9:10 – One of those two remaining booths has now reported, but the number of postal votes has also doubled. One Nation’s primary vote lead is now over 10%.

8:38 – We now have all but two ordinary booths reporting primary votes, and all but four booths reporting preference counts. In the places where both figures have come in, Labor has 55.3% of preferences from the remaining 14 candidates. Still, despite this, One Nation is on 53.2% after preferences.

8:24 – Unfortunately I was miscalculating the preference flow to Labor, it’s more like 60%, not 75%.

Speaking of errors, the WAEC results seem to keep popping up with errors – vote totals change slightly for particular booths, and right now two booths have exactly the same primary vote figures.

8:10 – We now have preference counts from four election day booths and they all show Labor getting 72-79% of preferences over One Nation. But One Nation still wins three out of those four booths.

8:01 – We have preference counts from two booths, and they show the votes of other candidates favouring Labor over One Nation by 74-79%. One Nation is still leading on the raw 2CP count, but it’s relatively close.

7:43 – There is no good news for Labor in the first two regular election-day booths. Labor has polled 26% and 28% in these two booths, well behind One Nation. In the low to mid 30s.

I am calling this by-election as won by One Nation.

7:39 – Poll Bludger’s results website (based on the media feed) is ahead of the WAEC website. It also has results now for Comet Bay and Port Kennedy. It also appears the Western Australian Electoral Commission batch was a mistake and it’s now listed as Mobile Polling.

Overall One Nation has a primary vote lead over Labor of 34.7% to 26.1%.

7:35 – Another roughly 1300 postal votes have been added, and Labor is on 25.6% to One Nation’s 35.5%.

There’s also another booth called ‘Western Australian Electoral Commission’ – presumably prepoll votes at the electoral office – which has One Nation on 22.6% and Labor on 26.3%. I don’t have a 2025 comparison for this booth.

7:23 – The first batch of results has reported and it’s 1300 postal votes. One Nation leads on 36%, with Labor on 25% and the Liberal Party on 19%. If you compare this to the total postal vote in 2025 (which was about twice as big), that’s a swing of 23% against Labor and 28% to One Nation. But it would be unsurprising that One Nation does relatively well on the postal votes.

6:00pm WA time – Polls have just closed in the by-election for the WA state seat of Secret Harbour. I will be covering results tonight, although I don’t plan on doing much in the next hour. WA is two hours behind the east coast, so I am posting this at 8pm Sydney time. While we wait for results, you can check out my by-election guide.

I have 341 candidates on my list of Legislative Assembly candidates. These candidates are running for eleven parties, along with fourteen independents. As a comparison, 740 candidates were nominated in 2022, representing twenty-one parties.

I expect that this field will grow a lot, but there is a question as to how the abolition of group voting tickets might affect motivations to run large numbers of candidates.

Under group voting tickets, a party may only be aiming to win in one region, but has an incentive to run candidates in every region so they can swap those preferences. Now, preferences will only flow according to voters (who may follow how-to-votes). For a small party, there may be an incentive to focus efforts on one or two regions. This could also flow through to the lower house where some minor parties have made a big effort to run a lot of candidates. In 2022, Animal Justice ran candidates in all 88 electorates, while Family First ran in all but one and the Family Party ran in 58 out of 88.

This time around, Labor and the Greens are leading with 74 announced candidates each. Both parties will undoubtedly run a full slate of 88. Victorian Socialists are not far behind with 68 announced candidates – a very large number this far out for small parties.

Often when a minor party runs a huge number of candidates, a lot of those candidates are announced at the last minute, with little details about those candidates at the time of nomination. Yet most or all of those VicSoc candidates have profiles on the party website.

The Liberal Party has announced 56 candidates and the Nationals have announced ten. The two parties have only announced competing candidates in the seat of Ripon, so the Coalition has 65 seats covered – less than the Socialists.

The Animal Justice Party, New Democrats, West Party and Socialist Alliance have all announced 6-12 candidates each.

It is fascinating how few seats have announced One Nation candidates. So far they have announced just eleven candidates. These candidates are mostly in outer suburban seats like Pakenham, Yan Yean, Sunbury and Melton. Only in Murray Plains and Narracan have they announced candidates in deeply rural seats where they will likely be in a head-to-head contest with the Nationals. I wonder if this reflects an analysis of the SA election which showed that they needed a much higher vote to win those rural One Nation-Liberal contests compared to their viability in a Labor-One Nation outer suburban race.

