Immediately notable from this graph is the 1975 result.  Notice the high NSW vote.  Then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam obviously garnered a very strong result from his home state, compared to the national 2PP and the result in Queensland.  Victoria led the way in 1975 for Malcolm Fraser.  However it was clear even in 1980 that the Garden State had begun to desert him, and when another Victorian in Bob Hawke swept to power in 1983, the advantage was lost.

 

Most of the big three states seemed to follow the national trend for Labor, but in 1987, with the margin narrowing, the NSW vote dipped slightly as Hawke opposed Howard, while the Victorian vote stayed high.  In 1990, Hawke faced another Victorian in Andrew Peacock, and that saw his advantage not only wiped out, but reversed dramatically.  The Victorian vote went back to Labor in 1993 as Paul Keating and John Hewson both from NSW, faced off.  The NSW vote was huge for Keating in 1993, and was certainly the difference, but Queenslanders tried very hard to balance the ledger.

 

Another all-NSW leader battle in 1996 saw the NSW vote match the national vote, with Victoria and Queensland again matching off against each other.  This Vic-QLD trend has continued right through the reign of John Howard.

 

The big questions to be answered in 2007 are:

South Australia has pretty much followed the national vote over the period identified, except that in 1993 it deviated sharply to the Coalition, and has pretty much stayed there. Without a South Australian party leader going to an election, it's difficult to gauge why this is.  Perhaps Alexander Downer's prominence in government has had something to do with the high Coalition vote there.

Malcom Fraser won Western Australia by a huge margin in 1975, and by even more in 1977.  However by 1983, WA was firmly with Bob Hawke, only to dip again in 1990.  The ALP's vote did not recover in the west until Kim Beazley squared up to John Howard in the 1998 and 2001 elections.  With Mark Latham as leader in 2004, Labor's vote dropped right back down to 1996 levels.  It will be interesting to see if there is much change relative to the nationwide vote in the 2007 election.

The Apple Isle is an anomaly.  With no Tasmanian parliamentarian in government, it has taken a curious path through the seventies and eighties as a Coalition state, only to jump sharply into the ALP's camp in 1993 (God knows why) and stay there.  Even with Bass and Braddon going to the Liberals in 2004, the state-wide vote there was still high in that election.

Queensland looks to be the battleground in the 2007 election.  With the prospect of putting a Brisbane boy in the lodge, expect the Queensland 2PP vote to jump sharply towards the ALP from it's 2004 level of 42.9%.  WA is likely to stay conservative, although the SA vote has been trending back to the ALP in recent elections. As much as Queensland looks set to move back to ALP, New South Wales could be much harder to budge for Kevin Rudd and Labor on November 24th.