2023 New South Wales state election
The 2023 New South Wales state election was held on 25 March 2023 to elect the 58th Parliament of New South Wales, including all 93 seats in the Legislative Assembly and 21 of the 42 seats in the Legislative Council. The election was conducted by the New South Wales Electoral Commission (NSWEC).
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All 93 seats in the Legislative Assembly and 21 (of the 42) seats in the Legislative Council 47 Assembly seats are needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Registered | 5,521,688 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Turnout | 4,861,148 (88.04%) (2.96 pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The incumbent minority Liberal/National Coalition government, led by Premier Dominic Perrottet, sought to win a fourth successive four-year term in office, though were defeated by the opposition Labor Party, led by Opposition Leader Chris Minns. The Greens, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, other minor parties and several independents also contested the election. The outcome resulted in the first Labor government in the state in 12 years, ending the longest Coalition government in New South Wales history. It was also the first time since 1995 that Labor had won a New South Wales state election from opposition. The election also marked the second time in history that the Australian Labor Party gained control of the entirety of Mainland Australia at the federal and state levels simultaneously (leaving Tasmania as the only state with a Liberal government), a feat last achieved in 2007.
Though the Coalition was defeated, Labor were unable to win enough seats to govern in majority, resulting in a hung parliament. But Labor will be able to govern with the support of independent MPs Alex Greenwich, Greg Piper, and Joe McGirr, who will guarantee Labor confidence and supply. Piper also made an agreement with Labor to become the Speaker of the Lower House, a role which he had been preparing for by doing duty as a deputy speaker.
New South Wales has compulsory voting, with optional preferential, instant runoff voting in single-member seats for the lower house, and single transferable voting with optional preferential above-the-line voting in the proportionally represented upper house.
The online voting system iVote was not used in this election. The NSW government suspended iVote after the 2021 NSW local council elections saw five wards impacted by access outages, with three significant enough that analysis suggested as high as a 60% chance the wrong candidate had been elected, after which the NSW Supreme Court ordered those elections voided and re-run.