Both majors primary vote dropped since 2019 but the coalition had a far larger drop down from 40%+ to just under 36%
The coalition are four parties whose combined primary vote adds up to just under 36%. The main Liberal Party scored less than 24% of the vote
Labor on its own received 32.58 a small drop from 2019. However what they dropped was more than picked by the Greens and returned to Labor as preferences. Labor comfortably won the election as shown by the following figures
National two party count
Party / Coalition
Votes
Percentage %
Swing %
Liberal/National Coalition
5,706,844
48.19
-3.34
Australian Labor Party
6,135,508
51.81
+3.34
Primary votes alone do not decide the election but rather who can after preferences win more than 50% of the seats. Each seat is decided individually based on a combination of primary votes and preferences. If a candidate secures over 50% in primary votes they don't need preferences to secure that seat. Where they fall short of 50% on primary votes then preferences will be used to determine the winner.
A good example of this is where in some normally safe Liberal seats Independents won the seat even though they had less primary votes than the liberal candidate. This is because the Liberal candidate had less than 50% of the primary vote and failed to pick up enough preferences to get them over 50% whereas the Independents received massive preference support from Labor and the Greens and that got the independents into a winning position.
