Many swing voters will only vote for Labor if they believe the party will govern alone

Tasmania’s Hare-Clark voting system tends to produce close results. The proportional voting system requires a party to win close to half of the total vote to win a majority, and the complexity of the voting system means that we often have a number of seats left undecided at the end of the night.

Yet the scale of the Liberal party’s victory was big enough to produce a clear result before the end of the night. The party is currently sitting on 50.5% of the total vote, with at least 13 out of 25 seats, and a chance of winning two more.

Labor recovered some ground from 2014, when they polled their lowest vote in recent history, gaining a swing of 5.4%, and possibly gaining as many as three seats.

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The result was most disappointing for the Greens, who dropped to 10% and may have lost two of their three seats (although both of these seats are still in play). This roughly equals the party’s worst result in 1998, when they polled 10.2% and dropped to one seat.

The Liberal campaign focused, among other issues, on the prospect of a hung parliament with Labor and the Greens forming government together. While the Greens have traditionally polled higher in Tasmania than in other states, there are also more voters who have a strong dislike of the minor party, and the prospect of minority government has been a turn-off for many swing voters.

Both major parties pledged to only form government if they won a majority (creating a dilemma if a hung parliament emerged), but the Liberal party particularly focused on how anything other than a strong Liberal majority would end up with the Greens holding power.

This issue played out in reverse back in the mid-2000s, when Labor was in a much stronger polling position, and they could claim that a vote for Labor would result in a stable majority.

The most recent polling did a reasonably good job of predicting this result, with recent polling suggesting a shift towards the Liberal party and away from the Greens.

The result was generally bad for minor parties. The combined vote for the major parties (83%) was the highest such vote since the 1986 election. The Jacqui Lambie Network managed 3.2% of the vote but this is down from almost 5% polled by the Palmer United party when Lambie was their senator in 2014.

While the Liberal party solidified its majority position with a scare campaign about a potential Greens balance of power, Labor did a good job of strengthening its left flank.

Labor’s promise to remove poker machines from pubs neutralised one of the Greens’ main non-environmental campaign issues.

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While Labor was targeted by a big-spending campaign against the poker machine policy that may have lost them votes to the Liberal party, Labor appears to have gained ground off the Greens, with Labor gaining a swing of 5.4% while the Greens lost 3.8%.

This election emphasises a dilemma for Labor – there are many swing voters who will only vote for Labor if they believe they can govern alone. Yet the Greens will continue to play a major role in Tasmanian elections and the voting system ensures they will keep a toehold in Tasmania’s lower house.

Labor and the Greens formed government together from 2010 until 2014 but were both punished with significant drops in support at the 2014 election. Since then, Labor has insisted that they would only govern alone but it was not entirely plausible that they would turn down the opportunity to govern if it came as a package deal with the Greens.

So how do you find a way to cooperate with a party who many swing voters don’t like, or convince those voters that you will be able to govern alone, when that requires a big jump in your vote? Until Labor solves this problem, they will struggle to win elections in Tasmania.