2020 Northern Territory general election
The 2020 Northern Territory general election was held on 22 August 2020 to elect all 25 members of the Legislative Assembly in the unicameral Northern Territory Parliament.
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All 25 seats in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly 13 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 74.9% ( 0.9 pp) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Members were elected through full preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member electorates, after the optional preferential voting system introduced for the 2016 election was abolished by the Electoral Legislation Amendment Act 2019 in April 2019. The election was conducted by the Northern Territory Electoral Commission, an independent body answerable to Parliament.
The incumbent centre-left Labor Party (ALP) majority government, led by Chief Minister Michael Gunner, won a second consecutive four-year term of government. It defeated the centre-right Country Liberal Party (CLP) opposition, led by Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro, and the regionalist big-tent Territory Alliance (TA) party, led by former Chief Minister Terry Mills.
ABC election analyst Antony Green called the election for the Labor Party nearly three hours after the polls closed. At the time it was not known if the party would claim a majority of seats, though on 24 August the ABC projected Labor had retained majority government. When the counting of votes concluded, Labor finished with 14 seats, enough for a two-seat majority on the floor of the Assembly. The Country Liberals won 8 seats, a gain of six from their landslide loss in the previous election, whilst 2 independents and 1 Territory Alliance candidate were elected. The new Gunner Ministry was sworn in on 8 September 2020.