Over four months, Labor clawed its way back from an uninspiring showing in the polls to a historic victory so unbelievable even the party's most faithful servants couldn't have imagined it.
Anthony Albanese knew exactly where he wanted to go on the first day of his re-election campaign and that was straight into enemy territory.
At a suburban doctor's office just outside Brisbane, he parked himself in front of a Medicare-branded backdrop ready to tussle with the hungry media pack.
The press stop would prove to be auspicious. It was the first of countless times during the five-week campaign the prime minister would wield a Medicare card in front of television cameras, a prop in the party's strategy to focus the message on territory where it had the upper hand.
Donald Trump was also invoked, though less obviously than the lime-green wall. Health Minister Mark Butler, who appeared alongside his leader, didn't say the president's name but the subtext was clear when he claimed Peter Dutton preferred "American healthcare, where everyone pays to see a GP".
There was no Coalition policy to wind back Medicare, in fact, the opposition had vowed to match Labor's spending, but that didn't matter: the spectre of the private healthcare-reliant United States was planted in an election almost guaranteed to be won and lost on the cost of living.
All of this made sense in the context of the party's election strategy. It was the location of the urgent care clinic that raised eyebrows — smack bang in the middle of Dutton's electorate.
The choice was an early signal of Albanese's persona going into the campaign: calm, confident and a bit cheeky. When reporters pressed him on why he chose to start the race on his opponent's home turf, he offered casually that it was simply the most marginal seat in Queensland.
There's always an element of mind games in election campaigns, and this was no different. But after months spent trailing the Coalition in the polls, which were widely predicting minority government, Albanese knew he couldn't start the race on the defensive — he was there to win seats and wanted everyone to know it.
Dutton held Dickson on just 1.7 per cent and Labor's internal polling showed signs of a swing in Queensland. But it had always been marginal, and in the previous two elections, Labor candidate Ali France couldn't get it over the line. History was also against them: no opposition leader had ever lost their seat at a federal election.
If senior members of the party were hopeful this time could be different, few outside the room truly believed that just a handful of weeks later the alternative prime minister would be ousted from the seat he had held for almost a quarter of a century.
The Coalition's loss on May 3 was so devastating and so complete that attention inevitably went to what they did wrong, rather than what Labor did right.
It was a combination of ingredients — in what exact quantities cannot be known — that created the recipe that delivered the emphatic victory for the government.
Dutton's popularity, or lack thereof, the Coalition's misjudged election strategy, and events outside either party's control all played a role in the red landslide, but underneath it all was a Labor campaign machine described by multiple insiders as the most effective they've ever seen.
The result was a feat not achieved by the incumbent party since Harold Holt in 1966: Labor didn't lose a single seat. (At the time of publishing, one seat, Calwell, remains uncalled due to a complicated count. Another is headed for a recount, but Labor isn't in the running.)
Instead, the party gained 16. Not only did Labor knock out an opposition leader to the right, but it also reduced the Greens to one seat in the house on the left, claiming its leader, too.
The scale of the victory is even grander when compared to expectations only a few months ago. "The published polls were correct in saying the government was in trouble," says Campbell White, who led Labor's internal polling. "It was a four-month effort to turn that around."
The numbers
Two things are true in the almost-final vote numbers: Labor won 62 per cent of seats in the House of Representatives, one seat short of Howard's 1996 record, and just under 35 per cent of the primary vote at the time of publishing, more than the previous election but still among the party's lowest results.
Labor had 33 electorates on their priority seat list going into the election. These races were the beneficiaries of big advertising spends, prime ministerial visits and high-profile candidates. They included Dickson, Bonner, Brisbane and Ryan in Queensland — all but one ended up falling to the government.
There were also surprise gains that Labor didn't see coming. Like Petrie to the north of Brisbane, Hughes in south-western Sydney and Melbourne, where Labor knocked out Greens leader Adam Bandt after 15 years.
"We no doubt underestimated the number of seats at play," says a senior campaign source. "No one expected to win as many as we have."
Australia's preferential voting system played a big role. The Greens, for example, maintained their national primary vote, but lost two of their Brisbane seats to Labor after the Coalition was knocked out of the race.
