The incumbent centre-left Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard won a second term against the opposition centre-right Liberal Party of Australia led by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and Coalition partner the National Party of Australia, led by Warren Truss, after Labor formed a minority government with the support of three independent MPs and one Australian Greens MP.

Labor and the Coalition each won 72 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives,[2] four short of the requirement for majority government, resulting in the first hung parliament since the 1940 election.

[6][7] Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent MPs Andrew Wilkie, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor declared their support for Labor on confidence and supply.

The two remaining seats were occupied by Xenophon and Victoria's new Democratic Labor Party Senator John Madigan.

It remains the most recent election in which the leader of the party forming government represented a division outside New South Wales.

The coalition total was reduced to 64 seats when Rob Oakeshott, former state Nationals turned independent MP, won the seat of Lyne at the September 2008 Lyne by-election, resulting from the resignation of former Howard minister and Nationals leader Mark Vaile.

The member for Ryan, Michael Johnson, was expelled from the Liberal National Party on 20 May 2010, reducing the Coalition to 63 seats.

The swing required by the opposition to win majority government had decreased by approximately 0.1 percent.

[28][29] New South Wales lost a seat to Queensland due to population changes for the second election in a row.

The Labor Party suggested the abolition of the marginal Liberal seat of Macarthur, while the Liberal Party suggested that Liberal-held Hume and National-held Riverina be merged to create a new seat called "Bradman" in honour of Sir Donald Bradman.

The balance of power rests with the crossbench, consisting of: For a majority, the government requires an additional seven votes from non-Labor senators.

Forty seats in the Senate were up for election: The party composition of these 40 senators whose terms will expire is: These seats are listed in order of election for the six states and two territories:[34] The election-eve Newspoll of over 2000 voters reported Labor on a 50.2 percent two-party-preferred vote.

[36] A JWS Research "mega-poll" was conducted by robocall late in the campaign and published by Fairfax.

[37][38][39] The graph shows a timeline of the estimates by three main polling companies – Roy Morgan (green), Nielsen (blue), and Newspoll (red) – of the two-party-preferred vote for Labor from January 2008 to 20 July 2010.

The pink dot on the left side represents the actual 2PP vote for Labor in the November 2007 election.

The Greens received a four percent swing and won a seat in each of the six states at the election, a first for an Australian minor party.