with greater representation in the shadow cabinet. 

As for Labor, we should not expect that it will now spend its considerable political capital on overly progressive and expansive policies. The lesson that its famously cautious leader is likely to take from his momentous election victory is this: in uncertain and unpredictable times the path to maintaining power in Australia is paved with moderation. This is not a message that leftists within and outside of the ALP will want to hear. But it is one that for now they will have to swallow given Albanese’s undeniable success.