The 2025 Australian Federal Election: Results from the Australian Election Study

The 2025 Australian federal election was a resounding win for the Australian Labor Party. What explained this result? Was the election result driven by long-term shifts in Australian electoral behaviour, short-term campaign dynamics, or a combination of the two? This talk will present evidence from the 2025 Australian Election Study to evaluate how long-term and short-term factors contributed to the election result. The 2025 election will be placed in longer term perspective, drawing upon the Australian Election Study surveys fielded after every federal election since 1987. There are several long-term factors that have eroded support for the Liberal-National Coalition. Younger generations are further to the left and less likely to vote for the Coalition compared to previous generations at the same stage of life. The Coalition has also lost support from women over the past decade. Moreover, the drift away from major parties has disproportionately impacted the Coalition, with Independent candidates successfully targeting previously safe Liberal seats. Alongside these longer-term factors, several short-term factors during the 2025 campaign negatively impacted the Coalition. This included having an unpopular leader, a poor performing campaign, and US President Trump’s global trade tariffs boosting support for incumbent governments. This talk will provide an explanation of voter behaviour in the 2025 Australian federal election, to understand how short-term and long-term factors contributed to the result.

This event was presented by the ERRN QLD Chapter.

View the panel recording

Presenter and Chair:

• Dr Sarah Cameron is a Chief Investigator on the Australian Election Study and a political scientist at Griffith University’s School of Government and International Relations. She is a leading expert on Australian politics and elections. She also contributes to cross-national research as an Investigator on the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and as Australian representative on the Consortium of National Election Studies. Dr Cameron authors reports on Australian federal elections including the Trends in Australian Political Opinion series as well as a report series highlighting key issues in each election, drawing upon results from the Australian Election Study.

• Ferran Martinez i Coma is Professor in the School of Government and International Relations. He is a current ARC Future Fellow.  His current research specialises in elections, electoral integrity, comparative politics, political parties and electoral behaviour and has published in leading journals in the discipline.