New figures from Labor’s post-election review shed light on a long-suspected pattern – extensive tactical voting by Labor supporters in Teal and independent contests, with implications for future elections.

The official ALP review of Labor’s federal election campaign, made public on Friday, includes statistics that provide important clues about one of the mysteries of the last two elections – the extent to which the success of Teal candidates has relied and been based on tactical voting by Labor supporters.

It has been known that most of the people voting for Teal candidates have previously voted for Labor and the Greens and that probably less than 10 per cent of the Teal vote has come from disaffected Liberal voters – mainly middle-aged women.

What has been less clear is how many former Labor voters switched their vote knowing that the Labor candidate could not win, but that voting directly for the Teal candidate would give victory to the Teal, rather than a sitting Liberal MP.

Just giving a second preference to the Teal would be insufficient. The Teal primary vote needed to be higher than the Labor primary vote – otherwise Labor’s second preferences could not be distributed to the Teal.

Two tables in the ALP campaign review illustrate the extent of Labor tactical voting on a national level and in 14 electorates contested by Teals and other independents.

Nationally the extent of tactical voting is quite striking.

Traditionally – in every election since the end of World War 2, until 2025 – Labor has polled better in the House of Representatives than in Senate elections held at the same time. In the past eight elections the vote in the lower House has been from between about 2.5 to 5 per cent higher than in the simultaneous Senate election.

But in 2025 that switched. While the vote for Labor in the House of Representatives nationally was just under 34.6 per cent of the total formal vote, in the Senate it was just on half a percent higher – 35.1 per cent.

The second table looked at the results in 14 electorates where there were close contests involving Teals or other independents. In those electorates the difference between the (lower) vote for the House of Representatives compared to the vote in the Senate ranged from almost 11 per cent to 22.4 per cent – averaging just over 16 per cent.

Taking account of the usual gap between Labor voting in the two Houses, the likely measure of tactical voting by previous Labor voters was in the high teens.

It is notable that the ALP review does not discuss the implications of these findings, whether such tactical voting was encouraged, say, at the local branch level, or in some polling booths, and what the party should seek to accomplish in future elections.

Its main finding is that ‘there is an opportunity for Labor to better demonstrate the importance of voting for Labor in the Senate to deliver meaningful reforms’. It is not obvious how that flows from the materials quoted.

However the figures do suggest that if, as is likely, Labor supporters continue to indulge in this level of tactical voting, the main beneficiaries from the current surge in support for One Nation – if maintained through till the next election – are likely to be community based independents, as the rural and regional equivalent of the Teals prefer to be known.

One Nation is likely to be getting most of its support from former Nationals and Liberal voters. This will bring down the vote for sitting Coalition MPs (assuming the Coalition is revived for the next election) below 40 per cent, which would make them vulnerable to defeat at the hands of either One Nation, or an independent. Provided the independent has sufficient primary votes to benefit from Labor and other preferences, the independent (thanks to Labor’s tactical voters) would have a very good chance of defeating the One Nation candidate or the Coalition MP.

Were the Coalition not to be revived and the Liberals contested seats held by the Nationals, the prospect for independents would be further enhanced. The former Coalition partners are no doubt very conscious of that prospect.

Meanwhile, the Labor review of the 2025 election was content to adopt many of the findings of the Australian National University’s Australian Electoral Study to explain the Labor victory in 2025, putting the cost of living as the most important election issue by far while its own research showed its most popular policies were increasing bulk billing and reducing the price of medicines, followed by providing tax cuts.

Labor’s research also showed that 23 per cent of Labor voters nominated party leadership as the most important factor in their decision, compared to 9 per cent of Coalition voters.

We await the publication of the Liberal Party’s postmortem to see just what its experts think went wrong with their campaign, and leadership.