The sea of red spread far and wide: Four of Tasmania's five seats were gained or retained, seven seats were picked up in Queensland, Labor's 2022 gains in Western Australia were maintained and grew by one, and the ultra-marginal South Australian seat of Sturt also went the government's way.
Dutton's dream of a path through outer-suburban New South Wales and Victoria also failed to materialise. Gains that the opposition were sure of, like Gilmore and Aston, went to Labor. The Coalition was further pushed from the inner cities, building on the trend of the last election.
"I'm usually pretty suspicious that campaign strategy matters and that those 35 days after writs are issued change anything, but what Labor managed to do in terms of turning votes into seats is phenomenal — the best that I've seen," says Jill Sheppard, a political scientist from the Australian National University and a former political advisor to the Liberals and Nationals.
"Labor has managed to pull off something that will be worth studying for a long time."
The strategy
By dawn on March 28, when Albanese drove to Government House to officially dissolve parliament, Labor staffers were already five months into what they saw as their re-election campaign.
It had begun exactly six months before polling day, according to Labor's National Secretary Paul Erickson, in the Adelaide electorate of Sturt (then a marginal Liberal seat, now belonging to Labor with a 7 per cent swing).
Albanese stood up in front of hundreds of party faithful and vowed to make 100,000 TAFE places free for students every year if he was returned to government. "No one held back, and no one left behind. That principle has guided me my whole life," he told the eager crowd.
Planning for the campaign had begun in earnest months earlier, just after last year's budget. Erickson, who gave an address at the National Press Club this week, says a key pillar of that plan was getting the message out early and that meant holding nothing back.
The Coalition took the opposite approach, delaying the release of some policies until the final weeks of the campaign and the actual details of others until the last minute. The rationale some in the party put forward was that Dutton had spent much of 2024 stepping back and letting Albanese fail.
By contrast, down south, senator-turned-MP Anne Urquhart says she was preparing for this election years in advance. At the last federal poll, on a two-party preferred basis, voters swung towards Labor in every state and territory except in Tasmania. It was the second time the party had gone backwards in the state.
"After the 2022 result, I thought if we're going to have any luck in 2025 … I'm going to have to really concentrate on opportunities to develop more about what we need, to get out and talk to people, and start fundraising," the former Tasmanian senator says. "All that, in mind, with not me as the candidate."
Urquhart, who was a union official before becoming a politician, still had years to go on her Senate term when she tapped on the shoulder and asked to depart the upper house to run in Braddon, a target seat for Labor that the Liberals held by 8 per cent.
"I had a campaign committee of four and three of them had never run campaigns before, so it was a bit of a learning experience," Urquhart says. "I thought if I was going to win, I would win by a little bit, just get over the mark by about 100 votes, but I was just blown away by the result."
In the end, Braddon saw a swing towards Labor of around 15 per cent — the largest in the country. The neighbouring electorates also received big swings, well above the national average, leaving the Liberals with no presence in the state.
As for how and why that happened, Urquhart has a couple of ideas. "We went into the election period talking about the things that mattered to people. Health was the really big issue up here," she says. "Even with the overarching national perspective, we were able to drill down and bring in the hyper-local experience."
Labor's decision to prioritise their Medicare pitch to voters allowed two campaigns to play out in tandem: At a national level, Albanese could talk about the plan to improve bulk-billing rates and remind voters of Dutton's record as health minister. Locally, candidates could point to tangible plans to build urgent care clinics in the community, taking the debate beyond the abstract. The message was united but easily tailored to each electorate.
Medicare was also a way for the party to be seen as addressing cost-of-living concerns, widely accepted as the number one issue on voters' minds, while staying in Labor-friendly territory. That the Medicare branding is recognisable to just about every Australian and the program is a source of national pride was a bonus.
Throughout the campaign, leaders and candidates remained relentlessly on message. At debates, media conferences, and meet-and-greets, Albanese would repeatedly pull out his own Medicare card to drive home the point — a strip of white tape obscuring his identification number.
