2021 Western Australian state election

2021 Western Australian state election

← 2017 13 March 2021 2025 →

All 59 seats in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly
and all 36 members in the Western Australian Legislative Council
30 Assembly seats are needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout1,467,159 (85.46%)
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Mark McGowan Mia Davies Zak Kirkup
Party Labor National Liberal
Leader since 23 January 2012 (2012-01-23) 21 March 2017 (2017-03-21) 24 November 2020
Leader's seat Rockingham Central Wheatbelt Dawesville
(lost seat)
Last election 41 seats 5 seats 13 seats
Seats before 40 6 13
Seats won 53 4 2
Seat change Increase 13 Decrease 2 Decrease 12
First preference vote 846,116 56,448 300,796
Percentage 59.92% 4.00% 21.30%
Swing Increase 17.70 Decrease 1.40 Decrease 9.90
2PP 69.70% 30.30%
2PP swing Increase 14.10 Decrease 14.10

Winning margin by electorate.

Premier before election

Mark McGowan
Labor

Elected Premier

Mark McGowan
Labor

The 2021 Western Australian state election was held on Saturday, March 13, to elect members to the Parliament of Western Australia, where all 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly and all 36 seats in the Legislative Council were up for election.

The incumbent Labor Government, led by Premier Mark McGowan, won a second consecutive four-year term in office in a historic landslide victory. Their primary challengers were the opposition Liberal Party, led by Opposition Leader Zak Kirkup, and the National Party, led by Mia Davies. Several minor parties also contested the election in the Assembly and Council.

ABC News psephologist Antony Green called the election for the Labor Party 42 minutes after the polls closed, with 0.7% of the vote counted.[1][2] Labor won 53 out of 59 of the seats in the Assembly, outdoing its previous record of 41 seats in 2017, whilst the Liberals had a wipeout loss and won only two seats, suffering a 14% two-party preferred swing.[3] The Nationals claimed the four remaining seats and became the largest opposition party in the Assembly. To date, the election is the most decisive result at any Australian state or federal election since Federation in terms of the percentage of lower house seats controlled by the governing party (89.8%),[4] and two-party preferred margin (69.7%–30.3%).[5] Labor's unprecedented victory extended to the Legislative Council, and the party claimed a majority of the seats in the upper house for the first time.[6]

Candidates were elected to single-member seats in the Legislative Assembly via full-preferential instant-runoff voting. In the Legislative Council, six candidates were elected in each of the six electoral regions through the single transferable vote system with group voting tickets. The Western Australian Electoral Commission conducted the elections.

  1. ^ "As it happened: Antony Green calls the election for Labor less than 45 minutes from close of polls". ABC News. 13 March 2021.
  2. ^ Law, Peter (14 March 2021). "WA a sea of red in Liberal bloodbath". The Sunday Times. West Australian Newspapers Limited. p. 3. Green formally called the election for Labor on ABC at 6.42pm, just 42 minutes after polls closed and with only 0.7 per cent of votes counted.
  3. ^ "WA Election: Sean L'Estrange loses Churchlands, leaving Liberals with just two Lower House seats". ABC News. 19 March 2021.
  4. ^ "Biggest State Election Landslides". Armarium Interreta. 12 March 2021. Archived from the original on 12 March 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  5. ^ "Mark McGowan claims WA election victory as Liberals all but wiped out". The New Daily. 14 March 2021.
  6. ^ "Legislative Council results". ABC Elections.