John Howard's Liberal Party Loses Federal Election in Australia

Australia's Labour Party racked up enough seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives during yesterday's federal election to unseat the ruling center-right Liberal Party, which has been in power for 11 years.

The defeat was a resounding one for outgoing Prime Minister John Howard, who apparently has lost his parliamentary seat, becoming only the second sitting PM to lose his electorate in an election in the 106 years since the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia from the continent's British colonies. According to the Melbourne Herald Sun, Howard currently trails Labour candidate Maxine McKew, a former Australian Broadcasting Corp. journalist, in his Bennelong electorate, a division of Sydney. The last sitting Prime Minister to lose his seat was Stanley Bruce, the Viscount Melbourne, whose Nationalist government was swept from power by Labour in the 1929 federal election.

Australia must hold federal elections every three years as members of the House are elected for three year terms. Unlike the United Kingdom, which has a "first-past-the-post" winner-take-all system that allows a party to form a majority government with a majority of seats in Parliament after winning just a plurality of the vote, Australia has aspects of a proportional representation system.

Seats in the House are allotted on a preferential system, in which the voters' alternative choices are considered if one candidate does not achieve an outright majority, a form of balloting known as "instant runoff." The Australian Senate is elected with the preferential system, though seats also are apportioned proportionally. Senators serve a six-year term, with half standing for election during alternating three-year federal election cycles.

John Howard's outgoing government held a Liberal majority in both the House and Senate, but his two prior governments were center-right coalitions.