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.
Adam Werribee isn’t declared yet
This is the second election I have watched where the alp did not run a candidate. The first was Manly in 2017, where I was managing an IND
It was astonishing to see the fury of rusted-on ALP voters who arrived at the booths to find they had no-one to vote for. I don’t know how they voted but I do believe it altered the result.
Does anybody know whether that fury was replicated in Prahran?
Geoff Lambert
The Liberals ultimately probably benefit from not having to run this guy again in Werribee, clearly they have issues with campaign infrastructure out west and still have heaps of work to do in order to appeal to disgruntled Labor voters – of which there are loads of, nearly 17% primary swing against Labor…
Let’s not forget that in the context of Prahran either, the humiliation factor of running and falling way behind has not been proven wrong at all
I have intently studied preference flows from a number of recent elections. The one that stands out the most is the QLD state election because there was good polling before the election and Newspoll was spot on with the primary votes of both major parties but missed the 2PP by some 1.5%. We can add the last NT and ACT elections into the mix but on a less reliable basis. Generally, the ‘other’ vote is becoming very large and I’m not sure pollsters have got it right. Yes, Labor picked up 62% of the non-two major party preference flow at the last federal election but this was somewhat a historical high against an unpopular government. Assuming preference flows will occur in the same way as the last election, I think, is fraught with danger and potential inaccuracy. The examples in these two by-elections are further examples of my point. Here, in Werribee, we have primary votes broadly similar for the two major parties and 2PP broadly similar. Yet in federal polling we have the coalition between 7-8 points ahead on primary, but pollsters are saying the 2PP is 50/50.
My tip: in the federal election, if the coalition get 8 points ahead on the primary vote compared to the ALP or if the coalition get to a 40% primary vote, the ALP will not form the next government. At an 8 point primary vote gap, I think it is more likely than not that the coalition would get around 51.5% of the TPP.
This again shows that the Liberals can win seats in Victoria, and they just have won a safe progressive seat.
The woke parts of Prahran in the far south voted Greens still, but the more moderate areas went back to the Liberals.
Could this be a factor of two things?:
A. John Pesutto being a moderate (I know he’s gone now but he was there for much of the campaign)
B. The Greens being way too woke and extreme and focusing on Palestine and idpol over the environment
These were factors in the Brisbane seats (in BCC wards the LNP still won a lot of federal and state Greens booths). If it weren’t for Labor’s abortion scare campaign they would’ve won back Maiwar.
I think the Prahran result is entirely down to the difference between a general election where Labor is running and handing out ALP 1 GRN 2 HTVs, and one where they’re not running. We’ll see from the full district how influential Tony Lupton was but I think even without him Labor’s voters may well go from 80/20 to 50/50 , and that’s the ones that show up. Plus relatively depressed turnout from young voters.
Didn’t get the sense from primary votes that the Greens are in much trouble with the base that won them Prahran in the past. They have perhaps declined a bit with the doctors wives/teal demographic but it’s not definitive.
I question what you consider as woke NP, considering a lot of people who use that word would consider the entire area woke – socially progressive, small l liberal, LINO all fall under said term etc…at the federal level, even Katie Allen would and has been labelled that in the past.
Anyway, I doubt John Pesutto had that much effect, he’s been in the background for over a month now – Rachel Westaway is also a moderate in any case.
One thing I’m quite curious about is that Manor Lake booth in Werribee – a 16% swing that is now strongly Liberal for an on the day vote. Even Little River still has a Labor aligned 2PP for on the day.
@WL I think Ben might’ve got this numbers mixed up on the map. The Manor Lake one should be 56% Labor whilst the 60% Liberal belongs to Little River.
The last redistribution substantially boosted the non liberal vote on Prahan to the extent it improved labors position against the greens As suspected the greens won again in 2022.
It is quite possible that this seat votes alp or green next state election.
The Werribee result is another example of where the vote has completely splintered. Both ALP and Libs are <30% primary vote and there are other candidates with decent votes in the 8 – 10% range. This seems to be happening in areas with larger South Asian communities such as Western Melbourne and areas in Casey (city of not electorate of). Not so sure if it is happening in parts of Western Sydney as well. On one hand it shows a disengagement with the main political parties as we know them and on the other hand they are areas where Labor are now forced to engage and not take the areas for granted. Not sure how it will play out. Thoughts?
In reality the right wing media (C7, Murdoch Empire, 3AW, AFR) would have rather that the Greens retained Prahran, and that the Liberals won Werribee. It would have suited their narrative that the Greens represent “Inner City elites” (sic), whereas the hard right Liberal Party message resonates with the working class.
