Farrer By-Election Live

Farrer (Lib vs IND 6.2%, Lib vs ALP 12.9%)

Raissa Butkowski (Lib) vs Michelle Milthorpe (IND), David Farley (ON) and others
Cause of by-election resignation of Sussan Ley (Lib)

CALLED (7:46 pm) Farley (One Nation) gain from Liberal

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Live comments will appear here from 6 pm - once counting gets going from around 7, refresh every 10 minutes or so for latest comments.

3:45 Is This A Record: The massive swings to the Liberals and against One Nation have had me asked, is this a record?  I get the primary vote swing against the Liberals as the highest in a by-election since the 32.1% swing against Labor in ACT 1970 (Labor nonetheless won the seat and the next election).  The swing to One Nation is the highest in a by-election to a recontesting party ever, except for the dubious case of Gwydir 1937 (44.2% to the official ALP in the absence of Labor (NSW)).  There have been some higher by-election swings involving parties and independents starting from scratch.

9:00 Sunday: Milthorpe did do well on the last prepoll and the margin sits at 57.3-42.7, this may go up a little on remaining postals but won't change much.  I've had a question about what would have happened had the Coalition recommended preferences to Milthorpe: if normal Coalition HTV card rate follow rates had applied, Milthorpe would be leading something like 51.5-48.5.  However with the low Coalition vote and the likelihood that voters would have seen such a recommendation as puzzling, I'm not sure that would have played out.  It's also possible that the Liberal attacks on Farley caused some voters to not follow the card anyway.  At least, it would have been much closer.  

11:20 All in on primaries now, EAV Farrer will be very few if any votes, a couple not yet in on 2CP.  Good job by AEC to get all booths counted this quickly.

10:54 Only two prepolls left, one of which may be very small.  Looking at the Greens' 2.22%, unless they can get it above the 2.56% they got in Grey 2016 it will be their worst result in a seat (general election or by-election!) since 2.21% in Flynn 2013 or perhaps even 1.97% in Flynn 2007.  This in the absence of a Labor candidate ... not good!

10:35 A few prepolls coming in, now six to go, but no major change to the picture.  

9:30 So what have we seen?  Some big picture comments while waiting to see what other booths come in.  Labor were very wise to sit this one out but it was hardly a difficult decision.  There could well be specific factors in the nature of the Liberals' utter drubbing here: anger at Sussan Ley's dumping as leader, the unusual nature of the One Nation candidate, local water issues - but looking at the extent to which the Liberals have been smashed here the Coalition has reason to be very nervous across a host of rural seats; for the time being at least what is going on in the polls is fully real.  Normally the messages sent by voters at by-elections are against the government (and we saw the Liberals do just fine in the Nepean state by-election last weekend) but in this case voters have turned on the Opposition, kicking an Opposition out of the top two in a seat it held for the first time ever at federal level.  (I am not sure how many cases of this there are at state level if any).  

I don't know if Michelle Milthorpe was ever going to be that competitive here.  Voting in a Climate 200 backed independent would have seemed too much like politics as normal in a decidedly right-leaning seat, and would have rewarded the government.  Milthorpe tried to get away from the "teal" label but without a lot of success.  While she has a swing on primaries, it's in the absence of Labor and with a very low Greens result.  I would think that some voters who would have backed her as a way to send a rocket to the majors have just found a bigger rocket.  

9:20 Every booth apart from some of the hospital and remote booths is now in.  Still waiting for eight prepolls.  Being mostly the larger sort they are likely to drag down the 2CP somewhat though I'm liking 58 more as an endpoint than my earlier 57.  It doesn't matter, Farley has won a thumping victory.  

9:12 Sorry for the technical problems with that!  No idea what happened with my internet there.  

8:48 Online at Tallyroom now.

8:12 Yeah it's not looking good for the Greens' deposit here.  They might still get over Legalise Cannabis because the latter are dropping back.

7:55 Looking at the others, at the moment nobody outside the big four is recovering their deposit, though the Greens will presumably come up as more of Albury enters the frey.  They would hope to as they're currently on 2.4% behind Legalise Cannabis (again!) I'm calling last for Roger Woodward, no idea what he was doing running here.  

7:50 I do think this is likely to finish up under 60-40 now, perhaps 57 or so.  Milthorpe is doing better in some of the later Albury booths in and also the preference flow is continuing to even up.  

