Kristina Keneally Labor Barry O'Farrell Liberal/National coalition The 2011 New South Wales state election held on Saturday, 26 March 2011.

Labor suffered a two-party swing of 16.4 points, the largest against a sitting government at any level in Australia since World War II.

The results in Ryde, Cabramatta, and Lakemba showed the largest by-election swing against Labor in its history.

[3] The Labor Party launched their campaign on 5 February 2011[5] in Liverpool within the electoral district of Macquarie Fields.

[6] Premier Keneally launched the Labor Party's campaign slogan "Protecting jobs – Supporting families".

[7] The Coalition had been leading in opinion polling for almost three years, and were unbackable favourites throughout the campaign to win the election.

[9] According to several pollsters, Labor was in danger of losing several seats where it had not been seriously threatened in decades, as well as several that it had held for a century or more.

Many prominent Labor MPs and ministers lost their seats including Verity Firth, David Borger, Matt Brown, Jodi McKay, Virginia Judge, Phil Costa and Kevin Greene.

[10] In the process, the Coalition took dozens of seats in areas considered Labor heartland, such as western Sydney and the Upper Hunter—some on swings of well over 10 per cent.

Members who confirmed their retirement were: Opinion polling was conducted by firms such as Newspoll, Galaxy and Nielsen via random telephone number selection in city and country areas Sampling sizes consist of around 1200–1300 electors.

Ultimately, the Liberals won 27 seats from Labor (Blue Mountains, Camden, Campbelltown, Charlestown, Coogee, Drummoyne, East Hills, Gosford, Granville, Heathcote, Kiama, Londonderry, Maitland, Menai, Miranda, Mulgoa, Newcastle, Oatley, Parramatta, Riverstone, Rockdale, Smithdale, Strathfield, Swansea, The Entrance, Wollondilly and Wyong) while the Nationals won two seats from Labor (Bathurst and Monaro).

The move that supposedly caused this was the decision of these two independents to support Julia Gillard, who formed a Labor minority government, over the Coalition under Tony Abbott (although Oakeshott stated that he would have supported the Coalition if Malcolm Turnbull was their leader instead of Abbott).