8:00am – It appears that the final pre-poll figures for Werribee came in just after midnight, and the Labor lead increased slightly to 441 votes. This is definitely not enough to call the seat for Labor so we will need to watch as the final postal votes are counted.
11:49 – On the other hand, it’s possible that the remaining early votes are more favourable to the ALP.
I’m going to call it a night here, and will update this in the morning if that final 2CP data comes through.
11:41 – The first large batch of pre-poll votes have reported 2CP votes in Werribee. About 10,000 pre-poll votes have 2CPs out of a total of 23,000 on the primary count. Those early votes have the Liberal Party leading by 704 votes, leaving Labor in the lead by just 353.
If the remaining batch break by the same margin, it would put the Liberal Party in front.
11:31 – They’re not the most exciting booth maps, but I’ve produced maps showing the 2CP swing and percent in both seats. There’s a ‘0’ for the Chapel booth in Prahran which didn’t have a 2022 match. Probably the most interesting thing is that the Liberal Party has lost most election day booths in both seats, but in Prahran they still managed to win on the back of pre-poll and postal votes, and in Werribee it looks likely to bring them close.
11:24 – Chatter about turnout usually starts up too early, before all of the votes have been counted, but the turnout in Prahran seems particularly low. As of right now, the Prahran turnout is 64.3%, and Werribee is 74.9%. Apparently there are about 2,000 postal votes expected to come in later. Even if there were 4,000 votes to add, that only brings the turnout up to 72.6%.
In contrast, no by-election in the last decade has had a turnout lower than 78.9%. The best comparison would be the Northcote by-election in 2017, when turnout was 79%. But I did go back further and find that turnout at the 2012 Melbourne by-election was only 68.6%. Which is very close to where Prahran would turn out if just 2,000 more votes were added.
So, yes, the turnout does look low, certainly lower than Werribee, but not unprecedented for an inner Melbourne by-election.
11:03 – For what it’s worth, it looks like most or all of the pre-poll votes have been counted in Prahran and the Liberal remains almost 1000 votes ahead of the Greens. Just over half of the postal votes have been counted, but that’s unlikely to turn things around. It looks like the Liberal Party will gain Prahran from the Greens.
As for Werribee, most of the pre-poll votes have been counted for the primary vote but not the 2CP. While the primary vote suggests the pre-poll is slightly better for the Liberal Party, it’s not a huge difference. But we’ll need to wait for those 2CP votes to be counted to make a call in Werribee.
9:47 – The 2CP swings in Prahran are all in the teens, and most of them are over 12%. Right now it looks like the Liberals are favourites to win.
9:21 – It appears that the Liberal Party is winning a very narrow majority of preferences flowing in Prahran. They’re gaining 50.8% in Chapel, 51.7% in Fawkner Park, 56.1% in Orrong, 53.9% in Prahran, 50.3% in Prahran East and 49.7% in South Yarra. This suggests the Greens need a primary vote lead to win.
9:04 – Eight booths have reported primary votes in Prahran, and the Greens and Liberal are tied on about 36% each. The Greens are on 53.7% of the 2CP.
9:03 – Ten booths have reported primary votes in Werribee, and Labor is leading 29-27. Four booths have reported 2PP figures and Labor is leading with 50.37%.
8:33 – That booth was Thomas Chirnside. Labor polled 29% of the primary vote to 24.5% Liberal, and that translated to a Labor 2PP of 55%. Labor got 57% of preferences from other candidates. This suggests a neck-and-neck primary vote is not enough for the Liberal to win.
8:30 – We now have some more two-party-preferred figures in Werribee and Labor is on 51.05%.
8:21 – Six booths have now reported primary votes in Prahran, plus some early votes. It’ll be hard to say who is winning until we have some real 2CP numbers but right now the Greens are looking stronger, leading 40-31.
8:08 – Worth noting that there isn’t much of a swing to the Liberal Party in Werribee – most of the swing away from Labor is going to minor parties. That 16% 2PP swing in Little River is impressive but if that drops to, say, 8% or 9% in the bigger booths then that would be too little for the Liberals.
8:04 – We finally have some results from Prahran, with primary votes in Orrong showing both Liberal and Greens on about 37%. No real 2CP numbers yet.
8:03 – We’ve also got some results for Thomas Chirnside, Westgrove and Riverside and Labor is below 30% in all three booths. Overall Labor is on 27% to Liberal 25%. Paul Hopper is on 13% and Victorian Socialists are just under 10%.
7:42 – The 2PP for Little River is 60-40 to the Liberal Party. That’s a swing of 16%. Of course it’s worth noting that Little River is a rural booth a long way from the rest of the Werribee population and may not be representative of the rest of the seat. We still have no other results.
