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.
This discussion was about the Greens winning Prahran back next year, not the Greens winning Macnamara this year.
@trent sry my mistake. i think the libs might improve their primary slightly. probably to around 38-39%. but yea 55-45 seems like a likely result in 2026
Yeah my guess for Prahran 2026 was based on reduced Greens preference flows compared to 2022 of:
* 75% of Labor’s preferences (down from 83%)
* 50% of other preferences (down from 60%)
Applying that to the Greens getting a -4% swing from both 2022 and the byelection, Liberals maintaining but probably not increasing the 5% swing they got at the byelection, and Labor reducing to the low 20s with a higher Other vote than 2022, the Greens still get around a 55% 2CP.
Agree Trent, the by election result involved an extraordinary set of circumstances that allowed the Liberals to win (albeit very narrowly, only 51% 2CP).
In a general election environment, Rachel Westaway as the incumbent MP will have to defend her own ‘moderate’ background against any controversial remarks made by some of her rogue colleagues like Moira Deeming. She would also have a voting record to defend, particularly if she supports some motions or legislation brought on by the hardcore Coalition members in Parliament. This would weaken her during the campaign and could also provide ammunition for Labor and the Greens, strengthening their argument that she is just another backer of the hard right.
The Prahran by-election loss is a massive blow to the Greens. The Greens’ primary vote stagnated despite Labor not contesting. One would have expected the Greens primary vote to be in the high 40s or even low 50s due to Labor voters switching to the Greens. Adding 40% of the 2022 Labor primary vote to the 2022 Greens primary vote (Labor preference flows to the Greens in a Greens vs Liberal contest will be more than 80%) will give the Greens a primary vote of 46.9% and an easy victory even with unfavourable preference flows from Tony Lupton’s voters.
@pencil: “In that by-election (2009 Higgins by-election), the ALP vote didn’t transfer to the Greens, just as it didn’t last night.” This was not correct. In the 2009 Higgins by-election where Labor did not contest, the Greens primary vote increased by 21.65%, which was equivalent to 69.7% of Higgins’ 2007 Labor vote. This was in stark contrast to the 2025 Prahran by-election, where the Greens primary vote decreased slightly from the 2022 state election despite Labor not contesting. Higgins’ boundaries in 2007 overlaps Prahran’s boundary in 2022. This was why the loss of Prahran was a massive blow to the Greens. Even with high-profile independent Tony Lupton contesting the Greens primary vote should have increased.
I think the reason for the slight drop in Greens primary vote was because more 2022 Greens voters turned away from the Greens than 2022 Labor voters switching to the Greens. I guess that had Labor contested, the Greens primary vote could be more than 10% lower than in 2022, back to a similar level where outgoing MP Sam Hibbins was first elected.
If both Labor and Tony Lupton contested, I imagined that the primary votes could be something like Liberal 32.2%, Greens 26.2%, Labor 21%, Lupton 8.8%, others 11.8%. Assuming Labor preferences flew 80% to the Greens, Lupton’s preferences flew 60% to the Liberals and others’ preferences split 50/50, the 2CP will be Greens 52.4% vs Liberals, still a Greens retain albeit a narrow one.
However, I don’t think the result is an endorsement of Brad Battin or the Victorian Liberals. The Liberal primary vote is entirely within my range of expectation. I agree with Blue Not John that the absence of a Labor candidate whose voters will overwhelmingly preference the Greens ahead of the Liberals due to Labor’s preference recommendation and the anti-Greens preference recommendation of Tony Lupton tilted the preference flow in favour of the Liberals and helped them win the seat. In the 2022 state election preferences flew 78.8% in favour of the Greens in Prahran, but preferences flew only 44.2% to the Greens at the by-election. As I hand demonstrated above, the Greens probably would have narrowly retained Prahran had Labor contested, even if Tony Lupton also contested and recommended preferences to the Liberal Party.
Disruption of preference flows caused by the lack of a Labor candidate and a high profile independent recommending preferences against the Greens plus by election-specific factors that hurt the Greens such as lower turnout, lack of broader campaign against Liberals especially by Labor, no risk of Liberal government, etc. shows that the Greens should regain the seat at the 2026 state election.
I think there is a lot, and I mean a lot of cope going on regarding the Greens/ALP votes in these two by-elections. At least some of that is valid, as the Libs did relatively poorly on primary votes, but for the Greens it is another data point that they have small but significant swings against them in their core inner city areas and Labor has definite problems in their outer suburban heartland.
While there is the obvious counter that by-elections are unique, and we might have caught Labor and Greens at a low point for them, similar to the Libs and Aston, they do feed into the narrative that has built up over the last 18 months or so.
@Joseph, your analysis is spot on, and it’s interesting to think about what may happen if both Labor & Lupton had run (not that Lupton would have if Labor did), because it’s a good way to think about where Lupton’s vote came from.
I think your comments also ring pretty true MLV.
The Greens would certainly be disappointed that their primary vote didn’t increase, as I expected they should hold most of their support in the absence of Labor AND get at least 4-5% off Labor voters.