7:46 Some of Milthorpe's best booths from the federal election are in and even in these she is down on the 2CP pseudo-swing.  CALLED.  

It is interesting that the preference flow to Farley so far isn't stronger.  It may be he's ripped out so much of the Coalition vote that only very moderate voters are left in any numbers.  

7:37 With more data, the corellation between One Nation's vote last time and the swing this time came back, and the other corellations continued, so they're doing better in small booths and booths where they did well.  All three projections say One Nation is winning easily, somewhere around 60-40.    The first prepoll is now in, Buronga and that isn't doing anything unusual compared to what we have seen before.  

7:30 Another projection method now is 2025 2CP vs 2026 2CP and this suggests One Nation are winning very easily.  Even in Springdale Heights which was a good booth for Milthorpe in 2025 she is only barely winning the 2CP.  William Bowe and Ben Raue both just called the seat.

7:20 The bigger booths are now dropping to low 20s.  At the last election the median booth voter voted in a booth with 734 voters which would put One Nation on about 40% in the booths, maybe a bit higher this time because the booth size will be slightly smaller.  So that's another way of trying to project this.

7:12 There is a relationship between booth size and swing to ON though, at present in the largest booths it's tracking around 33 and in the higher booths towards 50.  And now as more booths come in Farley is dropping down to the low 40s, such as that is.   

7:00 Now as more booths come in my model is finding NO corellation between previous ON vote and swing to One Nation which means it thinks for now Farley is just going to keep doing what he's doing now all night and win hugely!  I suspect there'll be an urban component that will drag that down but this is a great start for Farley.  

6:53 Springdale Heights says hello as the first booth with One Nation sub 40 and Milthorpe on 32.  In an early projection off five booths based on an assumed nonlinear swing I am putting ON on high 30s, 38.6% to be precise ... let's see how bad that is later on!

6:50 Two more in and One Nation continually smashing it in the littlies, though these are booths they did well on last time.  Milthorpe now has a primary vote swing to her after four booths, albeit just a small one.  

6:38 Booth two, an obvious candidate for silliest booth name in Burrumbuttock with a 60.7% One Nation vote (a 49% swing in a strong booth for them to begin with.)  Milthorpe down a lot in this one. I would expect there will also be some relationship between booth size and swing, or otherwise this is going to be called very quickly! 

6:30 We've got votes!  46.4% for Farley off 88 votes at Rankins Springs (a mere 42% swing).  For what it's worth that's fairly close to where he lives.  Milthorpe down 2.3% (she's coming off 20% seatwide but I suspect that swing will change.)  Also for what it's worth, a 19-15 break to Milthorpe on preferences which are mostly from the Coalition.

6:00 And we're on!  The AEC 2CP is ONE NATION vs MILTHORPE (IND).  If these are not the correct top two it will be realigned.  Note that primary vote swings to ON in early rural booths are likely to be exaggerated compared to those they get later.  For this reason projections off the 2025 totals are likely to be unreliable. (I'll be running projections on the assumption of a non-linear swing to One Nation later tonight if the data back that up.)  There are certainly cases of incumbent parties missing the final two at elections but I wonder if one has ever been left out of the initial notional 2CP before!  

12:10 Signage of concern: The AEC has issued a statement concerning an inappropriate election sign.  In my view this sign further underlines the need for laws in all jurisdictions that specifically target electoral material that gives a false impression of endorsement by an election authority.  Breaching such a law should be a very serious offence.  UPDATE: The AEC has obtained an injunction against the signs which have now appeared at other booths.

Intro 11:30 am

Well here we are at election day for the rather odd Farrer by-election.  Absent of a Labor candidate in a seat where they would not be competitive anyway, this one is mainly seen a litmus test for what we have seen in national polling with One Nation having surged to a level just above the Coalition.  That picture has stabilised since about February; it's even possible that One Nation might be going down very slightly.  More on federal polling here after the Budget.  However the by-election has become peculiar as such things go because of revelations that the One Nation candidate David Farley has supported both Labor and independent Michelle Milthorpe (now his main rival) in the very recent past.  Will this hurt Farley or are voters seeing him as a semi-independent in a positive way as they did with Helen Dalton when she was elected as a notional Shooters Fishers and Farmers candidate at state level?  All sorts of history beckons - an opposition has never missed the 2CP in its own seat in a federal by-election, and One Nation have never before won a by-election at state or federal level, nor have they ever won a federal seat with an endorsed candidate.  Also complicating the picture is the fact that while receiving Climate 200 funding and support, Milthorpe's energy comments make her not exactly a teal from central casting.  