I have been categorising candidates by gender. Labor and Greens are running a clear majority of women. Indeed if the two parties announce men for all of their remaining seats, they would have a bare majority of men. The Victorian Socialists are about even, while the Liberal, Nationals and One Nation parties are all male-dominated.

There are an average of 3.875 candidates per seat. Only one candidate has been announced in the Liberal seat of Mornington and the Nationals seat of Lowan. There are six candidates in Essendon, Melton, Narre Warren South, Pakenham, Sunbury, Frankston and Werribee. These seats all have a Labor and Liberal candidate – two seats are missing a One Nation candidate and Sunbury does not yet have a Greens candidate.

As for the upper house, we don’t really have that big fields in most regions yet. For most minor parties, they only have a chance of winning one seat, so it’s more a question of whether a lead candidate has been announced rather than the total volume of candidates.

The Liberal Party, One Nation and Greens have all announced full tickets. Animal Justice, Victorian Socialists and Family First have all announced lead candidates in four regions. Sustainable Australia has recently announced close to a full slate.

In 2022, the ballot papers were almost all the same size in every region – 22 groups in most regions, and 24 in West Metro.

With the new optional preferential system, voters will be instructed to number at least five boxes above the line. Experience from Senate elections suggest most voters will number five, no more, no less. But Senate experience also shows us that, as the ballot papers have shrunk, those five preferences have been more meaningful and lasted further into the count. Five preferences is more likely to stay in the count in a race of 15 groups than a race of 25 groups.

I suspect in the medium term of the next ten years we will see amalgamations and the closure of some small parties, but the trajectory for this year’s election may already be set.

While this election is still some way off, it should be of interest with the first-term LNP government facing off against a resurgent One Nation in very different circumstances to other jurisdictions.

As has become my standard practice, I will wait until closer to the election to assess the likely result in each seat.

Most of the guide is paywalled for those who donate $10 or more per month to the Tally Room via Patreon., but I have unlocked three guides to give you a taste:

• Caboolture
• Logan
• Townsville

At the same time as I have been publishing this guide, I have unlocked the entirety of my Victoria 2026 guide, about three months out from the election. If you find it useful, please consider signing up as a $10 member via Patreon. This gives you access to my NSW and Queensland guides, and my partially-completed federal election guide.

This means my federal election guide now covers 120 House of Representatives electorates, as well as the 8 Senate guides. The 30 guides for Queensland will need to wait until the federal redistribution in that state is finalised – which I expect will take place about a year from now.

Most of this election guide is exclusive to those who sign up as a Tally Room member via Patreon – more on that below. But there are six guides which are unlocked and free for everyone to read. That now includes my guide to the Tasmanian seat of Franklin. This seat has been dramatically redrawn in the redistribution, losing its western half to Clark and expanding up the east coast of Tasmania. An independent, Peter George, came second here in 2025 and then went on to win a state seat representing the same electorate. But on the new boundaries, I think this seat is now a conventional Labor-Liberal contest again.

It’s worth noting that the Commission has proposed renaming this seat, and specifically suggested the name ‘Tongerlongeter’, and the process of consultation on a new name is ongoing. If the name changes, I will update the guide.

With this new addition to my election guides, I’ve also now changed my price for Tally Room membership from $8 to $10. For the last year or so, I have been promoting the Tally Room as costing $8 + GST ($8.80). Unfortunately I now realise Patreon does not take Australian GST directly from patrons (unlike sales tax in a number of other countries), so I need to increase my prices to take account of this change. I will not be rising prices for existing $8 donors, if you stay as a member. But unfortunately I will need a small price bump to cover GST and general price rises.

I have also now created an option to sign up for an annual membership for $96 a year – that is $8 per month on average, 20% off the new price of $10 per month.

That’s it for now – I am currently working on my Queensland state election guide which should be out later this month, and I’m also looking forwards towards the Victorian state election – keep an eye out for an announcement about a live event, and of course the podcast and an election night livestream.