But at the same time, the Liberals can’t be pleased about only getting 36% in Prahran, in as favourable conditions as you could possibly expect, where even a 50.5% preference flow to the Greens would have been a Greens retain. There is just no way for the Liberals to hold the seat in a general election with a primary vote under 40%, and if the Liberals couldn’t reach 40% at an extremely favourable byelection, they’re not getting 40% in a state election where the Liberal brand & leader are front and centre.
So I think it’s a bad sign for the Greens’ overall support in inner city areas (but the big primary vote swing in St Kilda that bucked the trend means they may be holding up in their Macnamara heartland), but they shouldn’t have too much to worry about comfortably regaining the seat in 2026 because this was hardly an indication of Prahran moving back towards the Liberals in any meaningful way either.
@Darth Vader said on an earlier page “Libs can’t win Prahran you said. Who’s laughing now”.
I don’t think anybody was saying they couldn’t win this one-off byelection due to extraordinary circumstances that essentially reversed the typical preference flow, but I would still absolutely stand by that for a general election.
This by-election was caused by Greens own goal. not surprised they were punished.But the extent they were punished is a surprise.
All sorts of things can be drawn from this…. relations alp vs Grns
Liberal party sort of improving
Probably this depends on the spin and who is spinning.
There are about 15? Seats in greater Geelong Bendigo Ballarat areas of which the liberals hold exactly nil.
To win a majority with out any of these is near impossible. Say the liberals were to win.. they must take seats in Labor heartland at best a couple.
Or defeat Greens which is indeed impossible.
The libs are similar to Labor 1955 to about 1970 ie not electable
I’ve calculated the polling day primary vote swings based on overlapping electorate for Prahran:
Kooyong – LIB +4.0, GRN -2.4
Melbourne – LIB +6.0, GRN -1.2
Macnamara – LIB +4.8, GRN +2.5
The best Liberal swing was Fawkner Park (+11.1) in Melbourne, the smallest was St Kilda East (+1.1) in Macnamara.
The best Greens swing was St Kilda East (+6.4) in Macnamara, the worst was Prahran East (-5.5) in Melbourne.
I think the Greens vote definitely took a hit everywhere, but held up better in the Macnamara end of the seat than in the Melbourne & Kooyong parts. That would be encouraging for the Greens in Macnamara, where they only need to go backwards by at least 594 votes less than Labor do.
* NOTE: The above swings are all sourced from PollBludger where William has combined booths together for his swing calculations where some were not in use this time.
Mick
11 if you include Ripon which now goes into Ballarat. In 2010, the Libs won 1 (South Barwon) of the then 10.
Agree entirely that the Libs need to win some of these seats – they might be able to get a majority elsewhere but they need some of these to have a buffer. Ripon, South Barwon, Bellarine, Eureka are the most doable. Post Jacinta Allan – Bendigo East might also be possible. It would be interesting to know what the state of the Liberal Party branches are in these areas. Methinks they might be almost moribund.
Agree redistributed, all Coalition governments in the three big East coast states (Queensland, NSW and Victoria) have won several regional based seats as part of their majority.
Winning a handful (4-5) seats across the three big regional cities of Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong is probably a prerequisite for a Coalition majority in Victoria.
@Trent: Prahran East is in Kooyong.
Prahran East, the unofficial locality will be in Kooyong in the upcoming election.
However, the “Prahran East” polling booth location from this by-election will be in Melbourne and the areas where it was the closest polling place for this by-election will be in all 3 electorates (Melbourne, Kooyong and Macnamara).
Something else to think about – who were the 10% or so of voters who didn’t vote? If they were Labor voters who didn’t vote because there was no Labor candidate (and if you add in at least some of the donkey vote was also Labor voters with no Labor candidate), there is something like 40% of Labor voters who didn’t automatically defer to the Greens. Kevin Bonham seems pretty confident they weren’t predominately ex Labor voters.
One of the things that should come out of this is just how dependant the Greens are on Labor prefs, and how salty the Greens voters/members/MPs are about not getting those prefs. There seems to be a little bit of entitlement from the Greens about Labor voters needing to preference them.
Kevin Bonham referring to Tony Lupton’s voters – he doesn’t think they were predominately ex Labor voters.
@No Mondays, no I was referring to the booth name of Prahran East which is at Prahran RSL which is only a few blocks east of Chapel St, in the seat of Melbourne.
The booth in the area known as Prahran East that’s in the seat of Kooyong is called Orrong.
So the Orrong booth I counted to Kooyong, the Prahran East booth I counted to Melbourne.
@Tom is right though that it’s also on the boundary of Macnamara and not far from Kooyong, so would have had pretty even split of voters from all 3.
@Trent. That’s weird that they have a booth called Prahran East that is not in the sub division of Prahran East. It’s the same as Toorak station being in Armadale, Collingwood station being in Abbotsford, and North Melbourne station being in West Melbourne. It’s also akin to the Rivoli Camberwell, and Camberwell depot being in Hawthorn East.
@No Mondays There are so many of these examples across Melbourne. A couple more – the famous art deco Clifton Hill McDonalds is actually in Fitzroy North, and of course Chadstone Shopping Centre is in Malvern East.
