Federal election 2019: These six towns turned on Labor and helped save the Coalition, and they're not all in Queensland

Updated

Bill Shorten will convene the national executive of Labor this week to work out how his party lost the election.

Key points: Labor's primary vote declined, particularly in regional areas

Voters in Queensland shifted from Labor to One Nation in large numbers

Labor blames a scare campaign about its climate change policies

After the Coalition stumbled through two terms of government and polls pegged Labor as favourites, supporters will be seeking an explanation of what went wrong.

Labor's national first-preference vote dropped one percentage point, but the effect was different from booth to booth.

Many have focused on Queensland, but swings came in against Labor in many regional centres across Australia.

Here's a snapshot of six towns that led the trend.

Cessnock, New South Wales

The town of Cessnock is a mining community near Newcastle.

Local Labor MP Joel Fitzgibbon looks set to narrowly survive a voter revolt against him.

In each of the four major booths in town, and among pre-poll votes, the swing on primary votes was around 20 percentage points.

Mr Fitzgibbon told the Cessnock Advertiser the Coalition ran a scare campaign about climate change.

"They did that successfully and the electorate responded and we need to reflect on that, but I don't regret anything the Labor Party did in policy terms on that front," he said.

One Nation candidate Stuart Bonds polled 22 per cent of first-preference votes and clearly took votes from Labor.

Labor's margin in Hunter is less than 3 per cent. As voting continues, there's even speculation Mr Fitzgibbon may not be safe yet.

Mackay, Queensland

Labor lost thousands of votes in Mackay, the sugar capital of Australia.

The town at the southern end of the Dawson electorate is usually a Labor stronghold.

But candidate Belinda Hassan lost thousands of first-preference votes, as some booths in northern Mackay returned swings of more than 20 percentage points.

It meant the LNP's George Christensen claimed the seat with a swing towards him of 11 percentage points.

Ms Hassan said on Facebook she was proud she ran a "positive" campaign.

"We can walk away with our integrity intact," she said.

Labor lost votes to the One Nation candidate here too, who polled 13 per cent.

Rockhampton, Queensland

An industrial and agricultural hub in central Queensland, Rockhampton swung heavily towards sitting MP Michelle Landry.

One Nation's candidate grabbed 17 per cent of the vote.

That meant the swing away from Labor on two-party preferred was more than 10 percentage points.

Grafton, New South Wales

Sitting Page member Kevin Hogan came into the election with a nervous margin of 2.3 per cent.

But the Nationals MP romped home over Labor's Patrick Deegan.

Deegan's struggles were most obvious in Grafton, where Labor's primary votes dropped by about 15 percentage points.

Ipswich, Queensland

Labor's immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann suffered a scare on the western fringe of Brisbane.

Booths all over the major centre of Ipswich returned double-digit swings against Labor.

Early on election night the safe Labor seat looked under threat.

It appears he has held on, though his margin is down to 1.5 per cent.

Burnie, Tasmania

On the north-west coast of Tasmania, Labor's Justine Keay lost the seat of Braddon, less than a year after her by-election victory.

The swing to the Coalition was 5 per cent in the seat, but Ms Keay's primary was down about 10 percentage points across the half a dozen Burnie booths.

Ms Keay described it as a "strange" result.

Independent Craig Brakey also secured 11 per cent of the vote.

The difference between Labor's performance in Tasmania and its performance in Melbourne just across the Bass Strait — indicated by the prevalence of orange-coloured booths — is significant.

Note: Margins are provided based on counting at 4pm Sunday. Small booths were removed from charts.

Topics: government-and-politics, elections, federal-elections, australia

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