Australian federal election 2025 LIVE results and exit polls: All the key seats to watch

By PETER VAN ONSELEN and MAX AITCHISON and STEVE JACKSON and HARRISON CHRISTIAN and CAITLIN POWELL

Published: 08:32 BST, 3 May 2025 | Updated: 09:31 BST, 3 May 2025

Australians anxiously await the news of who will lead the nation for the next three years.

If Anthony Albanese is victorious, he will be the first Prime Minister to be granted a second term since former Liberal leader John Howard in 2004.

If Peter Dutton is handed the top job, it will mark the first time a first-term government has been kicked out of office since 1931. 

Polls have now closed on the east coast, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Follow Daily Mail Australia’s live coverage of the Federal Election results. 

 

Bombshell exit poll published

The first official exit poll is indicating that Labor is on track for another three years in office.

An exit poll of nearly 3,700 voters at 19 electorates across Australia, carried out by NewsCorp, showed Labor and the Coalition were matched on the primary vote with 32 per cent.

But independents and Greens’ preferences could push it in Labor’s favour in some keys seats.

The exit polls indicates a 2.2 per cent swing to Labor, while the Coalition looks as if it perform even worse than it did in 2022.

PVO: Keep your powder dry

The early numbers are starting to come in now but they are utterly meaningless.

Single early booths, less than a fraction of a percent of the vote are isolated and unless when trying to watch for trends.

They really mean nothing.

Give it another 30 minutes to an hour and we will see what the VERY early state of play tells us.

Won’t know who is PM tonight, Senator claims

Queensland senator James McGrath claims he doesn’t think Australia will know who the PM is tonight.

‘I think when everybody goes to bed too many seats will be too close to call,’ he told the ABC.

‘There is a high soft vote out there still and there are a number of unique and different contests across the country.’

It echoes comments made by Peter Dutton who said there was a large number of ‘quiet Australians’ who would be backing the Coalition.

But even Senator McGrath thinks the path to power for the Coalition has narrowed to a ‘goat track’.

‘There is a very narrow pathway – it is a goat track, there are lots of billy goats on it and lots of rock slides, but we’re not going to know tonight, I don’t think,’ he added.

PVO: Why we might not have a clear picture this evening, even if Labor are sitting pretty to win

This election is going to be unique. Results might still be up in the air when the AEC stops counting and we all go to bed.

That’s because of the unusually low major party primary votes and the fact there are so many minor parties and independents whose preferences will be influential in tight contests.

While it may be obvious Labor will win, somehow, because its share of seats is well above that of the Coalition, don’t be surprised if analysts are loathe to call close seats until very late or in the days to come.

Pre-poll votes get counted tonight, but there are more than seven million of them and they get added after 9pm.

Only after all the first preference votes have been counted do AEC officials start counting preferences.

Predictive models will make assumptions around preference flows, but much of what you see in telecasts will be predictive rather than actual preferences.

They could be wrong and need to get adjusted as the evening pans out. If the models make incorrect assumptions, seats that look like going one way could wildly swing when the real numbers are included.

Even if everything goes well, there is a good chance the winner – likely Albo – won’t be able to claim a victory with certainty when he takes to the stage. Unless he waits until very late, or only claims the win as a minority government, perhaps saying he has to wait for the count to finish before knowing he has a majority.

Which of course may never happen.

As for Dutton, with pre-poll votes coming in late and many more postal votes to come in the days ahead, if he does better than expected he may not want to concede this evening. Or at least wait until late before doing so.

With such low major party primary votes expected and so many crossbenchers trying to win their current seats, alongside new entrants hoping to win, it could be a long evening even if we get a hunch of what’s on the cards very early.

PVO: Are the Greens in trouble or will they grow their power base?

It sometimes feels like the major parties, especially Labor, over inflate their chances of overrunning Greens MPs, but it just might happen at this election.

Three years’ ago the Greens picked up three seats in Queensland of all places, new MPs joining leader Adam Bandt (pictured, below) in the House of Representatives.

Usually the power base for the Greens is in the senate where it hopes to hold the balance of power.

At this election the minor party hopes to have power in the lower house, if Labor drops to a minority government as expected.

But the major parties are coming after the Greens at this year’s election, and both the Liberals and Labor think they are a chance to snatch back at least some of the seats they lost three years ago.

Labor has high hopes of picking up Griffith in Brisbane, maybe even the CBD seat of Brisbane too, but that could be more difficult.

The Liberals want Ryan back, normally a safe seat for them. It’s a 50-50 proposition at best.

But the Greens aren’t sitting back merely hoping to retain their four lower house seats. They are going after Labor in the NSW north coast seat of Richmond where Labor strategists worry their MP could be in some bother.

Greens are also targeting Labor MP Josh Burns in his inner Melbourne seat, but I suspect Burns will hang on.

While the minor party is in the mix in lower house contests, it’s how it performs in the senate that will have the biggest impact on the next parliament.

A Green Senator is up for re-election in every state, and the odds are based on how the minor party is polling it will win a seat in every contest.

That will maintain its influence as the biggest balance of power minor party in the upper house. Meaning the Greens will often hold sway over policy decision making whenever Labor and the Coalition disagree.

