1978 New South Wales state election

1978 New South Wales state election

← 1976 7 October 1978 (1978-10-07) 1981 →

All 99 seats in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
and 15 (of the 44) seats in the New South Wales Legislative Council
50 Assembly seats were needed for a majority
  First party Second party
 
Leader Neville Wran Peter Coleman
Party Labor Liberal/National coalition
Leader since 17 November 1973 16 December 1977
Leader's seat Bass Hill Fuller
(lost seat)
Last election 50 seats 48 seats
Seats won 63 35
Seat change Increase 13 Decrease 13
Popular vote 1,615,949 1,031,780
Percentage 57.77% 36.88%
Swing Increase 8.02 Decrease 9.18
TPP 60.70% 39.30%
TPP swing Increase 9.10 Decrease 9.10

Two-candidate-preferred margin by electorate

Premier before election

Neville Wran
Labor

Elected Premier

Neville Wran
Labor

A general election was held in the state of New South Wales, Australia, on Saturday 7 October 1978. The result was a landslide victory for the Labor Party under Neville Wran, popularly known as the "Wranslide."

It is notable for being so successful for the Labor Party that it tallied 57 percent of the primary vote, the largest primary vote for any party in over a century. Having gone into the election with a razor-thin majority of one seat, Labor scored a 13-seat swing, giving it a strong majority of 63 seats. Labor even managed to defeat the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Coleman, in his own electorate. The seats of many other prominent Shadow Ministers fell to Labor as well. Labor also won many seats in areas long reckoned as Coalition heartland. Among them were four seats that Labor had never won before this election--Willoughby (contested for the Liberal Party by Nick Greiner who later became Premier), Manly, Wakehurst and Cronulla. It also came within striking distance of taking several more. For instance, it pared down the margin in Pittwater, the seat of former premier Bob Askin, to only 1.4 percent.

The state's first elections to the New South Wales Legislative Council, the state parliament's upper house, were held simultaneously. Voters had approved a referendum to introduce a directly elected council in June of that year. Starting with this election, Single transferable voting (STV) was used to fill the Council seats up for election.[1] The election of 15 members in a single contest was the largest District Magnitude seen in a STV election since the 1925 Ireland Senate election.[1] It would be surpassed, again by NSW in 1995 when it began to elect 21 in a single contest.[2]

The election was also the first in the state to be contested by the Australian Democrats.

Labor continued to campaign heavily on the strengths of Wran himself, with the slogan "Wran's our man".

  1. ^ Australian Politics and Elections Archives. https://elections.uwa.edu.au/listelections.lasso?ElectionType=6&State=NSW "Since 1978, the Legislative Council has had from 42 to 45 members with a third or half the membership to be elected at each election. Members have been elected by proportional representation using the single transferable vote method with modifications which have varied over the period since 1978."
  2. ^ Farrell and McAllister, The Australian Electoral System, p. 50