section_path: Election date/Choice of election date
section_name: Choice of election date
paragraph_text: Choice of election date
  
  On 5 September 2024, during the announcement by NDIS and government services minister Bill Shorten of his impending retirement from politics, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese suggested that he may schedule the election to be held at a date later than Shorten's departure from Parliament in February 2025, while noting that the election was due by May 2025. Consideration had to be given to the Western Australian state election scheduled on 8 March 2025. Holding the federal election on that day would require the state election to be rescheduled to the following Saturday. Having the state and federal elections too close to each other was also not desirable; calling the election in early March for April would have required the 2025 Australian federal budget scheduled for 25 March to be postponed to after the election. To prevent the campaigns for the state and federal elections from clashing, the federal election would ideally have to be called after the state election. Accounting for the minimum 33 day campaign period, the earliest possible date for the election would then have been 12 April 2025.
  
  Concurrent with increasing media speculation in the first week of March 2025 that Albanese might call the federal election for 12 April, it was forecast that Cyclone Alfred would make landfall in and impact south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales on or about 8 March (same date as the Western Australian state election). On 7 March, Albanese announced he had ruled out a 12 April election, and his government would deliver the budget on 25 March as scheduled. This was to prevent the need for Albanese to leave the recovery zone for Canberra to call the election, and to also prevent the announcement and start of an election campaign from clashing with dealing with the cyclone and recovery efforts. With the following April Saturdays of 19 April and 26 April coinciding with significant nationwide long weekends, i.e. the Easter and Anzac Day public holidays, holding an election on those days would likely be problematic and unpopular. This left the Saturdays of 3 May, 10 May or 17 May as the only plausible dates — of these, 3 May coincides with a long weekend in Queensland and the Northern Territory for Labour Day and May Day, respectively.
  
  Ahead of the 2025 federal budget, there was speculation that Albanese would call the election either on the Friday or Sunday following the budget, with potential dates being 3 May or 10 May. This speculation intensified when rumours circulated that Albanese might announce the election as early as Friday 28 March, for one of these dates. On Thursday 27 March, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet accidentally posted, then deleted, a message to social media platform X (formerly Twitter), referring to the government being in " caretaker mode ". This immediately fuelled speculation that the election would be called the very next morning. Several media outlets reported that they expected the election to be called for 3 May. As forecast, an election to be held on 3 May was called on 28 March, when Albanese visited Governor-General Sam Mostyn and advised her to prorogue Parliament and dissolve the House of Representatives, which she did.