7:02 – First booth has reported for Werribee – it’s Little River. Labor is on just 20% and the Liberal Party on 40% of the primary vote. Labor polled 43.5% there last time so that’s a big swing.
6:55 – I was out earlier and have only just started following hte results – but in case you weren’t sure, no votes have been published yet on the VEC site.
6:00 – Polls have just closed for the two Victorian state by-elections in Prahran and Werribee. I’ll be following the results here tonight.
No Mondays, Malvern and Kooyong village end of Toorak are demographically similar to Hawthorn and Kew.
The Orrong booth result is potentially bad news for Ryan, for while the swing doesn’t look big and it’s only one booth, but it might point to similar or bigger swings to the Liberals elsewhere in Stonnington and other parts of Kooyong.
No Mondays, When did the boundary between Prahran and South Yarra change? The Prahran high rise towers are now in South Yarra.
There are two high rise rowers in Prahran as well. I used to live around the corner from there.
The largest high rise estate is the one in South Yarra (bounded by Malvern Rd, Surrey Rd, Simmons St & Bray St) which has 3 of the old high rise towers, a couple of newer/refurbished towers, and a bunch of low-rise.
But there are also two old high rise towers on King St, Prahran as well. The whole area is home to a lot of public housing as there were also low & mid-rise estates on Essex St and Bangs St in Prahran (both being replaced with the mid-rise mixed public/private developments), with Essex St basically linking the 2 Prahran towers to the South Yarra towers.
But you’re right, that entire area that takes in both the South Yarra & Prahran estates are managed by the ‘Prahran Public Housing Office’ which is in South Yarra. I don’t think the boundary changed but it’s probably a case where it was named after the old City of Prahran as opposed to the suburbs they were in, especially since the estate straddles the border of both suburbs.
@Monday’s they weren’t lo ned up for being refugees they were locked up for entering the country illegally. They werent even targeted because of their race, if it had of been a bunch of new zealandees coming across the tasman they would have got the same treatment. In fact they weren’t even locked up they were sent offshore for processing.
So your saying 60% of Australia is racist for voting against it. In the voice itself was racist because it sought to give one race of people more rights then others.
Joking about something happening isn’t racist maybe a lil insensitive but not racist.
The Lebanese thing was because of crime not because they were Lebanese.
And the white genocide in south Africa is real white farmers are being murdered and having their land stolen simply because they’re white. Fhats racist.
Please do go on make an idiot of yourself.
Back to the byelection results, Tony Lupton was interviewed on Sky News last night (they are big fans) and boasted that his preferences split 70-30 to the Liberal Party. So he must have some intel, probably from scrutineers, into the flow.
If that’s accurate, then even the difference between a 50-50 split and the 70-30 split, applied to his 12.3% vote share, is a +2.5 contribution to the Liberal 2CP, more than their winning margin. So I think it’s safe to say that Tony Lupton’s preferences were actually decisive in the result. A 50/50 split applied to Lupton’s vote would have resulted in roughly an 0.5% GRN 2CP margin.
I also just did a bit of maths and worked out – assuming Lupton’s preferences did flow 70/30 – what the preference flow from the non-Lupton “Other” vote was.
Turns out, preferences from the non-Lupton ‘Other’ vote flowed 55.5-44.5 in favour of the Greens, and that includes Nathan Chisholm who had the donkey vote with Liberals second on the ballot too.
I think it’s fair to say that Tony Lupton was absolutely decisive, as if his preferences even just flowed 50-50, the 2CP (based on the current count) would be 50.8-49.2 in favour of the Greens.
Now, obviously that would still be a very disappointing result for the Greens who really should have improved their primary vote in the absence of Labor. But I think it’s indicative that Tony Lupton’s HTVC absolutely made the difference between a narrow Greens retain and a Liberal gain.
Of course, on Sky News he was boasting about that 70-30 split in the context that Labor should take that as a lesson that 70% of their voters prefer the Liberals so should do the same, but this ignores two very important points:
1. His HTVC directed those preferences, and voters who actually placed their first preference with other INDs/minors – most likely also ex Labor voters – actually favoured the Greens in their preferences;
2. Most importantly, he only got 12.8% of the vote, far less than Labor get, so it’s not at all indicative of all Labor voters. More than half of the 2022 Labor voters didn’t vote for Tony Lupton. This has to tell him that many probably disapproved of his HTVC.
On the 2026 predictions, I think this definitely adds weight the Liberal Party not being able to win it even in the absence of the Lupton effect let alone with a Labor candidate on the ballot, and that’s before even taking into account the other byelection effects (turnout).
