Voters in the Northern Territory go to the polls on Saturday and it appears likely that the first-term Country Liberal government will be swept aside after a tumultuous four years in power.
The CLP won the 2012 election thanks to large swings in outback electorates but its position has since become much weaker.
The territory’s legislative assembly consists of 25 seats and each one covers a very small population. In 2016 each electorate has an average enrolment of 5,420.
A majority of seats in the assembly cover the Darwin and Palmerston urban areas. There are two seats in the Alice Springs area and one covering Katherine. The remainder cover remote communities, most of which are dominated by Indigenous voters.
The small population and large areas covered make these electorates unlike most seats contested in Australian elections. Incumbent MPs have traditionally benefited from a great deal of loyalty from their constituents, many of whom would have met the MP personally. A large proportion of the vote is cast in remote settlements and it can be difficult for parties to reach these voters.
For most of the NT’s political history Labor has dominated seats in remote areas, while the Country Liberal party dominated the cities. Marginal seats in Darwin have generally decided election results. The CLP held power from 1974 until 2001. Labor then held power for three terms until 2012.
Labor’s loss in 2012 was not a shock but it happened in a surprising way. It effectively held on in its Darwin marginal seats but suffered massive swings in remote electorates, losing a number of those seats to Indigenous CLP candidates.
The new CLP government started the parliamentary term with a solid majority, holding 16 out of 25 seats, but has seen this margin steadily chipped away.
Three Indigenous MPs left the CLP and formed a local branch of the Palmer United party. One of the three MPs later returned to the government, while the other two became independents. Two other MPs left the CLP in 2015, leaving the government short of a majority.
Some of these independents are retiring at the upcoming election but others are running for re-election, along with a large surge in other independent candidates. This has resulted in a record number of candidates.
In particular the former chief minister Terry Mills has returned to contest his old seat of Blain, in the Palmerston area. Mills left the parliament in 2014 and the traditionally safe CLP seat was won easily in a byelection by Nathan Barrett. But he was forced to resign from the ministry and from the party in mid-2016, and will not be running for re-election on Saturday.
There is not a lot of polling out of the NT but none of the signs are good for Adam Giles’ Country Liberal government. There have been two polls: one in July 2016 and another in March 2015. Both showed Labor polling well over 60% after preferences. Labor also performed particularly well in the NT at this year’s federal election, gaining a swing of 7.4% after preferences.
If these polls are accurate, we’d expect to see the CLP lose numerous seats to Labor, and Labor would be likely to form government, ending four years of conservative rule in the territory.
