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Swing Seats

The 2004 Federal election will be decided in a dozen or more key seats.

Analysis of the notional two-party preferred swing needed for these seats to change hands in the House of Representatives election shows the 2004 poll may be one of the tightest in recent memory.

Further examination reveals that while the contest will be tight the result may see the eventual victor with a large majority.

This is because of the large number of Federal seats with a margin of five percent (5%) or less.

Based on the results of the 2001 election and adjusted for the effect of electoral redistributions in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia there are 31 seats with margins of five percent or less.

The redistributions have also changed the notional composition of the House of Representative so that prior to the election the Coalition will have 83 seats, Labor 63, Green 1 and Independents3, making at total of 150.

This gives the Government a majority of 16 seats and it would have to lose eight seats to be defeated.

Alternatively, Labor needs to win an additional 13 seats for it to form government.

Critically, to achieve this Labor requires just a swing of 2.2 percent.

But a swing of 3 percent will deliver 18 seats, and 5 percent swing will deliver Labor 24 seats.

Conversely, a swing to the Government of 2 percent will deliver it 7 new seats further increasing its majority. A swing of 5 percent will see Labor lose 16 seats and give the Government a massive majority.

The small margins in these swing seats on both sides has resulted in a tight contest, but not might result in a close outcome if uniform moderate swings occur.

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