And The Age today ran an article saying the Greens are incorrectly blaming Tony Lupton for the loss, and while the article is right that they do have to look at why they didn’t really pick up any of the 10,000 Labor votes that were up for grabs, the Greens were actually not wrong in saying that Tony Lupton was the difference between a GRN retain and LIB gain.
@Trent it’s all on the vec website
@Darth Vader, to my knowledge the preference flows aren’t there yet, only the primary votes and 2CP throw, which doesn’t tell you how each candidates’ preferences flowed.
Overall, preferences flowed something like 55.7-44.3 in favour of the Liberals I believe.
But if Lupton’s intel is that his 12.3% flowed around 70-30 to the Liberals, that means the other 15.3% IND/Minor vote flowed around 55.5-44.5 to the Greens.
Hendry, Billman and AJP preferenced the Greens above the Libs. Family First and Libertarians to the Libs but their votes were low. Nathan Chisholm had an open ticket but the donkey would have seen a substantial flow to the Libs. I will be interested to see the Greens flow to the Libs in Werribee – my betting is that its substantial due to the donkey vote.
Thing is, you also have to take into consideration who didn’t vote from 2022 to 2025. It looks like it will end up around 10%, so if it is ALP voters then there is another 10% of the 26% who didn’t either vote for or preference the Greens. If that is the case then there seems to be a big problem for both Greens and Labor, as it appears even in the most ALP/Green friendly seats without Labor directing preferences their voters don’t want a bar of the Greens.
Of course I don’t believe this, while I do think that a lot of the lost voters are ALP voters, Kevin Bonham makes a good argument that the Lupton voters are not necessarily ex ALP voters.
@Darth Vader: isn’t sticking defending reactionary policies making an idiot of yourself?
I don’t think that you have an understanding of structural racism, and its use by politicians to uphold the class divide inherent in capitalism.
@Pencil. The South Yarra high rise estate has always been in South Yarra. The division between South Yarra and Prahran has always been Commercial/ Malvern Road. This was the case even when South Yarra was SE1 and Prahran was S1. The Prahran high rise towers are the two 12 story towers south of the skate park. The Windsor tower is the 12 story one in the southwest pocket of Windsor.
I’ve heard of a scrutineering sample from postals with Lupton votes flowing 75-25 so 70-30 overall sounds right. For sure if Lupton voter preferences split 50-50 Greens would have retained. But concerning voters copying Lupton’s HTV, as I’ve noted on my site the Lupton voters were not just a random section of the Labor support base. There was slightly more support for Lupton in normally more Liberal-voting areas and slightly less in normally strong ALP-voting areas, which is striking given that the latter have more ALP voters to get votes from.
A commenter on my site has suggested what this could mean is that the older end of the Labor support base, voting for Lupton because of when he was the MP, are more likely to live in the conservative areas. But voters who were Labor voters when Lupton was the MP may well have drifted conservative with age anyway, and also this kind of Labor voter may have been much more Liberal-leaning than average in their preferences between Liberals and Greens.
On current numbers for the Lupton HTV card to itself have made the difference it would need to be the case that 12.5% of Lupton voters preferenced the Liberals solely because of the HTV and would have preferenced the Greens had Lupton put the Greens ahead of the Liberals. I’d say that’s very likely to be true but it’s not obvious to me that the Lupton HTV was the sole cause of Lupton prefs breaking to the Liberals by some amount. It’s common for HTV copy rates for non-majors to be sub-20.
Overall while the Lupton HTV probably made the difference and the Lupton preferences clearly did, the Greens shouldn’t have been in the position where it was that close without him. All else equal they should have retained something like 54-46 and that they didn’t retain at all suggests backlash over Hibbins, or dissatisfaction over other things, or the Liberal candidate being a good candidate (etc). Excuses about turnout only go so far as Prahran is a low turnout seat anyway and the turnout drop will probably end up in the low teens.
I agree with all that Kevin.
I definitely think the Greens need to look at why it was so close to begin with, in particular, why their primary vote didn’t increase when there was no Labor candidate for Greens voters to swing to, in addition to around 10,000 Labor votes up for grabs that they should have been able to get at least a third of as primary votes.
But at the same time, I do think Tony Lupton was absolutely the difference between the Greens retaining (albeit by a much narrower margin than they should) and them losing the seat, and it is likely that even just his HTVC alone made that difference.
Is there any evidence that older voters (especially postal voters) are more likely to follow HTVCs than younger voters too? Tony Lupton’s voter base seemed to be predominantly 55+ based on his social media activity, so if that is the case then I think a HTVC follow rate of at least 15% is probably likely.
