Melbourne’s streets buzzed with election fever, but the Liberal Party’s dreams of a comeback crashed hard on April 16. Victoria, long a battleground for Australia’s political heavyweights, delivered a gut-punch to the Liberals, swinging even further into Labor’s arms. The results, sealed in official tallies and splashed across government releases, tell a story of a state doubling down on its leftward lean, leaving the opposition reeling.
Labor, led by Premier Jacinta Allan, didn’t just hold ground—they gained it. The Australian Electoral Commission’s final count showed Labor snagging 56 of the 88 lower house seats, up from their 2022 haul of 55. The Liberals, under John Pesutto, managed only 21 seats, a bruising drop from their 27 last time. The Nationals, their coalition partners, clung to nine. In the upper house, Labor’s grip tightened too, with 22 of the 40 seats, while the Liberals and Nationals scraped together just 12. The numbers don’t lie: Victoria’s voters weren’t buying what the Liberals were selling.
The swing was starkest in Melbourne’s suburbs, where working-class and middle-class electorates like Cranbourne and Narre Warren flipped harder to Labor. In Cranbourne, Labor’s vote surged by 4.2 percentage points, a figure confirmed in the Victorian Electoral Commission’s breakdown. Narre Warren followed suit, with a 3.8-point shift. Even in traditional Liberal strongholds like Brighton, the opposition’s margin shrank, with Labor slicing their lead by 2.1 points. These weren’t random blips—preliminary booth data, cross-checked by the state’s electoral body, showed Labor’s campaign resonating across urban and regional lines.
Why the rout? The Liberals banked on cost-of-living gripes to claw back ground, hammering Labor over rising energy bills and housing woes. But voters, it seems, stuck with Allan’s pitch: steady investment in hospitals, schools, and renewable energy. On March 10, the state government rolled out a $1.2 billion hospital upgrade package, detailed in a Department of Health report, which hit electorates like Werribee and Melton hard. Labor’s $850 million solar and wind push, announced on February 3 via a Department of Energy release, also played well in green-leaning seats like Footscray. The Liberals’ counter—tax cuts and deregulation—fell flat, with their policy platform, unveiled on March 15, failing to spark much beyond their base.
Regional Victoria, once a Liberal-National fortress, cracked too. In Mildura, a 2.9-point swing to Labor flipped a seat the Nationals had held for a decade, per the electoral commission’s April 17 update. Shepparton, another rural bastion, saw Labor close the gap to under 1,000 votes. The state’s infrastructure blitz—$3.4 billion for regional rail, flagged in a January 22 government budget paper—likely swayed voters tired of bumpy roads and slow trains.
The Liberals’ campaign wasn’t without flashes of fight. Pesutto’s team poured resources into marginal seats like Bayswater, where their March 28 pledge for a $200 million local road fix drew cheers at rallies. But Labor matched them blow for blow, announcing a $150 million school upgrade in the same electorate on April 2, per a Department of Education notice. In the end, Labor’s ground game—fueled by a volunteer army and a slick ad campaign—outmuscled the Liberals’ hopeful but scattered push.
On election night, Melbourne’s tally rooms were a study in contrast. Labor volunteers hugged and hollered as results rolled in, while Liberal staffers stared grimly at screens. By April 17, when the last postal votes were counted, the verdict was clear: Victoria had not only rejected a Liberal revival but leaned harder into Labor’s vision. The state’s electoral map, redrawn in bold red, left no room for doubt.
Labor now holds 56 lower house seats, the Liberals 21, and the Nationals nine. The upper house splits 22-12-6 among Labor, the Liberal-National coalition, and crossbenchers. The primary vote share, per the Australian Electoral Commission, clocked Labor 56.4% for Labor, 34.1% for the Liberals, and 9.5% for the Nationals.