Prahran voters didn’t endorse a Dutton/ Battin agenda. They elected a “moderate” (sic) Pesutto endorsed candidate. Westaway is politically adjacent to Kamala Harris. She uses the identity politics card whilst promoting incarceration as a solution to poverty, and slash and burn economics. At the same time she is reluctant to engage in Temu Trump’s culture wars. She knows transphobia, and anti choice BS isn’t going to fly in South Yarra, and Prahran. Having a “moderate” Liberal MP isn’t going to affect the pay packets of most electors in the Prahran district. On the contrary, it will probably boost their overall bank balances. Westaway will do nothing to defend the residents of the public housing towers in South Yarra, Prahran, Windsor, and St Kilda. She will do nothing for trans youth, yet she will promote the pink dollar. I can see her draping herself in a rainbow flag in a photo opportunity with Gay nightclub owners.
Yes, Werribee quite rightly rejected Labor, yet they did not embrace the Liberal Party. The people of Werribee said they want an alternative, hence high votes for Hopper, VS, and LC. VS continue to poll well in the west because they promote policies that workers know will benefit them (redistribution of wealth, state run utilities, public housing, public schooling, accessible public transport, a non discriminatory NDIS). The Greens are viewed as bougie hippies in much of the west (Seddon, and Yarraville excluded). The Greens are not as popular in West Brunswick, as they are in Brunswick, and Brunswick East. The polling station that covers north west Brunswick West is solidly Labor with a high VS vote. The western suburbs arguably start here
@No Mondays , most Prahran voters would have not known about Westaway’s stance on social issues, but they would have known there’d been a change in the state Liberal leadership to Brad Battin.
Hence giving Rachel the first preference, or preferencing her above the Greens, is an implicit endorsement of Brad Battin.
Similarly in Werribee, huge swings have been recorded to the Liberal Party after preferences were distributed, so even if it falls a few hundred votes short, it’s also an endorsement of Brad Battin.
Remember in Werribee there’d be many electors who had before this by-election had never voted Liberal, so a big step change.
@mick labor are out of the race in prahan it will likely be a greens gain as they will have labor preferences to rely on.
@rob werribee will be won by the Libs in 2026 regardless of the outcome in this by election. a narrow lib loss may b favourable as they can then select the proper candidate who they should have this time
@Blue Not John – Your assessment of Prahran is spot on.
For all the factors that were at play, one was decisive: overall preferences split 55-45 to the Liberals, compared to 80-20 to the Greens in 2022.
Why? No Labor candidate. Simple as that.
Remember, even a 50.5-49.5 preference split to the Greens would have been a Greens retain yesterday.
No chance they get less than that (or even less than 60-40) with Labor on the ballot, not to mention the other byelection-specific factors that hurt them yesterday as well such as turnout, lack of broader/Labor campaign against Liberals, no risk of Liberal government, etc.
@Rob. You raise some fair points.
I do believe that many people are dissatisfied with both major parties. They are crying out for economic relief that neither major party can provide, as they both embrace neo liberalism.
VS offers an alternative, however a vote for them doesn’t mean that the mass of the working class are going to join SAlt. I am sure some in VS delude themselves that this is the case. They only do well because they spend hours door knocking and leafleting.
In the past Socialists have just turned up to electorates expecting to receive a high number of votes purely because they say all the right things.
There is a particular person on the left who still does this. This person stands in elections railing against privatization, while pushing a universal living income, and stock market turnover taxes. He fails to attract votes because he doesn’t have the cadre to do the ground work in the lead up to the election.
The Greens primarily make noise in areas they deem winnable. They don’t hold public meetings, and they don’t really venture north of Bell Street, or anywhere West (save for Seddon, Yarraville, and Kensington). The part of Brunswick West, in the electorate of Maribyrnong isn’t on their radar, because it’s too much like Footscray (lots of old brown and orange school walk ups, public housing, treeless streets etc). Sue Bolton does well in Fawkner because she puts in lots of hard work out there. The Greens don’t.
I agree that many people in Werribee would have voted Liberal for the first time ever. A lot of people are disengaged from politics and have the attitude let’s give the other mob a go.
Labor has been shocking. They want to knock down all the public housing towers, while they push on with privatization. Some people have the attitude that if Labor are going to imitate the Liberals, you may as well vote for the real thing; at least you know what you’re going to get.
I still don’t think that this is an endorsement of the culture wars, tax breaks for fat cat lunches, or nuclear reactors.
