The outcome of elections has little to do with supporters of the major parties. Historically, the party that forms government is decided by those who defect from the Coalition. Those who move further left remain within the radical Labor or Greens camps. Unlike the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) of the 50s and 60s, it is unlikely that left-leaning groups would preference the Coalition. This means that those conservatives who move away from the Coalition effectively hand government to Labor.

Labor governments are much like the Teals and other left-leaning independents. They rarely win on first preferences. In practice, Labor governments do not receive a mandate, especially where first preference votes are concerned. The preferential voting system means that deviations in voters’ party loyalties, particularly on the right, helps Labor to win government.

One key difference between the left and right of Australian politics is that the left tends to vote and act as one. However, this was not the case in 1961 (where it influenced an election outcome) when the Menzies government got over the line by two seats (one of whom had to be speaker, giving Menzies a single seat majority in the House) on the back of preferences from the DLP.

If we look at first preferences in 1961, Labor had 47.9 per cent against the Coalition’s 42.1 per cent. But the DLP with 7.6 per cent of the primary vote acted in the same way the Greens have for the ALP in recent years. The Coalition won despite having a lower first preference count than Labor.

The 1969 election followed a similar pattern. Gorton scraped over the line despite losing the two-party-preferred competition. Again, the DLP helped the Coalition win more seats in Victoria and to form government.

In 1972 and 1974, the ALP won the first preference contest outright and formed a majority government. In 1975, the Coalition romped home with 53.1 per cent of the first preference votes.

In all federal elections since, the Coalition has won government where it has beaten Labor on first preference votes and achieved more than 41 per cent. The 1998 and 2010 elections were the exception to this rule, but again, minor parties played a major role.

In 1998, One Nation scored 8.4 per cent of the first preference votes while the Democrats, who had negotiated with John Howard to enable the GST (while also trading away our ability to adopt nuclear energy), won 5.1 per cent of the vote. The Coalition limped home.

In 2010, the Greens won 11.8 per cent of the first preference votes. Greens preferences and support from independents (some like Andrew Wilkie who, with only 21.3 per cent first preference votes, received fewer primary votes than preferences to win his seat) enabled Labor to form a minority government.

These days, there remains some merit to the general rule that the Coalition needs to beat Labor on first preference votes and win north of 41 per cent of the primary vote to win government. Of course, the real contest is the number of seats, and minor parties are having an impact.

The 2022 election echoed the 1998 election in that neither of the major parties won more than 41 per cent of the first preference votes. However, it is now clear to most punters that Labor and the Greens are not a coalition in the same way the Teals are not a political party.

If the Greens’ 2022 first preferences are added to the ALP’s, then the Coalition lost on first preference votes to the tune of 44.8 to 35.7 per cent. So, a modern amendment to the general rule is that the Coalition must defeat the ALP and the Greens on first preference votes while also scoring above 41 per cent of the primary votes.

At the last election, if the 11.2 per cent of the first preference votes that went to One Nation, the United Australia Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and Katter’s Australian Party went instead to the Coalition, the general rule might have applied, and the Coalition would have received 46.9 per cent of the primary vote.

No doubt the popularity of the other conservative parties was fuelled by dissatisfaction with the Morrison government, but certainly not because Coalition voters defected to Labor or the Greens.

This has some clear implications for the Coalition.

Moving further left won’t win any favours from conservative voters.

In 2022, independent candidates won over 5 per cent of the primary vote. However, Zali Steggall was the only Teals candidate who beat all other candidates in her electorate on first preference votes.

Challenging Teals in a head-to-head contest achieves little point. They are an electoral anomaly that won because of our preferential system. Their insignificant impact and Labor-lite support for Woke policies means that their nickname is a misnomer. Mixing green and red doesn’t produce teal. It makes brown.

In the election before the Liberal Party was born, the United Australia Party-Country Party Coalition’s primary votes had fallen to around 24 per cent. That same year, independent candidates achieved over 12 per cent of the primary vote but gained only one seat.

For the Coalition, it all comes down to primary votes but it can be quite difficult to encourage conservatives to get with the program. That’s because conservatives think for themselves.

The reality is the preferential voting system gives the impression that you can give your first preference to a minor party and second preference to the Coalition and still end up with a conservative government. First past the post voting would be better for the Coalition because the tendency for conservatives to splinter is difficult to manage with preferences.

Menzies brought together some 18 different non-labour groups to form the Liberal Party, Australia’s most successful political party in terms of electoral success. Although Labor won the 1946 election, it did not win government again until 1972, primarily because of the fallout from the Great Labor Split of 1955.

To be sure, there are many reasons to vote for other conservative parties. One party is even offering free membership for defecting Liberals. But like Labor’s 1955 split, splintering the Coalition will only splinter their primary vote and help to undo Menzies’ legacy.

And that’s how you ensure Labor wins the next election.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is a political scientist and political commentator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA), and a Member of the Royal Society of NSW. He is Managing Editor of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of CILTA, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022. All opinions in this article are the author’s own and are not intended to reflect the views of any other person or organisation.