2024 Northern Territory general election

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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
Turnout	68.5% ( 6.5 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Lia Finocchiaro Eva Lawler No leader Party Country Liberal Labor Greens Leader since 1 February 2020 21 December 2023 N/A Leader's seat Spillett Drysdale (lost seat) N/A Last election 8 seats, 31.34% 14 seats, 39.43% 0 seats, 4.46% Seats before 7[a] 14[b] 0 Seats won 17 4 1 Seat change 9 10 1 Popular vote 49,738 29,292 8,272 Percentage 48.9% 28.8% 8.13% Swing 17.6 10.6 3.67 TPP 57.4% 42.6% TPP swing 10.4 10.4
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. Members were elected through full preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member electorates. The election was conducted by the Northern Territory Electoral Commission (NTEC).

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

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 1977; it won no seats at the first ever Northern Territory election in 1974. Labor also tallied its lowest primary vote in the Territory and suffered a complete wipeout in the urban areas of Darwin and Palmerston. The CLP swelled to 17 seats, up from seven at dissolution, giving the party a four-seat majority. There was a large swing to the CLP across 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 two seats in Darwin and all but one seat in Alice Springs. The swing led to Eva Lawler losing her seat of Drysdale to CLP candidate Clinton Howe. She became the third Chief Minister and the first Labor Chief Minister lose her seat at an election.^[4]

Of the four remaining seats, three were won by independents and one by left-wing minor party the Greens, whose candidate Kat McNamara defeated former Chief Minister Natasha Fyles in the seat of Nightcliff. This marked the first time the Greens entered the Legislative Assembly in the history of the Northern Territory.^[5]

For the first time in Northern Territory history, both major parties at the election were led by 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). Voter turnout dropped in remote Aboriginal communities, which the NTEC attributed to voter fatigue and apathy; others suggested the rejection of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament at the 2023 referendum contributed to low turnout among Indigenous voters.^[6]

With the Northern Territory election results, Labor lost its first mainland state or territory since the 2018 South Australian election.

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