The best attempt at a post-election pendulum was published recently by Dr Kevin Bonham, who also did a terrific job explaining developments during the preference count in the recent Tasmanian election.

Of course it shows the remarkable scale of the 2025 Labor victory and the consequent scale of the Liberal challenge in 2028.

But we all knew that, although it is useful to have it defined more specifically.

For example, Bonham’s pendulum shows that there would need to be a more than 6% swing against the government before it loses its majority. A 6.06% swing would see Labor lose 18 seats, but retain its majority as it would still have 76 seats.

The Coalition would become the largest party (assuming it stays together) after a 7.2% swing and would require a massive 8.9% swing to gain a majority.

Behind the statistics is another story. The breadth of the Labor victory.

Except for the National Party heartland, the ALP won everywhere. The Liberals lost everywhere. A look behind the figures show the strength of the Labor vote in previously Liberal heartland. For example, Bonham and Ben Raue in his excellent website, The Tally Room, both estimate that on a two-party-preferred analysis, Labor would have won Bradfield which has always been the safest of Liberal seats. It was, in fact, the bluest of blue-ribbon seats for the Liberals but not only have they lost the seat to an Independent, they would probably have lost it in a direct contest with Labor. This is an indication of the magnitude of the challenge the Liberals face in regaining the previously safe seats they have lost to Teal candidates. This problem is exacerbated by the National Party’s continuing love affair with climate denialism.

Looked at on a state-by-state basis, the result is equally remarkable.

There was a swing to the ALP in every state and territory except the Northern Territory. The swings ranged from -1.29 in the NT to 9.01 in Tasmania. More significantly, Labor won more than 55% of the two-party preferred vote in every state except Queensland, in which they won 49.42%, a swing of 3.47 in their historically weakest state. This suggests the Liberals need to have a strategy for the whole country rather than targeting any particular state or region, while the Labor Party needs to defend on a similarly broad basis.

This is reinforced when the character of the seats in contest based on the pendulum are analysed.

Of the 18 seats it would take to reduce the ALP to a mere 76 seats, according to the AEC nomenclature, three are inner city, 10 are outer metropolitan two are provincial and three are rural.

In fact, although I understand the rationale for the AEC’s classifications, I don’t always agree with their conclusions. The three Labor “marginals” which the AEC call rural are Gilmore, Leichardt and McEwen. I would consider each of them to be more realistically classified as regional or provincial. Leichardt is a very large electorate on Cape York peninsula, but its heart is the major regional city of Cairns. Gilmore is on the South Coast of New South Wales and based around the major centre of Nowra. McEwen includes outer Melbourne suburbs as well as many small to medium towns. In voting pattern, it tends to reflect outer-metropolitan rather than other rural divisions

In addition, Labor would need to defend Melbourne, Wills and Brisbane from potential threats from the Greens.

The combined impact of this assessment is that Labor has to prioritise the defence of six inner metropolitan seats, 10 outer metropolitan seats and six regional or provincial seats. That means defending everywhere.

But it also means the Liberals have to seek seats everywhere, in Teal seats, and seats across the range of regions and demographics.

In fact, they will have to campaign everywhere but in the National Party seats which will have no possible impact on any federal election in the next decade.

For the Liberal Party, this is a strategic challenge. Realistically they need to start with a two-election strategy while seeking opportunities to do better than that should the Labor government falter. However, it is never sustainable in a major party to concede that it will take two elections to win. Therefore, they will need some refined strategic and tactical thinking.

For the government, while this is a nice problem to have, it is a strategic challenge in terms of electoral priority setting.

There are also big decisions for the Greens, Teals and other House Independents, but it is unlikely that their decisions will affect the overall outcome of the next election, although they could have a significant impact in a number of seats.

In broad terms, the two major parties face a similar strategic challenge. Needing to win everywhere (or defend everywhere) creates a resource allocation and priority setting challenge.

However, having seats to defend everywhere is far preferable to having too few anywhere.

Of course, there are other very significant factors arising from the last election, such as the Liberals crisis in support amongst younger voters and women.

The low primary vote for both major parties is also a point of shared vulnerability.

Policy issues and international economic and geo-strategic events will play a big part in determining any election.

However, all these factors will play out in the lead-up to 2028 against a backdrop of the strategic and tactical issues arising from the comprehensive nature of Labor’s 2025 victory.

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