New South Wales state election, 1978

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7 October 1978 (1978-10-07)

1981 →

All 99 seats in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
and 15 (of the 44) seats in the New South Wales Legislative Council
50 Assembly seats were needed for a majority

	First party	Second party

Leader	Neville Wran	Peter Coleman
Party	Labor	Liberal/National coalition
Leader since	17 November 1973	16 December 1977
Leader's seat	Bass Hill	Fuller (lost seat)
Last election	50 seats	48 seats
Seats won	63 seats	35 seats
Seat change	13	13
Percentage	60.7%	39.3%
Swing	9.1	9.1

Legislative Assembly after the election

Premier before election

Neville Wran
Labor

Elected Premier

Neville Wran
Labor

A general election was held in the state of New South Wales, Australia, on Saturday 7 October 1978. The result was a landslide victory for the Australian Labor Party under Neville Wran, popularly known as the "Wranslide."

It is notable for being so successful for the Labor Party that it tallied 57 percent of the primary vote, the largest primary vote for any party in over a century. Having gone into the election with a razor-thin majority of one seat, Labor scored a 13-seat swing, giving it a strong majority of 63 seats. Labor even managed to defeat the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Coleman, in his own electorate. The seats of many other prominent Shadow Ministers fell to Labor as well. Labor also won took many seats in areas long reckoned as Coalition heartland. Among them were four seats that Labor had never won before this election--Willoughby (contested for the Liberal Party by Nick Greiner who later became Premier), Manly, Wakehurst and Cronulla.

The state's first elections to the New South Wales Legislative Council, the state parliament's upper house, were held simultaneously. Voters had approved a referendum to introduce a directly elected council in June of that year.

The election was also the first in the state to be contested by the Australian Democrats.

Labor continued to campaign heavily on the strengths of Wran himself, with the slogan "Wran's our man".

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Wikipedia