My guide to this by-election has been here.  It is widely expected - but curiously not by voters in my sidebar Not-A-Poll - that Farley will win, perhaps easily, and that he could well lead on primaries.  

As concerns tonight firstly the prepoll lineup is essentially the same as at the general election, except that three prepolls that were just outside the electorate have been replaced with prepolls just inside.  We can treat Barooga as a like for like with Cobram, Buronga for Mildura and Mulwala for Yarrawonga.  None of these are all that large anyway and all of them are conservative and on the whole likely to be One Nation leaning compared to the average.

47591 prepoll votes have been cast; 46624 were counted in 2025.  15801 postals have been issued with about 10.5K received so far, there may be another 3000 or so to actually return but a small portion of all postals that return will be rejected.  In 2025 10983 postals made it into the count.  These numbers will be offset by the absence of 5439 absent and out of electorate prepoll votes from 2025 so the number of total votes in non-booth categories will be down by about 2000.

A big suspense item for tonight's count is who the AEC will count the notional two-candidate count between; if they pick the wrong pair then the 2CP figures on the night will be useless and those will be realigned in coming days, or potentially there may need to be a 3CP to determine the correct final two.  (The AEC will be briefing election media about the progress of the count mid-week in the event that things are messy).  It is generally expected (and backed by such polling as exists) that the final 2CP in the seat will be Farley vs Milthorpe with the Liberals missing the 2CP in their own seat but whether the AEC goes with ON vs IND, Lib vs ON or Lib vs IND remains to be seen.   In the event that the Coalition combined primary exceeds either Farley's or Milthorpe's we will not know the Coalition/ON/IND split from the minor Coalition candidate on the night.  

Meanwhile there will always be other curious aspects of this count - how bad will the informal rate be?  How many of this lot will recover their deposits? Who will finish last?  And so on.  

By-elections are magnets for clueless turnout sookery so people should bear in mind that wherever turnout gets to by the end of tonight will not be final.  By-election turnout is frequently down several points on the main election, especially when a major party doesn't contest.  

At 8:30 tonight I will be joining Ben Raue for some live streaming of the count.  

The Urban Myth That "Sack Dan Andrews" Was A Labor Front

Does this look like a Labor front to you?

Group ticket voting in Victoria has again been in the news a lot lately - see my latest article about whether abolishing it would assist One Nation.  With this latest discussion has come a resurgence of a longrunning online urban myth concerning the shortlived Sack Dan Andrews party (or more formally Restore Democracy: Sack Dan Andrews Party) in the 2022 Victorian election.  The myth is that this party was set up to harvest the votes of people who hated former Victorian Premier Andrews and channel these votes back to Labor.  The reality is that while there is a disputed claim that Sack Dan Andrews (SDA) was a siphoning attempt of some sort, Labor gained no benefit from it anyway, and it had nothing to do with the party.  This article explores the reality of this short-lived party's preferences and its actual impact on the election in detail.  For those on twitter I also have a shorter version of events on a thread here.

The myth that Sack Dan Andrews was a Labor front has resurged on twitter mainly because of far-right attention-seeker Avi Yemini.  Yemini has been promoting attempts to create deceptively named parties called Save The Environment Party, Free Palestine Party and Muslim Votes Matter (not to be confused with the actual MVM movement active at the last federal election), whose Group Ticket preferences would then favour One Nation or other right-wing parties.  The first of these at least is the work of fellow traveller Monica Smit.  Yemini - who has blocked me on twitter which prevents me from replying to many of his myths being posted there - has claimed that what is being done here is simply "flipping the script" from when Sack Dan Andrews siphoned preferences to Labor.  Except that actually never happened.

