Understanding what has happened in these seats – and we obviously won't have a complete picture until the count is complete – is important to understand the lessons of the election.

But it also makes much of the commentary about the strengths and weaknesses of both major parties' campaigns in recent days fairly farcical.

What the primary votes suggest is that what was noted throughout the campaign – that neither side of politics had really been able to engage a lot of swinging voters – proved true on polling day; that a myriad of other, often very local factors, had as much of a role in determining the outcome as any national message, and that disillusioned voters turned very deliberately to minor parties instead.

So back to Eden Monaro. On the count in the seat as of Tuesday, Peter Hendy lost his job on a swing of just 0.58 per cent against him. Kelly was elected after enjoying a 7 per cent swing to him.

How to account for the disparity? The Greens suffered the slightest swing against them. A range of other minor party candidates standing for the first time collected a few thousand votes between them.

New electoral landscape New electoral landscape Marginal seats The final countdown in close seats Likely seats won so far What the latest counting suggests What the experts think will happen Research Greg Earl Australian Financial Review Interactive Interactive graphic by Les Hewitt

Notably the Palmer United Party did not stand this time and the AEC therefore records as a result a 5 per cent swing against it, compared to the 4,655 votes the party received in 2013.

The net result of this movements was – to date - a 6.43 per cent swing to Mike Kelly in two party preferred terms with over 8000 postal votes still to be counted.


Local issues

There was a similar story in most of the other seats that have changed hands: Dobell (where One Nation polled 8.5 per cent of the primary vote); Macquarie (where Labor won the seat with just 36 per cent of the primary vote in a massive field of minor candidates).

In all three Tasmanian seats lost by the Coalition, the Australian Recreational Fishers Party polled substantial primary votes before directing their voters to put Labor second.

Winning and losing candidates from both major parties report seeing an unprecedented level of local issues affecting votes from booth to booth, whether it be council amalgamations, mobile phone towers and in some smaller centres the 'Mediscare'.

Both sides – and both winners and losers – talk of all the voters who quite knowingly voted for minor parties in a vacuum of trust of either leader, and a vacuum which also extended to the Greens.

"Older blokes" were particularly unhappy with Malcolm Turnbull, the reports say, as being out of touch. Party strategists note the minor parties could be seen to have a particular strength in outer metropolitan areas around the country from Launceston, to the fringes of Sydney and up in to Queensland where One Nation scored primary votes in individual seats of up to 16 per cent.

Flying preferences

In this environment, the election outcome became more of a lottery than normal as the differing preferences of minor parties played out, often against each other.


And these same trends are at play in the seats that are still to be decided.

In the seat of Herbert in Queensland, for example, sitting LNP member Ewen Jones has suffered an 8.3 per cent swing against him on the primary vote but the Labor Party is only enjoying a 1.87 per cent primary swing to it.

A wide field of minor parties, led by One Nation, has snatched around 20,000 primary votes, sending preferences flying in all directions.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull noted the implications of the minor party vote on Tuesday when he said "while we suffered a swing against us - that is undoubtedly right and we recognise that - I want to note that the Labor Party has recorded their second lowest primary vote in its history".

"There is no doubt that there is a level of disillusionment with politics, with government, and with the major parties, our own included", he said.

"We note that. We respect it. Now, we need to listen very carefully to the concerns of the Australian people expressed through this election."

It's difficult for that to happen when much of the post-election discussion continues to be conducted as if it were a two horse race.