2024 Northern Territory general election

2024 Northern Territory general election

← 2020 24 August 2024 2028 →
All 25 seats in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly 13 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Reporting	65.2% as of 17:00 ACST
First party Second party   Leader Lia Finocchiaro Eva Lawler Party Country Liberal Labor Leader since 1 February 2020 21 December 2023 Leader's seat Spillett Drysdale (lost seat) Last election 8 seats, 31.34% 14 seats, 39.43% Seats before 7[a] 14[b] Seats won 16 4 Seat change 9 10 Popular vote 47,588 27,797 Percentage 49.1% 28.7% Swing 17.8 10.8 TPP 58.0% 42.0% TPP swing 11.0 11.0
Chief Minister before election Eva Lawler Labor Elected Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro Country Liberal

The 2024 Northern Territory general election was held on 24 August 2024 to elect all 25 members of the Legislative Assembly in the unicameral Northern Territory Parliament.

The election was conducted by the Northern Territory Electoral Commission. Members were elected through full preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member electorates.

The incumbent centre-left Labor Party (ALP) majority government, led by Eva Lawler since December 2023, sought to win a third consecutive four-year term of government. However, they were defeated by the centre-right Country Liberal Party (CLP) opposition, led by Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro, in a landslide.^[2][3]

For the first time in NT history, both major parties went into the election with female leaders. Additionally, both leaders were from the city of Palmerston; indeed, before her move to the then-new seat of Spillett in 2016, Finocchiaro was the member for Drysdale (the seat Lawler won in 2016 after Finocchiaro transferred to Spillett).

The election saw the second-worst defeat of a sitting government in the Territory's history. From 14 seats at dissolution, Labor fell to four seats, its smallest presence in the Legislative Assembly since it entered the chamber in 1974; it won no seats at the first ever Northern Territory election in 1974. Labor also tallied its lowest primary vote in the Territory.

There was a large swing to the CLP across the urban areas of Darwin, Palmerston and Alice Springs, as well as in the surrounding rural areas and in Katherine. The CLP swept the city of Palmerston and won all but one seat each in Darwin and Alice Springs. The swing led to Eva Lawler herself losing her seat of Drysdale to the CLP, becoming the third Chief Minister and the first Labor Chief Minister to do so.^[4]

Voter turnout dropped in remote Aboriginal communities, which was put down to the defeat of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in a 2023 referendum.^[5]

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