I have a mixed view of these tactics.  There is obviously a heavy dose of trolling the left alongside sincere opposition to group ticket voting, and if these parties actually formed and ran then they would clearly be dishonest.  But far more contempt belongs to the system that enables and rewards such tactics.   Scrapping group ticket voting would mean that any votes for deceptively named parties would simply scatter to whoever the voters chose to preference next, rendering the siphoning attempt ineffective.  If these attempts actually help to highlight the urgent need to get rid of group ticket voting before this year's election then they will have served a useful purpose.  Perhaps there is an intent by the far right to use these tactics to claim credit for scrapping group ticket voting and this might make some in Labor reluctant to give them the satisfaction.  However if that is a concern, I won't let them get away with it.  You'll see ...

Origins of SDA

There are multiple accounts of what Sack Dan Andrews actually was.  The party was founded and led by Tosh-Jake Finnigan, previously known as a whistleblower in the "red shirts rorts" scandal which despite the unsubtle attempts of the Herald-Sun had no impact at all on the 2018 "Danslide" election result.  It had a website that attacked Daniel Andrews and ... not much else. The claim that SDA was actually a fake anti-Andrews party designed to steal votes by deception originated with Glenn Druery in the Angry Victorians sting video:

"So let me tell you about Sack Dan Andrews [...] it's one of mine [..] I looked all over Aidan's social media [..] every other post was "Sack Dan Andrews, Sack Dan Andrews, Sack Dan Andrews" - aha!  We're going to form a Sack Dan Andrews Party.  We did, me and my allies.  That's been formed because if that gets a decent draw it's going to completely usurp Clive, One Nation and poor little Aidan".  

Druery went on to discuss how SDA was a fake "cooker party" that Aidan McLindon (of the so-called Freedom Party) still thought was a real "cooker party" and how the aim was to win a seat.  At no point in the video did he say SDA was working with Labor or funelling preferences for anyone else, the impression was simply that the idea was to nab primary votes with a catchy and deceptive name and deprive the non-Druery right wing parties of those votes.  

The Sack Dan Andrews party responded to the sting with a Statement Regarding Glenn Druery which opened with the particularly solid line "Unsurprisingly Glenn Druery talks copious amounts of shit" and claimed Druery had no involvement beyond Finnigan telling Druery that the party was running.  Finnigan explicitly denied that SDA was a Labor feeder, outlined SDA's preferencing strategy and said that if SDA preferences elected any Labor candidate they would "coward punch myself on a joint Discernable/ 6 News Australia live stream."  Finnigan reiterated that SDA was an attack on Labor but also praised Druery for his success in getting minor parties elected.

There is an obvious logical problem with the idea of SDA being a Labor Party front.  Why on earth would Finnigan, who was a disgruntled whistleblower against Labor in a prominent scandal, participate in such a thing?  

The actual SDA preference tickets

It's a sad sign of the laziness of social media ghettos that many posters have repeated the line that SDA sent preferences to Labor without bothering to find out whether the group ticket preference assignments might be, for instance, actually available online to see who this party actually gave preferences to.  And indeed they are online, and prominently, via the ABC.  In general SDA put Labor close to last.  

Where they didn't, one of the confusing aspects of group ticket voting is that parties may appear to have given a high preference to another party when what they have actually done is given a high ranking to some candidates for that party - but those candidates will actually be elected or eliminated before the preference can reach them.  This is often used by parties to muddy the waters about who they are preferencing, though I'm not aware of evidence that that was SDA's intention in this case.  

In Eastern Victoria, the party preferenced Labor dead last.  

In Northern Metropolitan and Southern Metropolitan, the party preferenced Labor last except for the Greens.

In North-East Metropolitan, the party preferenced Labor last except for preferencing Sonia Terpstra above all Greens and all Liberals except Matthew Bach, and also Shaun Leane above one Liberal, Nick McGowan.  

In Northern Victoria, the party submitted two tickets, both of which had Labor above the Greens, and one of which also had Labor above United Australia, Reason, Victorian Socialists and Coalition but below fifteen other parties.

In South-East Metro, the party submitted two tickets, both of which had Labor above the Greens and Victorian Socialists.  One also had Labor above the Liberals except that one Liberal was below the first Labor candidate listed, and one had the Liberals above Labor except vice versa.

In Western Metropolitan, the party preferenced Labor last except for an independent and the Greens and Liberals.

