2017 Western Australian state election
The 2017 Western Australian state election was held on Saturday 11 March 2017 to elect members to the Parliament of Western Australia, including all 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly and all 36 seats in the Legislative Council. The eight-and-a-half-year two-term incumbent Liberal–WA National government, led by Premier Colin Barnett, was defeated in a landslide by the Labor opposition, led by Opposition Leader Mark McGowan.
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All 59 seats in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly and all 36 members in the Western Australian Legislative Council 30 Assembly seats were needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The map on the left shows the first party preference by electorate. The map on the right shows the final two-party preferred vote result by electorate. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Labor won 41 of the 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly—a 12-seat supermajority. This was WA Labor's strongest performance in a state election at the time, and formed the largest majority government and seat tally in Western Australian parliamentary history until that point. Additionally, Labor exceeded all published opinion polling, winning 55.5 percent of the two-party-preferred vote from a state record landslide 12.8-point two-party swing. It was the worst defeat of a sitting government in Western Australia, as well as one of the worst defeats of a sitting state or territory government since Federation.
Labor also became the largest party in the Legislative Council with 14 of the 36 seats. The Labor government thus required at least five additional votes from non-government members to pass legislation.