Political expert weighs in on likely federal election date

Political science professor Dominic O’Sullivan predicts the likely dates for the 2025 federal election.

Transcript

00:00It has to be held by the 17th of May.

00:07The term of a parliament is prescribed, and while the House of Representatives term could

00:14technically go a little longer, the half-Senate election has to be held and the votes counted

00:20in time for new Senators to be sworn in by the 1st of July when their term takes effect.

00:28So that effectively creates a deadline.

00:31Of course there's Easter and school holidays.

00:39School holidays in the different jurisdictions run between, I think, the 7th of April and

00:45about the 29th.

00:48So most of April is ruled out for that reason.

00:52There's no constitutional reason why elections can't be held on school holidays.

00:57But while I think voters regard voting as very important and take it seriously, they

01:03also regard it as a nuisance and it's not something they want to do while they're on

01:08holiday with their kids, for example.

01:10So I think that time is unlikely.

01:14So really we're looking most realistically at either March or May.

01:25There's an election in March in Western Australia, and given the importance of Western Australia

01:32to the government's majority, it holds a couple of seats there that it didn't expect to win

01:38at the last election, and that's what got it over the line to be able to form a majority

01:45government.

01:46So clashing with the Western Australian campaign would be a political risk for the federal

01:53government, and there'd have to be compelling reasons, I think, for it to want to take that

02:00risk.

02:01So most of March is also ruled out.

02:09Pre-poll voting is becoming increasingly popular, and that changes the nature of campaigns.

02:16It means that the policies that any party thinks are likely to make a really big impact

02:24on voters have to be announced fairly early on.

02:28You can't really save big announcements for the last few days before the election, because

02:35by then, 50% or more of the electorate may well have voted.