WA election 2025: State results buoy Labor’s hopes for Federal election

Anthony Albanese will privately rue the cyclone blowing away his plans to join WA Premier Roger Cook on the campaign trail and move straight into a Federal election after Labor’s strong showing in the west over the weekend.

Labor has held on to a suite of seats the Liberals were strongly targeting in areas where the conservatives also want to win back Federal votes.

Saturday night’s result has buoyed Federal Labor hopes that it can hold on to the crucial gains made in WA three years ago.

The party won nine seats in 2022 — picking up four from the Liberals — meaning West Australians played a vital role in giving Mr Albanese a majority government.

The Prime Minister — who is two visits shy of his promised 30 trips west in this term — has consistently been confident about holding all nine and adding the new electorate of Bullwinkel to Labor’s tally.

Now, Labor insiders say while there is still work to do ahead of the May Federal election, nothing they want is out of reach.

Internal polling suggests the party’s primary vote in WA is holding close to the 2022 level.

In particular, Labor holding onto Bicton, Bateman and Riverton has given confidence that the energetic Sam Lim can keep Tangney despite its slim 2.8-point margin.

As the Liberal candidate for the seat Howard Ong said on Saturday, “Anyone who tells you that they are not looking at the results will be lying to you.”

But Liberal strategists insist, despite the party’s terrible showing on the State level, they haven’t lost hope of taking Tangney back and winning Bullwinkel.

The party will also be looking keenly at the results in Butler, Mindarie and Wanneroo, all within the Federal seat of Pearce.

Voters in all three abandoned Labor in droves with swings upwards of 19 per cent — more than the statewide primary vote drop — but less than half of it came back to the Liberals.

Pearce MP Tracey Roberts is battling serious health issues that have affected her ability to campaign.

Federal Liberals have been quietly mentioning Pearce for months in discussions about electoral prospects, but not with the vehemence they give to taking back crown jewels Curtin or Tangney.

Three-cornered contests in Forrestfield and Kalamunda turned out to be more two-cornered, where single-digit primary votes for the Nationals will have dented Mia Davies’ hopes of winning Bullwinkel for her party come the Federal poll.

Pulling back from the detail, the broader trends mirror what pollsters and strategists see at the national level.

The big issues for voters proved the same in the State election as the Federal one: cost of living, housing and health, says political researcher David Talbot, whose firm Talbot Mills runs focus groups for Labor at both levels.

Underlying these is the bigger picture vibe of which leader is more trusted to run a steady ship.

But while Mr Talbot said everyone — including him — would be doing the “tea leaf reading” of Saturday’s results, he cautioned against reading too much into it.

“My sense is that people are focusing on the State election, and then will turn their attention when the time is right to the Federal election,” he said.

As with the by-election in Melbourne’s outer suburbs last month, voters might be pulling back from Labor but they’re not turning to the Liberals.

Instead, preferences are spraying unpredictably across a wide range of independents and minor parties.

Redbridge pollster Kos Samaras points the finger at “millennials with kids” living in outer suburbs

“They are feeling cost-of-living pressures the most, they’re swinging all over the place,” he said, predicting the same forces would be at play in the Federal poll.

The Prime Minister might not have shared a democracy sausage with Mr Cook but he’ll still be hoping some of WA Labor’s glow stays around to help the Federal brand.