@no mondays. there are no tax cuts for fat cat lunches on the cards. that already exists. the coalitions plan is simply to extend a policy available to the top end of town to the small businesses who can do the same thing except they will likely have to go to out to other small businesses instead of taking care of it in house. and not only does that help the hospitality industry that generates GST revenue and income tax from those businesses.
If Labor had run in Prahran I suspect that their vote would not have been much higher than Tony Lupton’s 12.8%. I suspect some polling had been done which indicated that the vote would be under a base ‘acceptable embarrasment’ level and hence less embarrasing to not run at all.if that is the case then Labor’s primary vote is off about 10% or more. That is serious disaster territory.
Nathan Chisholm having the donkey vote and getting 5.8% with no campaign whatsoever (Liberals second on ballot order) indicates there was probably a significant number of Labor voters who just saw no Labor and then donkey-voted. His preference flow will be interesting.
I think there would have been a swing against Labor but I’d say they still would have been around the 20% mark and it even 70% of them put the Greens second it would have been a Greens win.
I think the Liberals winning emboldens their overall momentum to challenge Labor next year so even if they copped a big swing in both seats, if Liberals picked up neither Werribee or Prahran it would have been forgotten pretty quickly. Labor should have run.
On paper now it also looks like the Liberals only need 16 seats now to form government, even though there’d be a <5% chance they hold Prahran in the general election.
@trent they didnt run because they knew they couldnt win. why waste resources
Trent wasn’t wrong with Prahran, the Liberals achieved the needed swings in their stronger booths, however the Greens fell short on preferences, this is similar to the 2007 Higgins by-election, which the ALP also didn’t contest. In that by-election, the ALP vote didn’t transfer to the Greens, just as it didn’t last night.
I can see the Liberals holding Prahran at the next state election due to the Greens focusing more on winnable ALP marginals. They might decide to put more resources into neighbouring Albert Park, knowing that if the Liberals did win the election then Prahran might become more winnable, and there should be a restribution before 2030, which might push Prahran further into St Kilda.
While it looks most likely that the Greens will regain this I don’t see it as impossible for the Liberals to hold on.
As for Rachel Westaway she didn’t engage in culture war issues at all whatsoever which definitely boosted the small-l-liberal vote.
Maybe she could run in another Sandbelt seat.
I just had a look at the preferences, it’s not that Lupton’s preferences went 55-45% to the Liberals, that was preferences overall (and it was actually 55.5% to the Liberals and 44.2% to the Greens).
I reckon the impostor is Nathan Chisholm because of donkey voting. Yes Lupton’s preferences flowed to the Liberals over the Greens way above Labor’s average in seats like this but there’s still a good chance a slight majority of his voters put the Greens above the Liberals.
This is prime green territory next election
Mick, the Greens have a number of ALP marginals in their sights – Albert Park, Northcote, Pascoe Vale and Footscray plus they will be defending Melbourne, Richmond and Brunswick.
I think the Liberal primary vote will hold but not really grow in 2026:
– She’ll benefit from incumbency and a possible Labor to Lib swing (but the latter would already be baked into yesterday’s result)
– That’ll be offset by the lack of the byelection factors like turnout and general elections having more or a focus on the party / brand / leader, whereas for a byelection Rachel was able to keep it local and about her.
Honestly though I was expecting it to be higher, at least 38% in the absence of Labor, so that doesn’t bode well for her being competitive in a regular election.
Remember, in the classic 3CP contest, the Liberals have lost with a 44% primary vote and Greens’ have won with a sub-25% primary vote (they couldn’t win with that again).
But realistically the Greens just need to be >30% to win with Labor on the ballot, the Liberals would need to be over 40% to be competitive. They didn’t achieve that at a single polling place, or early votes, only on postals. If they didn’t this time, they won’t in a normal election.
I totally agree NP too that I think there was a significant donkey vote. 5.8% was a lot for Chisholm, he may be the high school principal but had zero campaign.
With an open HTVC, if his preferences heavily went LIB rather than 50/50 it would indicate a donkey vote.
@Pencil it will depend on whether Battin decides whether the Liberals preference the Greens above the ALP again.
If the Libs do preference The Greens higher, The Greens can target Preston, Albert Park, Pascoe Vale, Footscray and Northcote, without having to worry about sandbagging their existing seats. If they don’t, The Greens will have to funnel resources into sandbagging Richmond (I’m sure they’ve learnt lessons from South Brisbane 2024, and I’ve heard from Victorian ALP folk that Labor wants it back badly), and Brunswick and Melbourne will become marginal again.