In terms of politics, the suburb of Maribyrnong is in Fraser (not Maribyrnong) and none of the City of Casey is in the electorate of Casey, even though the electorate directly border the municipality.
In NSW the suburb of Blaxland is in the Blue Mountains and the state seat of Macquarie but Blaxland the division is in Western Sydney around Bankstown, Lakemba and Punchbowl.
Parkes is also not in Parkes (it’s in Riverina) though proposer redistributions put the town in the seat of the same name.
@No Mondays, yeah the Prahran district actually has a few of these examples:
– “Prahran East” booth is in the part of Prahran not considered Prahran East;
– “Windsor” booth is actually in St Kilda East
– “St Kilda East” booth is actually in St Kilda
– “Balaclava” booth (not used at the byelection) is actually in St Kilda
In overlapping Macnamara, the “Ripponlea” booth is actually in St Kilda East.
@Adam: Chadstone used to cover Chadstone SC, however in the 80’s the boundary of East Malvern was extended to Warrigal Road. However, your observation is correct.
Maribyrnong most definitely is in Fraser. A number of years ago the part of Footscray, around Maccas and the Powell Hotel was in Maribyrnong, as was the suburb of Maribyrnong.
The Federal electorate of Lalor is nowhere near Lalor.
The City of Hobsons Bay, and Port Phillip are other examples. Hobsons Bay has always been associated with Albert Park, and Port Melbourne. Hobsons Bay Secondary College is in Albert Park. Altona is on Port Phillip Bay, whereas Williamstown is on both. In the City of Port Phillip, only St Kilda, and Elwood are technically on Port Phillip Bay.
The City of Darebin doesn’t cover Darebin station, or the sub division of Ivanhoe called Darebin.
Melbourne/ Naarm is weird like that, and it’s not good for neurodivergent people with OCD (like me). Once I get started on this I won’t stop, so I better stop now.
Actually correction, the “Balaclava” booth is different in both Prahran & Macnamara electorates.
In the Prahran electorate it was in St Kilda East technically but on the road that is the boundary of Balaclava so it made more sense; but in Macnamara the “Balaclava” booth is the St Kilda PCYC in St Kilda.
@Trent. That’s so weird. I have been known to take note of anomalies like this.
There is an EG servo in Moreland Road Brunswick West, on the border of Pascoe Vale South that says Coburg. There’s also an EG in Brunswick on Dawson Street that says Brunswick West. It does my head in whenever I go past them. At least the EG in Maribyrnong says the right suburb.
@Adam. On the subject of Clifton Hill and North Fitzroy. The famous Clifton Hill fish and chips is in Fitzroy North.
I just can’t resist these. Kooyong tennis court is in Toorak, as is Royal South Yarra. I am actually surprised that they didn’t name both establishments after Toorak.
There’s a reason that All Saints Anglican Church in Hawthorn was called All Saints Anglican Church Kooyong, and that is because the bulk of the congregation came from neighboring Protestant Kooyong, as opposed to Catholic Hawthorn. The big churches in Hawthorn were St Anthony’s, and the Immaculate Conception Church. This is why Hawthorn had pubs, because they weren’t part of the Protestant dry zone.
Until the recent redistribution, the (very small) suburb of Kooyong wasn’t in the electorate of Kooyong, although my personal favourite is that the Malvern Central shopping centre isn’t in the suburb of Malvern (it’s in Armidale, Malvern starts across the road).
Getting a bit off topic for this thread but another one I just thought of was all of Burwood Village and Burwood station is actually in Camberwell. I think that’s another one where the boundaries changed. They really ought to move the boundaries of Camberwell slightly west so that it takes in the western half of the Camberwell Junction precinct and Burwood takes in Burwood village and station.
In some cases, places took the names of the former pre-amalgamation city councils, so that explains some of them such as places in Abbotsford named “Collingwood”, or places in South Yarra & Windsor (such as Prahran Market which is in South Yarra) being named “Prahran”. They may have been referring to the city rather than the suburb but the city no longer exists.
That doesn’t excuse the confusing polling place names though!
@Trent: The reason why I imagined a scenario where both Labor and Lupton contested was because Lupton may contest Prahran along with Labor in the 2026 state election in order to keep the Greens out. Lupton’s main aim for contesting the Prahran by-election is to keep the Greens out by disrupting the flow of preferences and making them much favourable for the Liberals, and he achieved his aim.
Prahran is very likely to return to the Greens in the 2026 state election, a big factor of which is the strong Labor to Greens preference flow, therefore Lupton may re-contest Prahran in 2026 along with Labor to make the Greens’ job more difficult. If Labor had contested the Prahran by-election and Lupton hadn’t, the results could be something like Liberal 34.8%, Greens 28.2%, Labor 25%, others 12%, 2 CP Greens 54.2% vs Liberal.
Note that Prahran had much more candidates (11 candidates) in the 2025 by-election than in the 2022 state election election (6 candidates). Considering the likely reduction in candidate numbers, even with Lupton contesting, the Liberal primary vote needs to have a “4” in front of it in order to retain Prahran, which is extremely difficult to achieve.
Trent, when Jeff introduced council amalgamations, his government also redrew suburban boundaries.