Tasmanians are going to the polls on 19 July as the result of a snap election more than two years early.

They are justifiably bewildered and angry as to how this could have happened and who is responsible for the political snafu.

Voter frustration is well founded. Had the usual four-year electoral rotation been followed, this election would have played out in March 2030. Three snap elections in succession have meant that five years of potentially stable and effective government have been lost.

Thus, the answer to the question “how did we get here” is not only reasonable but, given the level of anger over the “election no one wanted”, it is likely to have a significant influence on the outcome of the ballot.

A procedural stunt by Labor Opposition leader, Dean Winter, during the second reading debate on the budget bill, was the immediate catalyst for the events leading to this election.

Winter formally gave notice he would move a no-confidence motion in Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff indicating that he would advance this motion when he was certain he had the votes. However, parliamentary procedure required that the motion be tested immediately.

The timing wrongfooted the crossbenches, many of whom provided the confidence and supply supported needed by the Rockliff Government to maintain power. The urgency and surprise forced several to react viscerally and, seemingly, against their own interest.

For the Greens, it was provoked a loss of innocence. For the first time in their history, the party voted against stability to bring down a government.

Beyond the procedural miscalculation, Winter’s motion was seriously suspect constitutionally as he framed his motion as a personal attack on the premier rather than in the government as a whole.

This canard was to validate a myth that an election would not be necessary since Rockliff could accept the censure, resign and be replaced by another Liberal since the no-confidence motion was in the premier, not the government.

Alternatively, it was opined that the governor could sack the premier and invite (or, in some fantasies “force”) another Liberal or Winter himself to accept the premiership, thus avoiding an unwanted election.

Despite being advanced during the budget’s second reading debate and Winter’s motion attacking the budget and various policy failings of the Liberal minority government, a number on the crossbenches were willing to embrace Winter’s fiction.

The motion passed 18 to 17 on the deliberative vote of the speaker, Michelle O’Byrne, a member of the Labor Party, who was elected by a House that the minority Liberal Government did not control.

The ill-considered no-confidence motion was the immediate cause for the snap election, but the foundations were laid 16 months earlier; in the wake of the inconclusive March 2024 state election.

Having been forced to an early election by party defections to the crossbench, the Liberal Government suffered a 12% swing against it. Due to the earlier enlargement of the House of Assembly from 25 to 35 members, the swing did not cost the Liberals any seats but their share of the reconstituted House was much reduced.

The Liberals secured 14 seats, a gain of two. Although the ALP picked up three additional seats, their total of 10 still relegated them to third place in the Assembly. The crossbenches captured 11 seats of which five were held by the Greens.

An agreement with the Greens would have given Rockliff a governing control of the chamber large enough even to have control of the speakership.

Instead, he opted for the “herding cats” option of cobbling together confidence and supply agreements with the remainder of the crossbench made up of three Jacqui Lambie Network members and two independents.

The fragility of this arrangement was exposed almost immediately when two JLN members left their party to sit as independents. Some months later, they helped to force the resignation of Deputy Premier and Treasurer, Michael Ferguson.

Dissent grew over the mishandling of key infrastructure developments with ferries and ports. Along with this there was growing concern over the doubts regarding a new roofed stadium as part of an agreement to get a state team into the AFL. This further undermined the fragile crossbench.

These culminated a widely-shared view that Rockliff’s proposed 2025 budget was unacceptably riddled with projections of deficits well into the future.

Having brought the government down, will this third snap collection produce the stability that the two previous snap elections failed to achieve?

Polls suggest that the election that nobody wanted again will produce a result that no-one wants. At the time of writing, various polls show the most likely result on 19 July will be another minority government.

Interestingly, even if these polls accurately reflect voter intentions, the 2025 election day results will not be a mirror image of the 2024 election.

The two major parties collectively continue to receive only 60% support across the state making it unlikely that either party will have the landslide to give them a majority after the vote.

One of the surprises of the 2024 election was that the Greens appear to have both a floor and a cap on their support. They held their vote but were unable to capture any significant share of the vote not committed to the two major parties.

Indeed, half of the vote that did not go to one of the three parliamentary parties lodged in a fourth party – the JLN. The other half went to three independents.

The mechanics of the July 2025 election make it unlikely that similar poll numbers now will result in a similar parliamentary outcome to the 2024 ballot.

There are 1/3 fewer parties contesting the 2025 election. The National Party is trying again to get a foot in the door of Tasmanian politics but it lacks the appeal that Jacqui Lambey gave the JLN in 2024. The other minor parties are scarcely registering.

Consequently, the party vote in 2025 Tasmania will be essentially a tri-cornered contest amongst the established three parliamentary parties – Liberal, Labor and Greens.

Since it seems unlikely that the Greens will be the beneficiary of the absence of the JLN, it could be expected that some of the 2024 JLN vote will find its way back to one of the two major parties.

High-profile independents, particularly the new entrant Peter George, will enjoy support at 2024 levels but most independents do not appear to have an effective electoral base.

Unless some black swan event emerges very late, Tasmanian voters will return another minority government in 2025 with the odds favouring the Greens emerging as the balancer. But then this was the challenge of leadership that Rockliff rejected just a year ago.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.