Group voting tickets allow parties to control how preferences flow when voters cast their votes above the line, which allow for preference deals and have allowed small parties to corral their votes away from the bigger parties and win seats from low primary votes.

This legislation was introduced yesterday and when finally were able to see the legislation today following the second reading in the Legislative Assembly. You can read the legislation here.

There was a general expectation that a post-GVT electoral system would adopt some version of the systems used in other states or for the Senate, but now we have the detail.

It looks like Victoria will largely follow the lead of the Senate by requiring voters to number as many boxes as there are seats to be filled – in this case, five. But, also like the Senate, voters who give a clear ‘1’ but fail to number their top five preferences clearly will still have their votes count as formal. This was an important provision for Senate reform, since it meant that any voter who just voted ‘1’ (as had been formal prior to reform) would cast a formal vote.

Parties will be required to recommend 5 preferences or more on their how-to-vote cards, and we have seen from federal elections that this leads to a very high number of voters following that advice and numbering that minimum number of preferences.

I strongly support this legislation and hope that the Parliament will pass it with no delay.

We have a number of tools to help with this task, such as the pendulum and historical swing trends, but most of these tools don’t work that well in a multi-party environment, such as the one we’re now seeing with One Nation’s surge in support.

For this blog post, I’m going to use some limited data we’ve gained on how One Nation is polling in the state seats of Victoria to model how votes might turn into seats if One Nation’s vote is higher or lower.

To do some more sophisticated modelling of how votes might turn into seats, we would ideally get an estimate of how much of the vote each party has in each seat. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but it would give a rough shape of how votes are distributed. At a national level, two MRP polls have been published this year: one by DemosAU and one by Redbridge/Accent.

At a state level, none have been published in Victoria (or any other state). But we do have one MRP that was leaked to the media.

Redbridge/Accent conducted an MRP for Victorian Trades Hall in June 2026 which was eventually leaked to media outlets including the Australian Financial Review.

This MRP reported a primary vote of 27% for One Nation, with Labor and the Coalition tied on 26%, and the Greens on 13%. It’s basically a three-way tie between the three leading parties.

This MRP reports seat totals based on these votes of 39 Coalition seats, 35 Labor seats, 12 One Nation seats and 2 Greens seats. But there’s been a lot of disagreement about those seat totals.

The MRP asked voters to fill out a full ballot, and thus used preferences as allocated by the voter. It is more traditional in polling, particularly for MRPs, to use historic preference flows instead.

While we have less data on how preferences flow with a strong One Nation vote, there are definitely some strange figures in the Redbridge/Accent MRP preference flows. In particular, the MRP suggests that Coalition voters are favouring Labor over One Nation, while recent elections have suggested the opposite.

It may be that part of the discrepancy comes from Liberal how-to-vote cards. While those may influence voters in a real election, the MRP respondents haven’t had that advice.

It makes a big difference in a scenario where One Nation makes it to the top two in numerous seats. I have produced my own preference flow estimates based on previous elections. With the same primary votes as the Redbridge/Accent MRP, the seat totals end up very different:

The specific preference flows make a huge difference. I originally had Coalition to One Nation preferences a bit higher but tweaked it after feedback from Kevin Bonham, and that dropped the One Nation seat count from 31 to 27. There is also a lot we don’t know about how Coalition and One Nation preferences will flow in Labor-Greens contests and this makes a big difference as to the Greens seat count.

Anyway, while I have questions about the MRP’s preference flows, I do appreciate the provision of primary vote figures for every seat in the state, which then allows us to do some other analysis.

So I have taken those primary vote figures for the 88 seats, and I have then applied a model where I increase the One Nation primary vote of 27% by increments of 1% until they get to a primary vote of 37%, and also decrease their vote to 17%. For each increment of 1%, I transfer one third of a percentage point from Labor, and two thirds of a percentage point from the Coalition.

I also considered a model where there was a 1:1 swap between One Nation and Coalition votes, to model the impact of changes within the right-wing part of the electorate. I suspect the Coalition contributed more of One Nation’s vote as their vote started to climb, but this model only tries to model a One Nation vote starting at 17%, at which point that early climb has finished.