Erickson, in his press club speech, described the Medicare approach as the "pinnacle" of Labor's argument to voters to grant them a second term. The flagship policy — a $8.5 billion promise to dramatically increase the number of doctors who bulk-bill — was announced in February, around two and a half months before election day.
"In past campaigns, a major party might have held back its centrepiece policy commitment until the final five weeks to maximise cut through," Erickson says.
Dutton immediately matched it, but according to former Labor minister Craig Emerson, it didn't matter. "When the Coalition talks about Medicare, people just don't believe them," he says. "When Labor does, they do."
Emerson, a Queenslander who retired from politics over a decade ago, was part of the group tasked with reviewing Labor's 2022 campaign, where they won government for the first time in almost nine years with a one-seat majority.
He credits Erickson, and the wider campaign apparatus, for driving this year's stronger result. "He is deeply analytical, they tested everything. They didn't just say 'why don't we do this' they would test it and see if it resonated or not."
One of the key improvements this time around, according to Emerson, was the strength of the communications between campaign headquarters and the leadership group on the road.
"They were tracking everything … what the Coalition was doing and what they weren't doing," he says. This extended beyond traditional media to the online world of social media, influencers and podcasters.
The communication system meant Labor could quickly respond when the Coalition slipped up, Emerson says, flooding social media with potent sound bites. "I didn't see that from the Liberals," he adds. "It's not everything, but it's something, especially if it's true that in the last week there are still a lot of undecided voters."
The leader
Albanese is a 62-year-old man. He is also the prime minister of Australia, leading an establishment centre-left government, a job he inherited after almost three decades in parliament.
On social media, however, he was just as often a scruffy university student, borne of hardship and public housing in Sydney's inner west.
The second Albanese, conveyed via black and white photos cut together over trending songs, was part of a deliberate "hot Albo" social media strategy designed to capture the elusive youth vote increasingly at risk of flowing to the Greens.
An ABC investigation in February, before the election was officially called, found Dutton and the Coalition were significantly outperforming Albanese and Labor on TikTok — a social media platform popular with younger voters.
The prime minister was posting more often than the opposition leader, but the latter's videos were being played roughly 10 times more. That statistic, however, doesn't capture whether viewers were engaging with it positively or sending it to their group chats to mock.
While social media is not a new part of campaigning, both sides' engagement with podcasters and influencers in the lead up to and during this election was a fresh development.
Albanese appeared on several popular podcasts, including former The Bachelor contestant Abbie Chatfield's It's A Lot and the Betoota Advocate's Betoota Talks. "Why pay for a 30-second ad when you could have a two-hour ad? Would you rather be grilled by Sarah Ferguson or hugged by Abbie Chatfield?" advertising executive Todd Sampson told the ABC's Gruen Nation.
The campaign realised that for the strategy to work as intended, they had to target the person and message they were putting forward to the content creator publishing the content. Authenticity is the goal, so it's no use trying to jam a conversation about politics into a podcast primarily about personal finance, for example.
Chatfield opened the 90-minute episode by noting she "understood people have issues with Anthony Albanese and the Labor government". Putting up a middle-aged man for a candid chat with a woman who regularly donned a "come first with the Greens" tee during the campaign could have been a recipe for disaster.
But Albanese appeared at ease, cracking jokes and rehashing his origin story for a captive audience of young women who may never have heard it before.
Party insiders often cite Albanese's performance over this year when asked to explain the result. As Erickson put it, "From the first Monday of January, through to election day, the prime minister was in the form of a lifetime".
Emerson explained it this way: "He was full of purpose and implementing that purpose, and that's where it starts, at the top."
Albanese's confidence, real or faked, was critical in the face of turbulence overseas and a cost-of-living crisis at home. "Most politicians are confidence players, Anthony as much as anybody," a senior campaign source says. "People can tell when they're off their game."
If there was a low point for Albanese, it was when he, literally, slipped up — or off — a stage in the Hunter. What could have been a brief blip of comedic relief on the nightly news became something more when he denied it happened, telling the ABC at the time he "didn't fall" but "stepped back one step".
The prime minister eventually laughed it off on commercial radio, but not before handing the Coalition a neat new way to prosecute their message that the prime minister was "loose with the truth".