In Western Victoria, the party put the third Labor candidate Megan Bridger-Darling seventh, behind its own candidates, Hinch Justice and one Shooters Fishers and Farmers candidate.  The rest of Labor appeared way down the ticket, alternating with Coalition candidates and above the other Shooter (weird), Animal Justice, Victorian Socialists and Greens.  

As for which parties the SDA tickets preferenced highly this varied quite a bit.  Generally they preferenced minor parties with sometimes the odd major party candidate thrown in.  Most of the parties they preferenced highly were Druery alliance parties, but not all, with the Angry Victorians party and Freedom Party appearing high on some of their lists.  Mostly the Druery alliance parties they preferenced were on the right but not all, eg they had Animal Justice (thought to be an alliance party but had actually ratted on Druery) as their top preference after themselves in one region.   

What votes did they get and where did they go?

The Sack Dan Andrews party did not poll much, managing just 0.83% statewide.

This is what happened with their above the line votes in each count.  I also comment on whether the SDA preferences could have caused a different winner (at least via an obvious route) had they been different.  

* Eastern Victoria: Their ticket preferences split between the Shooters Fishers and Farmers and Health Australia.  On the exclusion of Health Australia their ticket preferences reunited with Shooters Fishers and Farmers, who went on to be elected easily.  SDA preferences had no impact on the result as Shooters would have won anyway.

* North-Eastern Metro: The party's preferences would have flowed to Rod Barton of the Transport Matters Party but Barton's preference spiral had already failed.  They therefore flowed to Health Australia.  On Health Australia's exclusion they flowed to the Liberal Democrats, and then to Labour DLP's Hugh Dolan who went on to narrowly lose to the Greens.  Again no impact on the result.

* Northern Metro: The party's preferences flowed to Labour DLP's Adem Somyurek who went on to win the final seat.  Again no impact on the result.

* Northern Victoria: The party's preferences split between Animal Justice and Liberal Democrats.  On the exclusion of Liberal Democrats the remainder pooled with Animal Justice who were elected, then flowed to One Nation who were also elected on Animal Justice's surplus.  Again no impact on the result.

* South-East Metro: The party's preferences split between Derryn Hinch and the Liberal Democrats' David Limbrick.  On the exclusion of Hinch the remainder pooled with Limbrick.  Limbrick narrowly defeated the Liberals for the final seat.  Had SDA preferenced the Liberals above Limbrick, the Liberals would have won, so the SDA's preferencing decision caused Limbrick to retain his seat.

* Southern Metro: The party's preferences flowed to Sustainable Australia's Clifford Hayes who lost to Labor by a large margin.  No impact on the result.

* West Metro: The party's preferences flowed to Bernie Finn (Labour DLP) who ended up losing to the Liberals by a very narrow margin.  No impact on the result but they very nearly caused Finn to win.

* Western Victoria: The party's preferences flowed to DHJP incumbent Stuart Grimley who ended up losing the final seat to the Liberals.  However there was in the meantime a close contest between the Greens and Legalise Cannabis.  Had SDA preferenced Legalise Cannabis ahead of Grimley, Legalise Cannabis would have defeated the Greens, who SDA put last (all this being another example of how stupid group ticket voting outcomes and decisions are).  Although this was the region where they had put Labor's third candidate Megan Bridger-Darling at a rather high 7 on their preference list, the preference was never reaching her because Grimley was higher at 4 and was always going to climb high in the count based on seven Druery parties preferencing the DHJP ticket next after themselves.  

No Sack Dan Andrews ticket preferences reached Labor at any live stage in any count.

Myth variant

A very common variant of the myth says that Sack Dan Andrews preferences re-elected or helped re-elect the Labor government.  In fact they could not have done so since government is determined in the lower house and Sack Dan Andrews only contested the upper house.  Furthermore it is only possible to direct voter preferences through group ticket voting in the upper house so Sack Dan Andrews could not have sent preferences anywhere in the lower house - it could only have recommended preferences via a how to vote card, and if those preferences favoured Labor then the few voters even seeing such a how to vote card would have immediately smelled a rat.  And finally, Labor actually led on primaries statewide and in every single seat it won except Hastings - the idea that Labor owed its lopsided 2022 win to doing well on preferences from anyone is simply wrong.  

