From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

1978 New South Wales state election

none

Field	Value
election_name	1978 New South Wales state election
country	New South Wales
type	parliamentary
ongoing	no
previous_election	1976 New South Wales state election
previous_year	1976
next_election	1981 New South Wales state election
next_year	1981
seats_for_election	All 99 seats in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
and 15 (of 44) seats in the New South Wales Legislative Council
50 Assembly seats needed for a majority
election_date
image1	[[File:Neville Wran cropped.png	175x175px]]
leader1	Neville Wran
leader_since1	[3 December 1973](1973-new-south-wales-labor-party-leadership-spill)
party1	Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch)
leaders_seat1	Bass Hill
popular_vote1	1,615,949
percentage1	57.77%
swing1	8.02
last_election1	50 seats
seats1	63
seat_change1	13
image2
leader2	Peter Coleman
leader_since2	16 December 1977
party2	Liberal/National coalition
colour2
leaders_seat2	Fuller
(lost seat)
popular_vote2	1,031,780
percentage2	36.88%
swing2	9.18
last_election2	48 seats
seats2	35
seat_change2	13
1blank	TPP
2blank	TPP swing
1data1	60.70%
2data1	9.10
1data2	39.30%
2data2	9.10
map_image	1978 New South Wales state election.svg
map_size	350px
map_caption	Two-candidate-preferred margin by electorate
title	Premier
before_election	Neville Wran
before_party	Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch)
after_election	Neville Wran
after_party	Australian Labor Party (New South Wales Branch)

and 15 (of 44) seats in the New South Wales Legislative Council 50 Assembly seats needed for a majority

(lost seat)

The 1978 New South Wales state election was held on 7 October 1978 to elect all 99 members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. The Labor Party Government was returned for a second term,defeating the Opposition Liberal/National coalition in a landslide victory under leader Neville Wran. The election is popularly known as the "Wranslide".

It is notable for being so successful for the Labor Party that it tallied 57 percent of the primary vote, the largest primary vote for any party in over a century. Having gone into the election with a razor-thin majority of one seat, Labor scored a 13-seat swing, giving it a strong majority of 63 seats. Labor even managed to defeat the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Coleman, in his own electorate. The seats of many other prominent Shadow Ministers fell to Labor as well. Labor also won many seats in areas long reckoned as Coalition heartland. Among them were four seats that Labor had never won before this election--Willoughby (contested for the Liberal Party by Nick Greiner who later became Premier), Manly, Wakehurst and Cronulla. It also came within striking distance of taking several more. For instance, it pared down the margin in Pittwater, the seat of former premier Bob Askin, to only 1.4 percent.

The state's first elections to the New South Wales Legislative Council, the state parliament's upper house, were held simultaneously. Voters had approved a referendum to introduce a directly elected council in June of that year. Starting with this election, Single transferable voting (STV) was used to fill the Council seats up for election. The election of 15 members in a single contest was the largest District Magnitude seen in a STV election since the 1925 Ireland Senate election.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07907180500359327 It would be surpassed, again by NSW in 1995 when it began to elect 21 in a single contest.

The election was also the first in the state to be contested by the Australian Democrats.

Labor continued to campaign heavily on the strengths of Wran himself, with the slogan "Wran's our man".

Key dates

Date	Event
12 September 1978	The Legislative Assembly was dissolved, and writs were issued by the Governor to proceed with an election.
18 September 1978	Nominations for candidates for the election closed at noon.
7 October 1978	Polling day, between the hours of 8am and 6pm.
19 October 1978	The second Wran ministry was constituted.
3 November 1978	The writ was returned and the results formally declared.
7 November 1978	Parliament resumed for business.

Results

Legislative Assembly

| turnout % = 92.77 | informal % = 2.28 |votes % = 57.77 |votes % = 26.98 |votes % = 9.90 |votes % = 2.65 |votes % = 0.30 |votes % = 0.16 |votes % = 2.24 |}

Legislative Council

This election was held using STV for at-large election of members of Legislative Council.

| turnout % = 92.77 | informal % = 4.05 |votes % = 54.91 |votes % = 36.28 |votes % = 2.91 |votes % = 2.78 |votes % = 1.31 |votes % = 0.91 |votes % = 0.90 |}

The final 2 party preferred result was 60.7% for Labor and 39.3% for the Coalition, making it one of the biggest landslide victories in New South Wales's electoral history. In 2PP terms it was a 9.1% swing to Labor from the Coalition. This was beaten by the Coalition's result of 64.2% and 35.8% for Labor in the 2011 election. However, Labor's record primary vote of 57.7 percent still stands today.

Seats changing hands

Seat	1976 election	Swing	1978 election	Party	Member	Margin	Margin
Albury				**	8.1	8.8	0.7	Labor}}
Armidale					6.6	7.2	0.6
Burwood	Liberal}}				8.4	10.0	1.6
Cronulla	**	3.8	12.4	8.6
Earlwood		5.5	16.1	10.6
Fuller		3.4	8.7	5.3
Manly	**	7.7	11.5	3.8
Miranda		4.0	10.5	6.5
Nepean		2.3	10.8	8.5
Wakehurst		7.8	14.0	6.2
Willoughby		13.1	13.9	0.8
Wollondilly	**	7.6	8.0	0.4
Yaralla		4.4	12.6	8.2

Members listed in italics did not recontest their seats.

Post-election pendulum

Notes

References

Sources cited

References

Australian Politics and Elections Archives. https://elections.uwa.edu.au/listelections.lasso?ElectionType=6&State=NSW "Since 1978, the Legislative Council has had from 42 to 45 members with a third or half the membership to be elected at each election. Members have been elected by proportional representation using the single transferable vote method with modifications which have varied over the period since 1978."
Farrell and McAllister, The Australian Electoral System, p. 50
Green, Antony. "1978 election totals". [[Parliament of New South Wales]].
Australian Government and Politics Database. "Parliament of New South Wales, Assembly election, 7 October 1978".

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

elections-in-new-south-wales 1978-elections-in-australia 1970s-in-new-south-wales october-1978-in-australia

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about 1978 New South Wales state election — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report