What I think is way off the mark is Tony Lupton’s comments on Sky that his 70-30 preference split is “evidence” Labor should also preference the Liberals.
I think the fact that he got less than half the vote share that Labor got in 2022, and like you say not all of that (maybe not even most) would have voted Labor anyway, even despite that the preference flow to the Liberals was less than Labor’s usual preference flow to the Greens, and the non-Lupton “Other” vote which was most likely also made up of a significant number of Labor voters flowed stronger to the Greens than the Liberals, completely contradicts what he and Sky News are trying to say Labor should do.
@trent his scruteeners would have access to the raw daw at the count.
rather then keep people waiting until friday the VEC should be providing dailty conts on the postals
I’d think postal voters would be (all else equal) less likely to follow a HTV card as they would be less likely to have ever seen one. It might be inferred that younger voters are less likely to follow HTV cards given that the rate of following of them has sharply declined over decades, but I’m not sure that inference is reliable.
@kevin the majors usally send out flyers to all the residents just in case.
@Trent, I also assume Prahran area tend to lean on Social Liberalism rather than Socialism like Brunswick and Fitzroy probably explaining why many Labor Voters couldn’t bring themselves voting for the Greens this by election.
@Kevin Bonham, that makes sense about postal voters.
Looking at the results, Tony Lupton actually did worst with postal voters anyway (only 10.1% vs 12.8% overall and 11.6% on election day), most postal voters – literally most as they got over 50% of the postal primary vote – just put the Liberals first.
Lupton did the best with early voters (15.6%), where there were only two booths and he was personally always at one of them. I am convinced that his voter based definitely skewed older, so between an older voter base and personally handing out HTVCs, I think it’s definitely very likely that there was at least 15% adherence to them.
@john , since Saturday, more than 2,500 postal votes for Werribee have been received by the VEC and more than 1,700 for Prahran.
Not all will be admitted to the count.
I can’t see this changing Labor’s lead in Werribee: it’s too far ahead.
@rob the results will then be rechecked and if it’s close enough a recount may be in order and regardless of if Labor just holds on Labor have lost this election this has been a damning judgement on the Allen Labor government. Werribee should be a Liberal gain in 2026.
Based on swings here the overlapping federal seats of Corio Labor and Hawke might want to prepare themselves. Marles should be safe in Corio due to the feeling based Labor vote and his profile as deputy leader and defence minister. Maybe a 4% swing. Joanne Ryan in Labor maybe a 6-8% swing. Sam Rae in the biggest trouble I’d say Hawke might be really close. It should be noted Marles Ryan and Rae all lost primary vote in a year when Labor swept to power though Rae didn’t have the benefit of incumbency due to it being a new seat. Marles got a modest 2pp gain of 2% despite the loss of nearly 10% of the liberal primary. and Ryan was basically stagnant even though her opponent lost 5%. Libs actually gained ground in Hawke but again factors in Hawke to explain that
@Ben Raue, I thought Little River voted Liberal?
The ABC (Antony Green) is reporting completely different results for some booths: https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/werribee-by-election-2025/results
Antony’s map says Little River voted 60.2% Liberal on TPP, while Manor Lakes voted 54.6% Labor on TPP.
Ben’s map says Little River voted 56% Labor on TPP while Manor Lakes voted 60% Liberal on TPP.
Not sure which one is right?
@NP, Ben had misplaced the polling booths as PollBludger got the same as ABC which is correct
https://pollbludger.net/vic2025by1/Results/LA.htm?s=Werribee
Yeah there was a mistake in the order of booths – for some reason Glenorden was listed second-last on the list of lat/longs rather than first, so when I matched the vote data it was off by one booth for all but the last booth. Fixed now.
@ben raue and other can we please drop international politics. Thanks
I agree.
@No Monday Right, so according to you: people in a working class area who are also of Chinese descent don’t like the leader of a major conservative party = all people of Chinese descent in Australia don’t like him
Your words: “Dutton really doesn’t appeal to people of Chinese descent. He’s too Anglophone, and quite frankly outright racist.”
Just because your experiences have given this impression does not give you the right to make blanket statements like that. If your statement was true and Dutton really didn’t appeal to people of Chinese descent, Bennelong and Chisholm would be completely unwinnable as I have mentioned before. Such statements show a lack of self-awareness and an obvious bias towards him.
I will not be commenting on international politics any further as requested – I would rather trust the first hand account of someone I know, over someone on a forum who has a literal black and white mentality.
Alright cut it out.