I think they’ll target Praharan in both situations, as the ALP won’t make the 2pp and the re-emergence of the ALP will make it a Green pickup.
Prahran is by FAR the easiest Greens pickup regardless of how the Liberals preference in the ALP v GRN seats.
Literally the only reason they narrowly lost yesterday was because overall preferences flowed 55-45 to the Liberals instead of 80-20 to the Greens when Labor are on the ballot.
Even if preference flows considerably weaken next time, they still would have won yesterday with preference flows a hair over 50/50.
Put it this way:
Preference flows from 2022 applied to yesterday’s GRN & LIB primary votes would have been a 58-42 Greens win.
ALP on ballot = Greens gain.
This raises an issue. That the greens need Labor in Prahan
N
You’re not wrong. The byelection also showed they need to be seen to be a productive ally of Labor to rely on their preferences without a HTVC too.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/58952/comment-page-4#comment-831316
The ALP were only 4.7% ahead of the Liberals on the 3CP in Albert Park in 2022, with what appears to be a significant swing from the ALP to the Liberals since the 2022 election, the Liberals look like they will come first in the 3CP, so overtaking the ALP on 3CP would be more achievable (although still an uphill battle) and then the Greens would get ALP preferences.
Richmond would have been knife-edge in 2022 without Liberal preferences but with a Green incumbent and an ALP down in the polls, I don`t see them gaining it. Melbourne has a little more of a buffer but already has built in Green incumbency.
The Greens won Brunswick on 3CP (with 55.2%, then the Greens` best ever 3CP result, only overtaken by Newtown 2023), before the Liberals were distributed, so the Greens would need a significant 3CP swing to the ALP (or an even bigger one to the Libs) to lose it.
There are some valid points made about the mechanics behind the Prahran result.
The low turnout vote was a factor and I’m sure it was much lower amongst young voters or transient and out-of-electorate voters. This is not just a by-election thing. Labor’s abstention mean that their voters weren’t too mobilised to get out and vote. My guess is that Labor voters, who quite often put the Greens ahead of the Liberals, either abstained or donkey voted or even voted for Lupton or Westaway.
Further to the above, there is hesitancy of Labor voters to vote Greens in Prahran. This case is quite unique should the Greens ended up with a lower primary vote than in 2022.
Generally at by-elections where Labor abstains, both the Liberal and Greens primary vote go up. In cases like the Warrandyte and Cook (federal) by-elections last year, the Liberal vote went up more than the Greens primary vote did. In NSW in Epping and Hornsby, the Greens vote grew more than the Liberal vote did. Those cases are different in that they were Liberal seats and the MPs resigned on their own terms to pursue different life or career goals.
The ALP got a swing against it in Werribee and funnily enough it came almost a year after the Dunkley by-election, another by-election that took place in Victoria in a Labor-held and that too had a swing against the ALP.
@Trent – Greens waved through most of federal Labor’s legislative agenda late last year and have pivoted to an explicitly anti Dutton campaign. I think their main takeaway from QLD 2024 was that they were too hostile to Labor and didn’t give them enough credit when they did good policies, and it’s coming through in campaigning.
Despite this there is still plenty of animosity, plenty of things for Greens to criticise about Federal Labor, and Labor don’t want to be associated with the Greens. So the hostility will continue and I don’t see rusted ons embracing the Greens without a how to vote card.
@Trent – agree with your analysis on Rachel Westaway’s campaign. She was very smart in running a campaign about HER & PRAHRAN rather than a campaign on BATTIN & THE LIBERALS. This was evident in a lot of aspects, she ran on local policies (e.g. saving Windsor Childcare Centre, crime & homelessness on Chapel Street), mostly was helped by moderate MPs (Southwick & Pesutto were heavily involved in the campaign), even her HTV card didn’t include a picture of Battin just her. Because of that, she was able to sell herself as a local and a strong campaigner to the people of Prahran, who evidently were satisfied with that.
It actually was a blessing that the leader of the party she was endorsed by barely appeared in Prahran, focusing on Werribee. If Battin appeared in Prahran more, game over, she would have been seen more as a minion of him rather than a local, mostly-independent & grassroots candidate, which she proved in the campaign.
100% agree James.
In a general election, that will be much harder because it will be in the broader context of an ALP vs LIB state election with a focus on Battin and the Liberals, so combined with a normal turnout, even before factoring in Labor being back on the ballot I think the byelection result would be hard for Rachel Westaway to replicate.