So, what did I find? This next chart shows how many seats each party would win for a given One Nation vote between 17% and 37%, using my preference flow estimates and using Redbridge/Accent’s primary vote estimates as a starting point with One Nation on 27%.

I have assumed that the top two candidates make the 2CP. If two candidates are tied for second place, I have run two different counts for each of the possible 2CPs, with each result worth half a seat. This explains why some results involve a party winning half a seat.

The number of One Nation seats is very low until they get to about 22%, and then the seat count climbs relatively consistently until they get to the low 30s, then it slows down again. In this model, Labor and Coalition seat wins are roughly neck-and-neck as the One Nation vote climbs.

Interestingly, a primary vote of 32% is enough for a very slim One Nation majority. In that scenario, the Coalition is on 24.3% and Labor is on 22.7%. With quite a clear right-wing majority, it’s not surprising that the dominant conservative party would be able to win a majority in a divided contest.

This is just one model, but I think it does give some insights into how One Nation might perform in seats for a given vote.

Another feature of this modelling that I found interesting was how each party’s vote share translates differently into seat shares. Each party has a different preference position – Labor benefits from the Greens in most seats. The Coalition does a bit better than One Nation if they face off. At the recent state election in South Australia, One Nation narrowly outpolled the Liberal Party, but won one less seat. I think it’s reasonable to expect a similar primary vote for the two parties would see the Coalition win more seats.

So I went into my election model and compared how many seats each party wins on the same primary vote. The range of results is wider for One Nation than the other parties, since the model assumes a greater range of change for One Nation.

For most of the comparable range, the major parties win more seats than One Nation on the same vote.

On the current polling, with all three parties in the mid-20s, the three parties would win relatively similar numbers of seats. If any of the three parties was to boost their support into the 30s, they would then have a chance at winning a majority, because there is quite a steep dropoff in support.

Next month I plan to write seat guides for the 18 seats in South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT, to add to the 102 that have already been published. Queensland’s 30 seats will need to wait for next years.

10:30 – I have updated my federal pendulum to reflect the new boundaries for South Australian, Tasmanian and ACT federal electorates. This includes links to my guides that I’ve written so far – I am planning to write guides for these newly-completed electorates in August.

I will put together the interactive map later this morning, but that’s it for now.

10:20 – This table compares the old and new margins. There is very little change – Mayo becomes 0.4% stronger for Rebekha Sharkie, while Makin and Spence each change by 0.2% and Barker changes by 0.3%. Compared to the draft redistribution, the biggest change is in Grey/O’Donoghue, where the Liberal Party is now 0.4% stronger than they were on the draft boundaries.

10:15 – This table shows the 2PP and primary vote for each of the new seats. Only Mayo, Spence, O’Donoghue and Kingston should have differed from the draft.

10:13 – The original draft redistribution shifted 3.9% of voters – the new version shifts just 1.8%.

10:00 – The Australian Electoral Commission this morning announced the final decision on the federal redistribution of South Australia’s ten electorates.

They have adopted most of the proposed changes, but in two places they will be leaving suburbs in their original seat. A bunch of suburbs swapped between Mayo and Kingston will remain in their 2025 electorate, and the same is true for Grey and Spence. The commission has also adopted the new name of O’Donoghue to replace the seat of Grey.

This is a relatively small chance so it will be possible for me to create a map and data reflecting these changes – something the AEC has not done itself. When that’s done I will share an interactive map, my estimate of seat margins, and an estimate of the pendulum now that the first wave of redistributions has been completed. The Queensland federal redistribution is only commencing now and will take a way to finish.

11:47 – I’m going to wrap up here. Over the next few days I will produce a map showing the new boundaries, which should allow me to also produce seat guides for the Tasmanian federal electorates, but I will wait for the final boundaries in South Australia before getting to work on the next wave of my federal election guide. When that map is done, I will add it here.

11:46 – This table compares pre- and post-redistribution percentages and quotas for each group. The numbers change slightly for Bass and Lyons but all the commentary I provided in February is still relevant.

One thing I noticed while producing this table this time: Kristie Johnston has 0.7 quotas in Clark, despite only contesting about half the seat. But she also has 0.4 quotas in Lyons, which is pretty impressive considering most of the seat wasn’t able to vote for her. I suspect she would stick with Clark, but a Johnston-backed candidacy in Lyons could also be interesting.