Overall, the myth is attractive to people who hate Andrews because it sounds to them like the sort of thing that Victorian Labor might do.  While Victorian Labor have to a degree brought this perception on themselves by failing to get rid of Group Ticket Voting in twelve years in office (sigh), the reality is far more prosaic.  If Sack Dan Andrews was even a front at all, it was clearly not a front for Labor, Labor did not benefit from its preferences, and there is no evidence or reason to believe that Labor had anything at all to do with it.  

Would Scrapping Group Ticket Voting In Victoria Help One Nation?

On this website I have frequently covered Victoria's ongoing failure to repeal the use of Group Ticket Voting in state Legislative Council elections.  Victoria is now the last state that still has this system, which has been scrapped everywhere else after being gamed by preference-harvesting.  In the current cycle the Electoral Matters committee in an outstanding report recommended the scrapping of Group Ticket Voting way back in July 2024, and the government has still not responded officially to that recommendation.  The clock is ticking in terms of time for the Victorian Electoral Commission to implement the changes required to move to a different system, and the Commission has said the decision must be made by August.  After recent issues involving service delivery by state electoral commissions I suggest the sooner the better.

Last week there was reporting by the Guardian this week that one Labor MP had said current Premier Jacinta Allan "had appeared reluctant to [scrap GTV] as it would benefit One Nation."  Separately I understand that the view that scrapping GTV would benefit One Nation is also espoused by some Labor lower house MPs.  Irrespective of who actually holds that view, this article is to explore this claim.  

The Guardian's article does not say why anyone holding this concern might hold it, and in the absence of any actual claimed mechanism it is not that easy to counter.  However there are at least three well known myths about how Group Ticket Voting is supposedly bad for One Nation in the modern age.  Here they are and here is why they are wrong.

1. The Howard era ringfence

In the first heyday of One Nation, Group Ticket Voting in the Senate was famously bad for the party.  What would happen is that the major parties, Democrats and Greens would put One Nation last and this would more or less starve the party of preferences.  In 1998 One Nation was overtaken in two states where they were leading in the race for the final seat as a result of the major parties preferencing each other above them.  In 2001 Pauline Hanson lost in Queensland where she had a large lead over the Democrats but the strong flow of group ticket preferences between left parties saw them easily overtake her.  Basically unless One Nation polled a quota in its own right in those days it couldn't win seats under GTV.

However, this hasn't been the case for a long time.  One reason for this is that there are these days more minor right wing parties that will give One Nation group ticket preferences on principle.  Another is that over time the Coalition parties stopped putting One Nation last.  The party won three seats in the Western Australian 2017 election under GTV (two of those from well short of quota and one of those from way behind the Liberals) and also won off 3.72% of the vote in Northern Victoria in 2022, overtaking four parties with higher quota totals (more on that below).  Also, in some of the classic cases where One Nation were overtaken, it may well have happened had voters chosen their own preferences anyway.  

2. The impact of exhaust

This argument was seen in some circles (not particularly federal Labor, who tended instead to wrongly claim that One Nation wouldn't win seats at all in the new system) in the leadup to 2016 Senate reform.  The claim was that scrapping group tickets would advantage One Nation because One Nation candidates who polled modest primary votes but were struggling on preferences would benefit from some votes going to exhaust and would hang on in situations where other candidates might have caught them had voters given full preferences.  

This argument has been completely discredited.  It has repeatedly turned out (Malcolm Roberts passing numerous candidates in Queensland Senate 2016, One Nation winning two seats from behind in 2025, One Nation nearly beating Nick McKim in Tasmania Senate 2016 etc) that One Nation do not crawl on voter-directed preferences in the manner claimed.  Instead they tend to gain on other parties, though not as quickly as they would if excluded minor right wing parties sent Group Ticket preferences their way.

3. Glenn Druery's spin

Glenn Druery frequently claims that One Nation do badly under Group Ticket Voting because he can't stand them and so he makes them do badly.  Druery has an obvious financial interest in the survival of Group Ticket Voting and yet his remarks are often reported by media without any independent assessment of them, and then they feed into political bubble talk and may be believed by politicians.  In fact what Druery says on this subject is misleading at best.

In the latest example, Druery has said "I am happy to say I will use all my expertise, my contacts, my experience, to do my best to stop any racists, cookers or crazies from getting into the Victorian parliament," However, at the 2022 election, most of the nine parties with a reported connection to Druery (not including the two who ratted on him) generally preferenced One Nation ahead of Labor, Liberal and Green candidates.  Group Ticket preferences of seven of the nine parties actually reached Rikki-Lee Tyrell in Northern Victoria, and these preferences combined caused Tyrell to win.  

