Parliament of Tasmania, House of Assembly election
Election of 3 March 2018
Government in office and parliamentary support before and after the election
Government in office at election
Government in office after election
Enrolment and voting
Tasmania, House of Assembly votes and seats won
Election held on 3 March 2018
Criteria for the inclusion of parties in this table are set out in the Glossary under 'listed party'
| Party Name | First preference vote n | First preference vote share % | Change from previous election % | Seats won n | Uncontested seats held n | Seat share % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal Party | 168,303 | 50.26 | -0.96 | 13 | 0 | 52.00 |
| Australian Labor Party | 109,264 | 32.63 | +5.30 | 10 | 0 | 40.00 |
| Tasmanian Greens | 34,491 | 10.30 | -3.53 | 2 | 0 | 8.00 |
| Jacqui Lambie Network | 10,579 | 3.16 | * | 0 | ||
| Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party | 7,640 | 2.28 | * | 0 | ||
| Independents | 3,609 | 1.08 | -0.20 | 0 | ||
| T4T Tasmanians for Tasmania | 985 | 0.29 | * | 0 | ||
| Votes for other than listed parties | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 | |||
| Totals | 334,871 | 100.00 | 25 | 0 | 100.00 |
Previous election in this series | Display Chart
* Party did not contest previous election or did not meet criteria for listing, or contested previous election under a different party name.
Notes
Government in office after election: The Hodgman Liberal Party government was returned to office with its majority reduced to a single seat; even though it lost 1 percent of its first preference vote, the Liberal Party retained the support of more than 50 percent of the electors.
Electoral system and voting: The Constitution Amendment Act 1906 reduced the number of Assembly districts to five, the boundaries of which were to be identical with the five Commonwealth electoral districts. The 1906 Act specified six members in each electoral district, but this was increased to seven from 1959, and then reduced to five from 1998 creating a House of Assembly of 25 (see the notes to the 1998 House of Assembly elections).
The Electoral Act 1907 introduced proportional representation by the single transferable vote (STV) method to elect all members of the Assembly, a method which became known as the Hare-Clark system. For details of the adoption of STV and references on the operation of the electoral system, see the notes to the 1909 House of Assembly elections.
From 1980, candidates' names were rotated within party lists on the ballots under a system of Robson rotation; for details, see the note to the 1979 House of Assembly election.
The Electoral Amendment Act of 1917 provided that '... casual vacancies be filled, not by a fresh poll of the electorate [by-election] but by a re-count [countback] of the ballot papers which elected the vacating member. For a brief summary of changes to the electoral system from 1909 to 1994, see Terry Newman, Representation of the Tasmanian People, Expanded edition 1803-1994, Appendix 2 (Hobart: Tasmanian Parliamentary Library, 1994, ISBN 0724642475); and see generally David M Farrell and Ian McAllister, The Australian Electoral System: Oirigins, Variations and Consequences, (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2006, ISBN 0868408581).
Jacqui Lambie Network: The Jacqui Lambie Network was formed in 2015 by Jacqui Lambie who had been a senator from Tasmania from 2014 to 2017. First elected to the Senate in 2013 as a candidate for the Palmer United Party, she resigned from the party in 2014 and sat in the Senate as an Independent before contesting the 2016 double dissolution election as a candidate for the Jacqui Lambie Network. Jacqui Lambie was reelected to the Senate in 2016 but resigned in November 2017 when she revealed that she was disqualified to sit in the Senate because section 44 of the Australian Constitution prohibited members of the Commonwealth Parliament from holding dual British-Australian citizenship.
The Jacqui Lambie Network fielded 12 candidates at this Tasmanian Assembly election. Although focused on federal issues, the party had a 'range of policies that address the problems facing everyday Tasmanians'. This included such topics as poker machine gambling, the health system, medical cannabis and public housing. None of the candidates was elected.
Independents: The vote share of Independents shown in the table above is the sum of first preference votes won by 6 'Ungrouped' candidates, 1 in the electoral district of Bass, 3 in Braddon, and 2 in Lyons. None of these candidates was elected.
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party: The Shooters Party first fielded candidates in 1993 at the federal Senate election in New South Wales to protest the limitations on access to guns that had followed from an agreement between state and federal governments. The party has contested elections in all states and gained representation in the New South Wales Legislative Council since 1995 and the Western Australian Legislative Council since 2013. The party has modified its name to appeal to other groups with similar interests.
This Assembly election in 2018 was the first contested by the Shooters Party although a candidate for the party ran for the 2017 Tasmanian Legislative Council elections and the party had fielded candidates for Senate elections in Tasmania since 2010. The party fielded 11 candidates at this Assembly election; none was elected.
T4T Tasmanians 4 Tasmania: This political grouping argued that decisions affecting Tasmania were made in the boardrooms of Sydney and Melbourne and that locals should have more direct say in government policy. The party endorsed 4 candidates but none was elected.
Sources
Information in the tables above was calculated from the Tasmanian Electoral Commission website '2018 Election Results', online here [accessed 18 March 2018].