1990 Northern Territory general election

← 1987 27 October 1990 (1990-10-27) 1994 →
All 25 seats of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly 13 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	81.6 ( 10.4 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Marshall Perron Terry Smith Ian Tuxworth Party Country Liberal Labor Nationals Leader since 14 July 1988 19 August 1986 10 May 1986 Leader's seat Fannie Bay Millner Barkly (lost Goyder) Last election 16 seats 6 seats 2 seats Seats won 14 9 seats 0 Seat change 2 3 2 Popular vote 31,758 23,827 3,060 Percentage 48.8% 36.6% 4.7% Swing 9.4 0.6 13.1 TPP 57.0% 43.0% TPP 0.3 0.3
Chief Minister before election Marshall Perron Country Liberal Elected Chief Minister Marshall Perron Country Liberal

A general election was held in the Northern Territory on Saturday 27 October 1990, and was won by the incumbent Country Liberal Party (CLP) under Chief Minister Marshall Perron.

The CLP's political strategy for the campaign, devised by the Chief Minister's media secretary, Tony-Barker May, involved attacking the opposition ALP's policy platform, and using the costings as the basis of a 'where's the money coming from?' media assault. Although the Chief Minister was ill for much of the campaign, government ministers made challenging statements every day.

The CLP also used the services of conservative social researcher Mark Textor, subsequently co-head of Crosby Textor Group, who made accurate polling predictions during this election, outperforming internal ALP polling and independent public polling. The result came as a surprise to most except for CLP insiders.

Six months prior to the election, polling showed the CLP was headed for a big loss. However, the CLP government remained in power with an increase of over 9% to its primary vote, holding 14 of the 25 seats, with the ALP opposition gaining 3 seats for a total of 9 seats in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. Meanwhile, the Northern Territory Nationals contested the election again, but lost both of their seats. The 1990 election also saw the Greens emerge in territory politics, with 3.05% of the vote—fourth behind the CLP, Labor and the Nationals.

Independents Noel Padgham-Purich and Denis Collins were both re-elected.

The NT Nationals lost both seats of Barkly and Flynn.

Retiring MPs

Labor

• Dan Leo MLA (Nhulunbuy)

Country Liberal

• Tom Harris MLA (Port Darwin)

Results

Candidates

Sitting members are listed in bold. Successful candidates are highlighted in the relevant colour.

Seats changing hands

Post-election pendulum

The following pendulum is known as the Mackerras pendulum, invented by psephologist Malcolm Mackerras. The pendulum works by lining up all of the seats held in the Legislative Assembly according to the percentage point margin they are held by on a two-party-preferred basis. This is also known as the swing required for the seat to change hands. Given a uniform swing to the opposition or government parties, the number of seats that change hands can be predicted.