Druery's claim to reliably obstruct "racists, cookers or crazies" is also not true.  Groups favoured by his networked preference deals in various state and federal elections have included no shortage of anti-vaxxers, pro-gun campaigners, xenophobic "conservatives" and others who would be classed in the racist/cooker/crazy spectrum by those who tend to use such labels.  Not One Nation as such, but between them candidates with every view One Nation has ever held and then some have been on board.  Indeed while Druery might claim he could use his influence to wreck One Nation , it clearly didn't stop Shooters Fishers and Farmers and Labour DLP from sending their preferences One Nation's way in Northern Victoria (these two being the most crucial as even had the other seven all put Labor above One Nation, Tyrell would still have won).  The fact that his alliances include parties that Druery can't or won't stop from preferencing One Nation because of who they are and who votes for them tells us everything we need to know here.

What could really happen?

Current Victorian polling suggests a reasonably close race in the lower house (especially given how favourable the 2PP pendulum from 2022 is for Labor, meaning they could potentially lose 49-51 or perhaps even 48-52 and still cling to office) but it is a different story upstairs no matter what the system.  The relative closeness of the lower house race is because the conservative primary vote is split close to evenly between the Coalition and One Nation and the preference flows between them are relatively weak compared to those from the Greens to Labor.  This means a large chunk of the right-wing primary vote will land with Labor as preferences.

In the upper house however more of the primary vote for the Coalition and One Nation would be likely to be locked up in quotas of winning candidates, and less would be distributed as preferences.  Whatever the system on current primaries there is a real prospect at present of a combined Coalition and One Nation majority or blocking majority (20/40).  Perhaps this will last, perhaps not.

The Guardian report says that Druery says that without GTVs, based on current polling One Nation could win 13-16 of the 40 seats.  On current polls I don't think they would get above the range 11-13, and also they would clearly win most of those (potentially more!) under Group Ticket Voting anyway.  Their average support level is about 1.5 quotas per region (25%).  Their support tends to distribute quite unevenly around states when they do well and I would expect them to land below 1.3 quotas in at least three regions, at which point winning a second seat without Group Tickets is extremely difficult.  To win three seats in a region without Group Tickets would require a vote in at very least the high 30s (probably 40s) and the SA election provides no reason to believe that could be sustained across a whole region. 

One scenario to watch out for if Victoria keeps group tickets is this.  If the combined vote of the Coalition, One Nation and supportive right micros reaches 50% in a region, and the Coalition and One Nation in effect cross-preference each other, then the Coalition and One Nation would win three seats in the region.  At the moment this is the median statewide outcome in polling, especially noting that in South Australia, One Nation did better in the upper house than the lower.  There could be cases where Group Ticket Voting helps the right by locking in a third seat in regions where preferences would otherwise exhaust or leak to Labor.

At this stage we don't know if the Coalition would send GTV preferences to One Nation, but it has done so consistently ahead of Labor given the opportunity in recent elections.  The federal Coalition even recommended Senate preferences to One Nation in 2025 where it could easily have avoided recommending either way.  If you are involved in a contest for winning government and wanting to be able to govern effectively, why would you throw seats to the opposition major party?  I suspect if GTV is retained the Coalition will put One Nation above Labor even if it is well down the list.

In general Group Ticket Voting disadvantages any party with a large vote share (be it Labor, Coalition, Greens or One Nation) simply because preference harvesting can cause losses to micro-parties that don't get as many votes.  But I don't think One Nation are especially vulnerable to this in the way that the Greens were in 2018.  One Nation are likely to have a wide range of remainders over quota in different seats.  In a GTV context this makes them worth doing deals with (in the way the Greens are generally not) and means they can win off low portions of an extra quota.  They might on the other hand poll below a quota in, say, Southern Metropolitan, and be at risk under GTV of losing to a preference spiral, but I also think that One Nation will - if they do well - have sucked so much vote share out of the right wing side of the micro-party lineup that it will be harder for such spirals to work on the right anyway.  Preference spirals might be more of a risk for Labor who could find themselves sitting on one point something quotas in a brace of regions and at risk of being jumped by Legalise Cannabis or others.