Cast against the stumbles of the last campaign, however, it was negligible. The Albanese of this campaign was distinctly different from the Albanese of three years ago, when a failure to name the cash rate on day one stuck with him until election day.
He eventually recovered, but the experience was rattling. This time, it was Dutton who stumbled early on.
The alternative
Australian elections are, at the end of the day, a battle between two potential leaders. Both sides know this, which is why campaigns are typically built on a combination of attacking the other side and presenting your case convincingly.
Labor used the former to good effect in 2022, with many commentators describing that election as a referendum on the by-then unpopular prime minister Scott Morrison.
This time, in theory, it was Albanese's record as the incumbent that was open to attack. Part of the explanation for Labor's lagging in the opinion polls towards the end of the year was that an electorate fed up with high prices would be open to taking a chance on a new guy.
This was supported, according to Erickson, by research at the start of the year that showed "how open to hearing from both sides many voters were".
But cracks in the Coalition's front quickly started to emerge: The shock work-from-home reversal, the parallels to Donald Trump (not helped by Coalition minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's MAGA moment), and the unanswered questions about nuclear.
"Labor absolutely benefited from the Liberal Party having no policies," Sheppard says.
"Everyone throws Dutton under the bus for this campaign, I think Dutton was fine, but somewhere in that organisation there is a genuine breakdown in confidence."
Just as Labor's positive messaging was locked in on Medicare and the broader cost-of-living crisis, their negative lens landed firmly on Dutton's plan to shepherd in nuclear power and specifically what it would cost.
The Coalition labelled this focus, along with Labor's attacks on Dutton's record as health minister, as scare campaigns.
"Labor didn't have to make up a story," Emerson says, "they just had to tell the story that was already on voters' minds".
Then there was Dutton, the man. According to Erickson, Labor's research found voters had "deeper reservations" about the opposition leader. "His aggression and intolerance unsettled people," he told the press club.
"Was he focused on Australians who were looking for the party with the best plan to make them better off over the next three years? Or was his priority winning over voters who were looking for an Australian variation on MAGA?"
The uncontrollable
The election was never meant to be held on May 3. Albanese's original plan was a poll in late April, and by the beginning of March, staffers were in place around the country, ready for it to be called.
Under that scenario, the government would have avoided having to hand down the federal budget scheduled for March 25.
But as Cyclone Alfred approached the Queensland coastline, a decision was made to hold off. Staff were sent back to Canberra and Treasury kicked into gear, finishing off a budget they never expected to hand down. By the time staff returned to campaign headquarters, ready for the election proper, they were already burned out from the process.
According to White, Labor's pollster, it was around the budget and the following two weeks that the internal research started to shift in Labor's favour. "That period was when the foundation for the win was built," he says.
While many believed the budget would be a drag on Labor, considering the growing deficit, the cyclone also presented an unexpected opportunity. While Albanese was holding press conferences from the emergency control room, news emerged that Dutton, whose electorate was in the warning zone, had travelled to Sydney for a luxe fundraising event.
Days later, it came out that Albanese had attended a fundraising event in Sydney on the same day, but the news cycle had already moved on.
The cyclone wasn't the only wildcard to contend with. By the time Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down the budget in the House of Representatives, Trump's chaotic trade agenda was dominating global news.
"We didn't convince any Australian that Dutton was just like Donald Trump — we convinced them that Albanese was better at dealing with Trump," one senior campaign source says.
International media characterised the Australian election result as an anti-Trump bump. Whether the American president was the driving force in this election is impossible to know. Some believe the significance has been overblown compared to the importance of textbook campaign strategy.
"It's so impressive for Labor, which has its own internal problems and isn't always on the same page, to get through the last six months without having their head turned," Sheppard says.
"Deciding on a seat like Dickson, and deciding this is what we're going to do, even as you worried about Western Australia, where polling was always quite good for the Coalition, or seats like Western Sydney or Wills.
"They decided on a strategy, and they stuck to it and it came off."
Credits
Reporting and production:
Photography: Brendan Esposito, Ian Cutmore, David Sciasci, Adam Kennedy, Che Chorley, Matt Roberts and Lukas Coch
Editor: Elise Scott
