Federal election - just how close it was ...

Excerpt from The Age:

Howard only 1.5% from being PM again

5 January 2008

It fel like a Labor landslide. Yet John Howard and his Coalition government came within 1.5% of holding on to power at the recent federal election, final figures show.

The Australian Electoral Commission says the Coalition ended up with 47.44% of the two-party vote after strongly outpolling Labor in the record 2.5 million postal, pre-poll and absentee votes counted after election night.

The final count shows the election was closer than it appeared on election night.

Not only did the Coalition haul back Labor's lead in overall votes, but the election outcome was decided in an extraordinary number of close seats that could have gone either way.

In the end, Labor won 83 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, the Coalition 65 and independents two. But nine of Labor's 83 seats were won by margins of less than 1.5%.

Had the Coalition won them, the seats would have been split 74-all, with two conservative independents holding the balance of power — and most likely using it to give John Howard a fifth term in office.

Labor's narrow wins included Maxine McKew's victory over Mr Howard in Bennelong (by 1.4%), the Victorian seats of Corangamite (0.85%) and Deakin (1.41%), and three seats won by tiny margins: Robertson (NSW, 0.11%), Flynn (Qld, 0.16%) and the Darwin seat of Solomon (0.19%).

With just 320 more votes in the right places, the Coalition could have cut Labor's majority to just 10 seats, a less than commanding tally. With fewer than 6000 more votes in the right seats, it could have held onto government.

But there was even more luck on the Coalition's side. It won 13 of its 65 seats by less than 2%, five of them by less than 0.22%.

They included the Melbourne fringe seat of McEwen, which former tourism minister Fran Bailey held by just 12 votes (0.01%), the Brisbane seat of Bowman, held by 64 votes (0.04%), the former Labor seat of Swan, won by 164 votes (0.11%), and the Queensland seats of Dickson (0.13%) and Herbert (0.21%).

All told, the Coalition won half its seats — 32 out of 65 — by majorities of less than 6%. Labor won 25 of its 83 by the same margin, including the seat of Melbourne, where Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner beat the Greens' Adam Bandt by just 4.71%.

Most of the 57 MPs in marginal seats now face new uncertainties, with federal redistributions likely in every state except South Australia before the next federal election.
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