11:33 – Here are the estimates of the percentage vote for each party group per electorate.

And here are the estimates of quotas.

Next up I’ll put up a table comparing pre-redistribution and post-redistribution figures for the main groups in each seat.

11:14 – 27.6% of voters have been moved into a new seat. That number is exactly the same as on the draft boundaries.

It’s worth remembering that the scale of the federal redistributions in this term is quite minor. Only three states and one territory are redrawing the map, and in every case the number of seats stays the same (which minimises the need for change). That means as a starting point 102/150 seats are unaffected. Two more seats (Fenner and Braddon) have now been confirmed to have no changes. The South Australian draft redistribution proposed no changes to three other seats. So this would mean 107 out of 120 seats would be unchanged, before we start redrawing the Queensland map.

11:11 – It will not be that difficult to draw a map of these new boundaries – take the draft boundaries, rename Franklin, change the Launceston-area boundary back to the 2025 boundary, and then swap Break O’Day LGA – but I won’t get that done today. Sorry for that! Should be done by Friday.

11:09 – And I just realised I don’t need to calculate a 2CP margin for Clark since it was already done for the draft boundaries.

11:07 – It will take me slightly longer to estimate 2CP margins for Clark, but this table shows primary votes and 2PP for each seat.

The Labor margin in Bass on the draft boundaries and on the 2025 boundaries was 8.0%. Now it is 8.3%. The Labor margin for Lyons had grown from 11.6% on the 2025 result to 13.1% on the draft boundaries. It is now 12.7%. There are no changes to Braddon (since the previous boundaries) or to Clark or Tongerlongeter (since the draft boundaries).

10:24 – The Australian Electoral Commission has just announced the final Tasmanian federal boundaries, although there will be further consultation on a new name. The draft version of this redistribution was published in February and you can find my analysis of those boundaries here.

The AEC media release is here and there is more information here.

The draft involved very minor changes to northern Tasmania but completely redrew the southern half of Tasmania, with Clark losing Glenorchy and picking up the rural south-west of Tasmania, Franklin losing those south-western areas and spreading up the east coast of Tasmania, while Lyons pushed into Hobart by picking up the Glenorchy area.

I have only had a chance to quickly read the AEC media release, but it appears that they are maintaining the draft boundaries in southern Tasmania, but are proposing to rename Franklin as ‘Tongerlongeter’. The AEC has given the following explanation of this name:

Tongerlongeter (c. 1790-1837) is recognised by historians as one of the most significant Tasmanian Aboriginal leaders during the early period of British colonisation. As a member of the Oyster Bay nation, Tongerlongeter’s Country is within the proposed boundaries of the electorate.

The Commission has also made some changes to the proposed boundary between Bass and Lyons. Bass will now gain the Break O Day local government area on the north-east coast, but will not gain Prospect Vale or Blackstone Heights on the south-western outskirts of Launceston.

The boundaries appear to be final, but there will be a chance for further consultation on the name Tongerlongeter.

These boundaries are also expected to be applied for Tasmanian state elections, with each electorate sending seven members to the House of Assembly. But this process is not automatic – the state Parliament will need to adopt the new boundaries once the federal process is completely finished. I will also be calculating state election vote shares once I have the maps and data, but it takes a bit longer than a federal redistribution, so probably won’t be done today.

6:32 – Unfortunately the AEC has not published maps for the final versions. I am relying on the descriptions of the borders to draw them myself – I am confident I have assigned every SA1 correctly, but it’s a bit of a pain to make. It may also be beyond my capacity to accurately do so for the Tasmanian and South Australian redistributions, depending on how much they deviate from the drafts. I will add some maps when they are done, but it probably won’t be until tomorrow.

3:30 – The scale of the changes are significantly less than on the draft boundaries. 9.9% of electors were moved on the draft, and that number is now 6.6%. On the draft boundaries, the new Fenner contained 5.9% of new electors. That number is now zero, with Fenner unchanged. The number for Bean dropped slightly from 9.4% to 9.3%, while Canberra’s changes have dropped significantly from 14.6% to 10.4%.

