There’s been a lot of discussion comparing the recent City of Brisbane council election to the 2022 federal election. Both elections saw a high Greens vote. At the federal election, the Greens won three seats in the inner city of Brisbane, something which exceeded expectations. Expectations were higher at the council election, with talk of the Greens winning up to six wards. The Greens did gain a swing, and won a second ward, but the eventual results didn’t quite meet expectations.
There are quite a few differences between the two elections which plays into the different outcomes – a lower Labor vote, a higher LNP vote, and a different preferential voting system, all of which helped the LNP in a relative contest against Labor and the Greens.
So I thought I would try to compare like with like – the primary vote in the two elections.
I was able to convert results of the 2022 federal election to the 26 Brisbane City Council wards, which then allows me to compare the primary vote at the two elections. To start with, let’s look at the council-wide change in vote.
Just to confirm this is just counting the federal 2022 results within the City of Brisbane. In the case of electorates that overlap the border, it’s only counting those SA1s contained in the City.
The Liberal National Party vote was about 11.5% higher at the council election, while the Labor vote was 5.9% lower.
The Greens vote was almost the same at the two elections. Indeed it was actually slightly higher at the council election. The proportionally lower seat result was not due to a lower primary vote, at least across the whole city.
Also bear in mind that council ballot papers were much smaller than for federal elections, so the ‘other’ vote was much lower, which explains why the change in vote doesn’t add up to zero.
Then next up I have made some maps showing the change in vote for each party in each ward from 2022 to 2024.
For the Greens map, I’ve overlaid the three federal electorates they won in 2022 in red lines.
The Greens vote went up in fourteen out of 26 wards, which is in line with a slight increase citywide.
The biggest changes tended to be in inner city wards targeted by the Greens, with the primary vote 5-10% higher in Central, Paddington, The Gabba and Walter Taylor, and a smaller increase in Coorparoo.
There were also significantly higher Greens votes in Moorooka and Forest Lake, while the Greens vote was significantly higher in a string of wards on the northern edge of the city.
If you overlay the federal electorates, the biggest increases appear to have been in Ryan and Brisbane, the two federal seats the Greens won by the smallest margins. Griffith is more of a mixed bag, with the Greens doing significantly worse in Morningside. This might be explained by some campaign effects and incumbency, with a Labor local councillor and the Greens not focusing on the ward, but it’s also worth noting that the Greens had a 9.9% swing on primary votes in Morningside, their fourth best result. It just wasn’t as good as the Greens vote in that area in 2022.
I also made maps for the LNP and Labor vote but they are less interesting. The Labor vote was lower in most areas, and the LNP vote was higher in most areas.
So what does this tell us about the different outcomes in 2022 compared to 2024. Firstly, it shows that it was not due to a differential primary vote – the Greens had a big uptick in their vote in all of the wards where they came close to winning.
They lost those wards due to a combination of different shares of the vote for the other parties, and optional preferential voting. The LNP started a lot further ahead than they had in 2022, and Labor was much further back, thus having less to offer. OPV also meant that those Labor preferences were less helpful in reining in the LNP.
It also suggests that the Greens may be having some success in increasing their vote in their inner-city heartlands now that they have incumbent federal MPs, although this doesn’t account for differences in voting patterns between the two levels of government. This is obviously a major factor in support for Labor and the LNP.
It is important that this not be taken as a prediction – it doesn’t mean the Greens will do better in 2025 in areas where their 2024 vote was higher. But it does debunk the suggestion that the Greens not winning as many wards as they did electorates in 2022 was due to the decision of voters to not vote for the Greens. More people voted for the Greens in 2024 than in 2022 – but the other voters tended to vote in a way that was less helpful for the Greens, and were strongly encouraged to do so by the OPV system.