The Coalition won the 2016 federal election with a one-seat majority 76 of 150 lower house seats. Labor holds 69 seats while

crossbencher A crossbencher is an independent or minor party member of some legislatures, such as the British House of Lords and the Parliament of Australia. They take their name from the crossbenches, between and perpendicular to the government and oppositi ...

s hold the remaining five. Classification of seats as marginal, fairly safe or safe is applied by the independent Australian Electoral Commission using the following definition: "Where a winning party receives less than 56% of the vote, the seat is classified as 'marginal', 56–60% is classified as 'fairly safe' and more than 60% is considered 'safe'."Division Classifications
''Virtual Tally Room 2016'', Australian Electoral Commission. Retrieved 21 August 2016.

Pendulum

The Mackerras pendulum was devised by the Australian psephologist Malcolm Mackerras as a way of predicting the outcome of an election contested between two major parties in a Westminster style

lower house A lower house is one of two Debate chamber, chambers of a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. Despite its official position "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has co ...

legislature such as the Australian House of Representatives, which is composed of

single-member electorates A single-member district is an electoral district represented by a single officeholder. It contrasts with a multi-member district, which is represented by multiple officeholders. Single-member districts are also sometimes called single-winner vot ...

and which uses a preferential voting system such as a Condorcet method or

IRV IRV or Irv or ''variant'', may refer to: *Instant-runoff voting, a type of ranked preferential voting counting method used in single-seat elections with more than two candidates *Irvine railway station, North Ayrshire, Scotland (National Rail stat ...

. The pendulum works by lining up all of the seats held in Parliament for the government, the opposition and the crossbenches according to the

percentage point A percentage point or percent point is the unit (measurement), unit for the Difference (mathematics), arithmetic difference between two percentages. For example, moving up from 40 percent to 44 percent is an increase of 4 percentage points, but a ...

margin they are held by on a two party preferred basis. This is also known as the

swing Swing or swinging may refer to: Apparatus * Swing (seat), a hanging seat that swings back and forth * Pendulum, an object that swings * Russian swing, a swing-like circus apparatus * Sex swing, a type of harness for sexual intercourse * Swing rid ...

required for the seat to change hands. Given a uniform swing to the opposition or government parties, the number of seats that change hands can be predicted.

References

{{2016 Australian federal election Pendulums for Australian federal elections