3:28 – And here are my estimates of the margin. My estimate of the Bean margin has become slightly smaller, falling from 0.6% on the draft to 0.4% on the final version, compared to an actual margin of 0.3% in Bean. These are all pretty loose so overall I’d say the seat is about as competitive as the old boundaries.

3:25 – Apologies for the delay. Here is my estimates of 2PP and primary votes for each electorate.

11:22 – Unfortunately I’ve just realised that the AEC has not yet published the data and maps. While draft proposals are published immediately, maps and data are not published for the final announcement until it is determined and tabled in parliament. I think I will be able to calculate the changes, but it will take a bit longer.

11:08 – The Australian Electoral Commission in the last half hour has announced the final redistribution for the ACT’s three federal electorates. In the next hour I plan to produce estimates of vote shares for the new electorates, but to quickly summarise:

• Despite original plans to make changes to the Canberra-Fenner boundary in both directions, the Fenner border is now left unchanged.
• The redistribution committee had originally proposed to move Norfolk Island and part of the suburb of Duffy from Bean to Canberra, but that has not been adopted, so those areas will remain in Bean.
• Symonston, Hume and the remainder of the Jerrabombera district will be in Canberra.

The council is elected at large, with nine councillors representing the entire council area.

In New South Wales, councils can opt in to using countbacks instead of by-elections to fill vacancies, but that process can only be used for the first eighteen months of the council term. Vacancies can also be left vacant for the final eighteen months of the term. This means that by-elections must be used for the middle year of the four year term, and that’s right where we are.

By-elections aren’t a great way to fill vacancies when multiple members represent a district. All of the voters get a chance to vote again, but only one portion of the district has lost their representative. There can be absolutely no change in the partisan make-up of voting patterns yet you can get a quite different result.

In the case of councils where all councils are elected at large (which otherwise has a lot going for it) the scale of the by-election can be far in excess of the value. Every voter in Kiama will need to vote again to replace 1/9 of the council. When there was a by-election for the City of Campbelltown in 2017, a population roughly the size of a federal electorate needed to vote to replace a single councillor.

Which is why I’m an advocate for using countbacks much more extensively, not just for the first eighteen months of the term. I would use them for all vacancies except for the last six months of the term, for all councils, and candidates should be aware of this process when they nominate.

But Kiama Council’s solution to the problems of by-elections is much worse, and shows a shocking disregard for democracy and representation.

Councillor Mike Cains resigned from council in June 2026, triggering a requirement for the council to hold a by-election.

Kiama Council is in the middle of a budget crisis, with the council needing to close a significant budget deficit with cost and service reductions. I experienced this myself when visiting Kiama on New Years Eve last year to discover that their regular fireworks had been cancelled. With this in mind, and the cost of a full council by-election estimated at $200,000, the council has instead suggested that they simply opt out of filling a vacancy.

The council decided on June 30 to ask the minister to allow the council to operate with just eight councillors for the remainder of the term and thus negate the need for a council by-election. The minister has quickly dismissed this idea as not possible. It is worth emphasising that these councillors were elected in September 2024 for a four year term. Cains resigned about 44% of the way through his term.

I think this is a disturbing reflection of how a lot of local government looks at their role of democratic representation – if councillors are simply a board of directors it makes perfect sense to just leave a seat vacant. But councillors represent different political interests and vacancies should be filled.

$200,000 may seem like a lot, but I think it is a pretty important part of local government. Without democratic representation, local government might as well be fully integrated into state government. For a council like Kiama, which is relatively small and is struggling to demonstrate its ability to financially stand on its own, it would be nice for them to show that they value their connection to their voters.

It also demonstrates the flaw in having councils directly pay for their own elections. Councils struggle with a limited revenue base and an ever-increasing demand for them to use their resources, with state and federal governments in a far more powerful position financially. It is understandable that councils would skimp on proper democratic processes. It would be far superior for the base-level costs of running elections to be covered by the state government outside of council budgets as a guarantee of democratic excellence.

Thankfully Kiama hasn’t succeeded in their push to cancel local democracy, but it is a good reminder of the problems with using local by-elections when a countback would be far superior. There is legislation sitting before the NSW parliament which would change how councillor vacancies are filled. The proposed process is convoluted – instead I would urge a change to simply make countbacks universal where they can be applied.