As Australia watched on with bated breath and Scott Morrison defied years of opinion polls and public expectations, the results for the national capital were severely lacking in suspense.

While Canberra will soon be a part-time home to 222 members of the 46th Parliament, the five federal politicians who live in the city full time have practically walked it home.

The ACT may have been created specifically to host fierce debates from across the political spectrum, but the territory itself is one of the most politically homogenous regions in the country — and one of the most predictable.

Just over the border in New South Wales, it came down to the wire in the former bellwether seat of Eden Monaro.

With 75 per cent of the vote counted Labor's Mike Kelly has only just held onto his seat from Liberal political newcomer Fiona Kotvojs.

But it was a different story in Canberra.

Even before the count began the ACT's three lower house seats Canberra, Fenner and Bean were all expected to go Labor's way, with margins as high as 12.9 per cent.

With about 80 per cent of the vote counted Fenner and Bean have seen a slight swing to the Liberals.

And, while the Greens had vague hope of claiming the central seat of Canberra, ultimately voters reaffirmed its status as the safest seat in the territory with a 3 per cent swing to Labor.

With first preferences counted, Labor's Katy Gallagher is set to take out one of the ACT's Senate seats and the Liberals' Zed Seselja looks safe to win the other, despite pockets of discontent over his backing of Peter Dutton in the failed leadership coup.

But it is hardly a surprising result.

The heart of the nation continues to bleed red

Canberra is the home of government, but it's been a safe Labor seat for decades. ( ABC News )

Labor has held power continuously since 2001 at a territory level — the Stanhope-Gallagher-Barr Government is just a few months away from being allowed into the Mooseheads nightclub.

Similarly the ACT's federal House of Reps seats have not been touched by Liberal fingers since the 1990s — and even then the member, Brendan Smyth, was propelled in through a by-election amid voter dissatisfaction with the Keating government and the departing member Ros Kelly.

He won a by-election in 1995 but his seat was swiftly returned to Labor just 13 months later, even amid a swing to the Coalition that saw John Howard thrust into office.

What makes a safe seat safe?

A common jab at Canberra's status as a Labor town is that self-interested public servants flock to a party that is often seen as being softer on public sector jobs and conditions.

But political scientist John Warhurst said that was just one of many factors pushing the capital a little to the left.

"In generalities urban people are more likely to vote Labor than rural Australians, so that's one characteristic," he said.

"Higher academic qualifications tend to be more Labor than Coalition — and the ACT would have a high percentage of those with a university education and perhaps even a postgraduate university education.

"The ACT also tends to be more secular than many other parts of the country, and churchgoers tend to be more conservative than those who are not regular churchgoers or those who are not believers at all."

So even though the territory's somewhat government-reliant workforce may play some role in its voting habits, there is more nuance than immediate self interest.

"It's certainly not the whole story as far as public servants are concerned," Professor Warhurst said.

"You're in a job where you're a government servant, and therefore you presumably believe that government has a role in a mixed economy like Australia.

"It's a bit of values as well as self interest, and that's probably a good way of approaching a number of these social characteristics."

With all this in mind, you hardly needed a degree in divination to read the tea leaves on this one.

Meet your new (and slightly less new) representatives

Zed Seselja will walk his well-trodden path as the only federal Liberal spokesman for the ACT. ( ABC News: Jake Evans )

A growing population, resulting in a third seat for the ACT, was not enough to stem the tide of the red sea.

The only patch of blue, though still expected, lies with Liberal Zed Seselja — who looks on track to re-enter the Senate for a third term after moving to the house on the hill following his role as opposition leader in the ACT Legislative Assembly.

No stranger to him is Labor senator-elect Katy Gallagher, who was ACT chief minister until 2014, when she followed Mr Seselja into the Senate.

But she was temporarily pushed out of federal politics after her dual British citizenship was revealed.

Moving to the lower house, Andrew Leigh has been elected in the northern seat of Fenner. He has been the member of parliament since 2010 — before that he was an academic and economist.

The central seat of Canberra will be represented by Alicia Payne — the only completely fresh face entering Parliament — though she has spent time there before as an adviser to Labor frontbenchers.

In the southern electorate of Bean David Smith has been elected.

Mr Smith was something of an accidental politician. When the aforementioned senator Gallagher was booted under Section 44, he was pulled from relative obscurity to fill her seat.

At the 2016 election the ABC even did a story about how incredibly unlikely it was he would ever be elected.

Two years later he was being dragged into the red room.

Just goes to show, even foregone conclusions can mask unpredictable twists — who knows what the 46th Parliament will hold?