In the progressive stronghold city of Melbourne, the Greens were hopeful that by now, they might finally be celebrating winning a second Victorian seat in the federal lower house.
Instead, 15-year local member and party leader Adam Bandt is out of a job after Labor's Sarah Whitty claimed the formerly "safe" Greens inner-city seat of Melbourne.
In the northern-suburbs electorate of Wills, the Greens were competitive, but the seat was also retained by Labor despite a distribution favourable to the Greens and speculation about the party winning migrant votes over its support for Palestine.
The Greens are expected to maintain their presence in the senate, but in the lower house they have been decimated, losing two of the three Brisbane seats they gained from the major parties in 2022.
On Thursday afternoon, Mr Bandt formally conceded he had lost the seat.
He said he believed a number of Greens votes in Melbourne had "leaked" to Labor because the electorate was determined to keep Peter Dutton out of government.
"People saw Labor as the best option to stop Dutton ... it did make a difference." he said.
[Melbourne results]He said redistribution of the Melbourne electorate worked against him but he still led on first preference votes, with Labor's candidate Sarah Witty elected on preferences.
The latest Melbourne count shows a 4.6 per cent swing away from the Greens on first preferences too.
It's true Mr Bandt experienced an unfavourable re-distribution — losing high Green-vote areas of East Brunswick and Fitzroy North — in favour of shakier territory south of the Yarra River.
That lost Greens territory was expected to be the gain of his colleague over the boundary in Wills, which swept in those areas as part of its own redistribution.
But those changes in Wills, which also takes in Coburg and Fawkner, were not enough to get Greens candidate Samantha Ratman over the line, despite a swing in her favour.
[Wills results]Greens losing seats despite increase in young, progressive voters
On election night the Greens put out a press release celebrating the party's "highest-ever vote in history," and their continued expectation that Mr Bandt would retain his seat.
The vote for the Greens has not been finalised, but by Thursday morning — with about 80 per cent of the vote counted in the lower house — the party was trailing nationally on its 2022 election result.
While ballots are still being counted, election analyst John Black said no matter how you looked at it, it was hard to characterise the result as a victory for the Greens.
"To dress this up as a win is a flight of fantasy," said Mr Black, a former Labor senator who runs an election modelling company.
The Greens currently have a swing against them in the senate and the lower house of about half a per cent, with a slightly larger swing against them in Victoria, often viewed as the country's most-progressive state, at 0.7 per cent.
In comparison, Labor has seen a 2 per cent positive swing in the lower house.
That's despite this year's election being the first where gen Z and millennial voters outnumbered baby boomers, with the increase in younger progressive voters expected to work in the Greens favour.
Despite the general upwards trend in the Green vote in recent decades, their leader is toppled and the party's representation in the lower house has been slashed.
"They're in the same position as the Liberals at the moment, aren't they?" Mr Black said.
Greens losing votes from their base, analyst says
Before voters went to the polls, Mr Black, who writes for the Australian Financial Review, warned the Greens were campaigning on a strategy that was failing to win votes and losing support from their own base in the seats that mattered.
The environmental party campaigned hard on broader social issues, like renters rights, healthcare and universal childcare — and pro-Palestinian advocacy following Israel's invasion of Gaza.
"I think that they were way too negative and didn't focus on their strengths, which was to concentrate on the environment," Mr Black said.
Former Labor strategist turned Redbridge pollster Kos Samaras said there was a surge of support for the Greens amongst 20-something year olds, but the increased "activism" in the party's politics also cost them votes in the seats that mattered most.
Some Melbourne voters found Greens campaign divisive, too idealistic
Since election night, hundreds of Victorian voters have written into the ABC about what decided their vote as part of the ABC's Your Say project, with more than 50 voters telling the ABC why they did — or didn't — vote for the Greens.
It included a number of former or swinging Greens voters who said they did not vote for the Greens this time because they did not like the outsized focus on the Israel-Gaza war, which was seen as divisive.
There was a frustration with the Greens' tendency to prioritise the "idealistic" over the practical, while a number said they were concerned about Mr Bandt's leadership.
Angela, a childcare worker in the Melbourne electorate said while the Greens campaign was highly visible, she knew many of her neighbours did not support Mr Bandt.
"A lot of them were not in favour of the Greens policies … [because] are they actually feasible? What's the price to pay for all of that? That was a lot of the sentiment that I've been hearing from my community," she said.
19-year-old Carlton resident Scarlett said she was "very disappointed and very surprised" with the Greens loss.
She voted for Mr Bandt, but noticed the environment was not at the front of the Greens campaign.
"The environment's a very important issue for me, but … you know, no one was really talking about it at all this year," she said.
A Carlton resident and university professor said she was relieved at the result — she said she used to find Mr Bandt charming, but no longer liked the direction of the Greens, describing their campaign as "very undergraduate".
Pro-Palestinian message splits Greens voters in Wills
There was speculation that the Greens' pro-Palestinian messaging could pay dividends in seats with higher migrant populations like Wills by attracting new voters, but it appears to have cut both ways in Victoria.
Some voters told the ABC the party's staunch stance on Palestine and Gaza won their vote.
"There are tens of thousands of people this election who voted Greens for the first time, in areas where the party hasn't been able to reach … more diverse areas … suburbs with migrants and multicultural populations," said Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi.
While the Greens recorded a positive swing in Wills (after a favourable redistribution), some voters, including those who voted for the party before in areas with a typically strong Greens vote, told the ABC they felt alienated by the party's messaging on the Israel-Gaza war.
A 40-year-old lifelong Greens voter from Carlton North (formerly Melbourne, now Wills) said she found the pro-Palestinian messaging divisive and negative.
"Both my parents were migrants, so I really dislike watching the rise of hate and bigotry on all sides," she said.
She said she was a Chinese-Australian and voted Labor in the end.
At Edinburgh gardens in Fitzroy North, the ABC spoke to multiple people who had formerly voted Greens — including a young mother and an environmental consultant — who did not vote for them at this election, referencing the "outsized" and "divisive" pro-Palestinian messaging.
Another Wills voter —a lawyer who voted Labor — told the ABC the Greens' campaign focus on international issues did not resonate with the local community, who realised that real change would come from the political centre.
These "better-educated professionals" were the natural base of the Greens who were leaving the party, analyst Mr Black said.
While they may have won some new votes in migrant communities, they were mostly in seats the Greens would not win, he said.
"The strategy that they were running was demonstrably not working," he said.
"As the ALP has demonstrated, clearly, it's the middle ground that is now occupied by the majority of Australian voters."
