The 2013 Western Australian state election was held on Saturday 9 March 2013 to elect 59 members to the Legislative Assembly and 36 members to the Legislative Council.
The incumbent Liberal–National Coalition government, led by Premier Colin Barnett, won a second consecutive four-year term in government, defeating the Labor Party, led by Opposition Leader Mark McGowan, in a landslide. The Liberals alone won a majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly for the first time since the election of 1996, retaining government with 31 seats. Labor won 21 seats and the Nationals won 7 seats. In the Legislative Council, the Liberals won 17 of the 36 seats.
Background.
At previous elections, the government was able to choose the date of an election, but on 3 November 2011, the government introduced fixed four-year terms, with elections being held every four years on the second Saturday in March. This was the first election under the new system.
Seats held.
Lower house.
At the 2008 election, Labor won 28 seats, the Liberals won 24 seats, the Nationals won four seats, with three seats won by independents. Three changes have occurred since; the Greens won the seat of Fremantle off Labor at the 2009 by-election, Vince Catania in the seat of North West defected from Labor to the Nationals in July 2009, and Fremantle MP Adele Carles resigned from the Greens in 2010, leaving Labor with 26 seats, the Liberals with 24 seats, the Nationals with five seats, while independents hold four seats.
Boundary changes took effect at this election. The only changes to the notional 2008 results were that the seat of Morley shifted from Liberal to Labor and the seat of North West (renamed North West Central) shifted from Labor to National.
Upper house.
At the 2008 election, the Liberals won 16 seats, Labor won 11 seats, the Nationals won five seats, and the Greens won four seats.
2008 pendulum.
The following Mackerras pendulum works by lining up all of the seats according to the percentage point margin post-election on a two-candidate-preferred basis.
1. ;templatestyles src="Citation/styles.css"/ ;^ Elected as Labor member, defected to the Nationals in July 2009, margin is ALP v NAT.
2. ;templatestyles src="Citation/styles.css"/ ;^ Elected as Green member, resigned from The Greens in May 2010.
Polling.
Newspoll polling is conducted via random telephone number selection in city and country areas. Sampling sizes consist of around 1,100 electors. The declared margin of error is ±3 percent.
Voting intention.
Graphical summary of opinion polls for voting intention.
Graphical summary of two-party-preferred opinion polls.
Preferred Premier.
Graphical summary of approval rating opinion polls for preferred Premier.
Approval ratings.
Graphical summary of approval rating opinion polls for Colin Barnett.
Graphical summary of approval rating opinion polls for Labor leaders (Alan Carpenter, Eric Ripper and Mark McGowan).
References.
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