No matter which major party wins this federal election.

First exit poll published

The first exit poll has been published – and it’s not looking good for the Coalition.

The Liberal Party is at risk of losing the blue-ribbon South Australian electorate of Sturt, according to NCA Newswire.

Liberal incumbent James Stevens secured almost 38 per cent of the primary vote in the poll which asked 193 voters across three booths how they marked their first reference vote.

Meanwhile, Labor challenger Claire Clutterham secured 71 votes, or almost 37 per cent of the vote.

But Stevens’ first reference vote share fell five points from his 2022 performance, meaning his seat could be at risk.

He holds the seat with a tight 0.5 per cent margin.

Polls CLOSED

Polls are now officially closed on the east coast of Australia.

One Nation voter unleashes on Albo

A One Nation voter has revealed what he thinks of Albanese – and it’s just what you’d expect.

‘I voted for One Nation – that’s probably the best party,’ the young male voter told Sky News earlier.

‘I’m sick of Albanese and Dutton. Dutton’s better but Albanese is just a f**kwit.’

The blunt-talking voter was praised by Pauline Hanson.

‘One Nation: We’ve got the guts to say what you’re thinking,’ Senator Hanson wrote on X.

Greens leader caught out by selfie

Adam Bandt thought he was posing for a simple ‘happy birthday’ video selfie.

But the Greens leader was caught out by the man behind the camera who criticised the left-wing party’s stance on Israel.

‘Let’s say together: I’ve demonised the Jewish community for my own political gain,’ the man said, as Bandt quickly lurched away.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has described the Greens as an ‘antisemitic, Jew-hating party’.

The seats that will decide the election

Millions of Aussies head to the polls

PVO: All the Seats to watch one by one

Votes will start to be counted on the east coast after 6pm, two hours later WA will join the party.

So what are the seats to watch this evening? Daily Mail Australia’s political editor Peter van Onselen has crunched the numbers, hit the phones to talk to candidates and party officials, and come up with the following as his assessment of the state of play seat-by-seat in the battlegrounds that matter.

Use this as your yardstick throughout the evening for how the election is unfolding, and we will circle back to these seats as the results come in. As well as any others we might have missed, but that’s unlikely.

Labor held seats at risk from the Coalition:

I think in descending order these are the Labor held seats most at risk of falling to the Liberals, with their margins in brackets.

Gilmore in NSW (0.2 percent)

Aston in Melbourne (3.6 percent)

Bullwinkel in Perth (3.3 percent)

Paterson in NSW (2.6 percent)

Werriwa in Sydney (5.3 percent)

After these five it becomes more difficult for the Liberals to pick up further Labor seats, but I still have them as the narrow favourites in three more, but all three are very close:

Lingiari in the NT (1.7 percent)

Hawke in Victoria (7.6 percent)

McEwen in Victoria (3.8 percent)

After that I can see three 50-50 toss of the coin seats the Coalition are fighting to claim:

Bennelong in Sydney (0.04 percent)

Tangney in Perth (2.8 percent)

Bendigo in regional Victoria (11.2 percent)

Beyond the above there are nine more seats Labor holds that the Australian electoral commission classifies as marginal, but I don’t see Labor losing any of them except maybe Blair but even then I think they’ll just miss out.

Lyons in Tassie (0.9 percent)

Robertson in NSW (2.2 percent)

Boothby in Adelaide (3.3 percent)

Chisholm in Melbourne (3.3 percent)

Parramatta in Sydney (3.7 percent)

Hunter in NSW (4.8 percent)

Reid in Sydney (5.2 percent)

Blair in Queensland (5.2 percent)

Bruce in Melbourne (5.3 percent)

Finally, a few roughies that aren’t even marginal Labor seats to keep your eyes on where big swings might go the Liberal Party’s way, but not by enough to win, unless something extraordinary happens which you never know in one or two of them.

Labor has its eyes on a number of Liberal held seats it hopes to win.

The ones I think they are a chance of picking up (in order) in are:

They should win some of these. If they pick up more than two or three, majority governnent for Labor is well and truly on the cards.

Beyond the above showdowns between the major parties, watch out for the following contests:

Labor might get Fowler back off the independent who won it at the last election.

Labor might get Griffith back from the Greens, perhaps even Brisbane too.

But Labor is at risk of losing Richmond on the NSW north coast to the Greens.

The Nationals might lose Cowper to an independent. And Liberals are trying to stave off an independent in Wannon and a Teal in Bradfield.

The Liberals hope to win against teals in Curtin, Kooyong and Goldstein. They want win all three, but that’s the order of likelihood in my view. They might not win any of them.

Liberals will also reclaim the seats of Moore in WA, Monash in Victoria and Calare in NSW. Sitting Coalition MPs in all three seats were elected three years ago but defected to the crossbench. All three are running against their old parties as independents this time around but I expect them all to lose.

So that’s the snapshot of what to watch out for this evening. Also, pre-poll votes – there were more than seven million of them – and they won’t get added to the count until after 9pm at the earliest. I would expect them to favour the Coalition, because they usually do. So don’t assume results are set in stone until we see what those numbers do, especially in very close seats.

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Australian federal election 2025 LIVE results and exit polls: All the key seats to watch

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