@Trent – to be frank, I think it is likely she will lose in 2026 with everything being back to normal, however there is a slim possibility that she is able to develop a personal vote in the electorate and hold a lot of votes, which can happen, and it’s about a 1/100000000 chance for her to actually retain. It is clear the transient population of Prahran may not recognise her, and the people she gained support from may have moved electorate. The densification will impact a lot on the demographics, especially around South Yarra. I’ll predict an Greens gain but it will be an absolutely interesting race as the Greens may only come in front on preferences.
‘Despite the 16.7% swing away from Labor on first-preference votes, the Liberal candidate received just a modest 3.7% increase.
It suggests voters at a general election may return to Labor, at least via preferences – so trying to knock off Labor seats with comfortable margins might not be a winning strategy for the Coalition.
It’s certainly not a big enough showing for state Liberal leader Brad Battin and Peter Dutton if they believe their respective pathways to government will be through the outer suburbs.
“It was a perfect storm, the perfect opportunity to pick the seat up and they didn’t,” the former Labor operative said.
Instead, voters appeared to shift from Labor to the independent candidate, Paul Hopper, who received 14.7% of first-preference votes, as well as the Victorian Socialists and Legalise Cannabis.
Hopper campaigned for better infrastructure in the west and did not preference other candidates, saying many in the area couldn’t stomach voting either Liberal or Labor. And clearly he was right.
Federally, it’s given the teals some confidence they can hang on to existing seats and possible gain others.‘
This is from the Guardian. It reinforces my view that the Werribee by election was not endorsement of the Battin/Dutton punch down agenda. Dutton would not know where Werribee was if he stumbled across it. He has probably never even met anyone from Werribee. He has no idea what voters in the west of Melbourne need.
@mondays that can be atrributed to the large canidadate field and most of those votes came back to the libs in a >10% swing on the 2pp. if the libs ahd chose that indian guy id say it would have been more. but they didnt id say after postals come in the libs will win it. there are stilll 4111 postals to come in the result will then be rechecked and likely a recount to ensure the correct result given how close it will likely be
I suspect that the Libs vote in Werribee might be a bit overcooked due to their position near the top right after the Greens. I suspect the flows from to Green to Lib will be very out of the ordinary.
@john , I admire your optimism but the gap is too large for the Liberal Party to win. It will narrowly lose.
@redistributed donkey voting usually accounts for about 1% of votes so i doubt it
last time the 2pp prefence flow from grn was 80/20 when they were 6th on the ballot and labor had pole position
@rob it depends on how the postals break, rechecking and any likely recount if its narrow enough could change it in their favour. it wont be decalred until its mathematically impossible for them to lose. postals usally favour the libs and so im not ready to call this until that happens. a loss could be favourable to the libs anyway to get the more desirable candidate in for the 2026 election
@James, again I agree with that assessment. I think in 2026 the Liberals will likely still win the primary vote in Prahran, as the return of Labor will probably actually eat into the Greens’ primary vote a little bit, however the Liberals just don’t really have a realistic path to win the 2CP with Labor back on the ballot.
I think the Liberals will keep a 35-36% primary vote in 2026 (higher than even the 2018 result let alone 2022), while the Greens will reduce to somewhere within the 30-35% band. However, Labor will be in the 20s so the Greens will easily stay in the 2CP and win off their preferences.
Something like this looks realistic:
35 LIB
32 GRN
23 ALP
10 Other
Assuming Labor preferences flow 75-25 (compared to 83-17 in 2022) and others flow 50-50 (compared to around 60-40 in 2022) so I’m assuming much weaker Greens preference flows than 2022, that would result in a 2CP result of around 55-45 for the Greens, which I think sounds about right.
@trent how did you see labor prefeence flows from 2022? also based on 2022 results the 2pp was basically the combined vote of the alp and greens and so i cant see any reason that would be stronger after alp > grn prefences are alot weaker. based on your votes the combined alp/grn vote is 55. so id imagine it would be alot weaker. i think though you overestimated the grn and underestimated the labor vote i think the grn primary will stagnate as it did in prahran and that was with labor voters voting for them due to lack of a labor candidate. i think the combined greens/alp vote will be around what you said 55-56%. the combined Other vote was around 10% in 2022 and the majority of that went to the libs. i think like prahran the margin in macnarma will be around 3% either way. the greens would probably get 53-47 max and the libs could upset them with a narrow victory of 1% or under.
the other vote split about 70/30 to the libs in 2022
of the 11605 others they received 8144 of the preferences
@john I think you’re very my this thread confused with the Macnamara thread.
We’re talking about the Prahran 2022 result, not Macnamara.
There were nowhere near 11605 “Other” votes in Prahran 2022.
*getting this thread confused, stupid auto correct.