Anyway if anyone at all in Labor does have a concern about GTV favouring One Nation this is a discussion that should be had in the open where the reasons for the concern can be stated fully and analysed.  Barring that it just sounds like another excuse to kick the can down the road.

The wrong question

Finally while it is probably futile to say it I will say that whether abolishing Group Ticket Voting would favour One Nation is not the right question anyway.  If someone's argument for keeping Group Ticket Voting is that it might help some random with no real voter support beat One Nation to a seat that One Nation deserves based on actual voter support, then the person making that argument is actually against democracy, and whatever they may think of themselves they are actually worse than One Nation.

The right questions are:

* what will give voters effective and easily exercised control at party level over their own preferences?

* what will keep MLCs accountable to voters rather than to preference harvesters and luck?

* what will ensure preferences go only where voters send them, and not to places that they do not know?

* what will stop squalid scandals about seat-buying and fake front party names from bringing Victorian elections into disrepute?

* what will protect the Victorian Legislative Council from having votes corrupted by MLCs being afraid to anger an unelected consultant?

* what will prevent a repeat of the circumstances in which the 2013 WA election was voided?

* what will stop the election of MPs with no real public support?

And the answer to all of these questions is getting rid of Group Ticket Voting.  

Legislative Council 2026: Huon and Rosevears Live And Post-Count (Plus Nepean!)

Huon: Clare Glade-Wright (IND) elected, gain from Dean Harriss (IND)

Rosevears: Jo Palmer (Lib) has very large primary vote lead and expected to win.  Liberals have claimed victory.

NEPEAN (VIC): CALLED 8:30 pm Marsh (Lib) retain

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Live comments (scrolls to top)

All numbers here are unofficial, check the TEC and VEC sites for official numbers

Refresh every 10 mins or so after 6:30 for latest updates

Huon Glass Ceiling RIP: Clare Glade-Wright is the first ever female MLC for Huon leaving Derwent as the only division to have never had a female MLC.  

Vacancy Clarification: I have seen some comments that Glade-Wright might still be on council when Wriedt resigns.  That's incorrect.  Once the poll is declared on 11 May the seat automatically vacates from 12 May.  

Friday: Facebook Whingers!  The Huon result has seen some whingers on Facebook complaining about preferences.  They forget that Harriss won from behind using Liberal preferences in 2022. 

5:05 It's over!  Harriss actually didn't gain on the Labor exclusion prefs at all (perhaps because of those coming from other sources) and Glade-Wright wins 52.5-47.5 as projected, give or take the handful of postals to come.  Almost exactly Harriss' margin over Labor from last time.   

As for Kingborough Council, I believe the seats of Glade-Wright and the soon to resign Paula Wriedt (if she resigns from council as well) will now be vacant til the next election as it is within 6 months of the day of notice of this year's elections.  It's been foreshadowed that Kingborough will elect a new Deputy on May 18 and that person can then become the new acting Mayor when Wriedt resigns, with another Deputy then elected after that, or this process may vary slightly.  Anyway there will be no by-elections or recounts.  

3:32 And here we are ... assuming the postals to come do nothing then Harriss needs 61.1% of Labor preferences assuming no exhaust (and there will be a little bit of that), that's difficult (the rate reported to me by a scrutineer from sampling of 1 Labor votes was 54). The preferences aren't all 1 Labor either 

2:15 And Glade-Wright strikes back on Rowan preferences, now trailing by 3.13%.  For election watchers the good news is that the count goes on as Gibson is out next.  Glade-Wright needs 54.6% of preferences to win.  

Thursday 7th:  In Huon, Harriss increased his lead to 3.37% after postals added so far.  The TEC has conducted the first exclusion (Petersen) and Harriss gained significantly on those with his lead increasing to 4.32% - I don't think even that's enough but it might be, he's still in this!  Glade-Wright currently needs 55.6% of preferences to win, up from 54.1% on primaries. In Rosevears unfortunately the number of postal votes outstanding is larger than the gap between McLennan and Monson although there is no realistic chance Monson gets out of fourth, so no further action til Tuesday.  Palmer needs 23.4% of preferences to win.  She might even in theory get there entirely off Monson.    

Monday: Today we've seen telephone votes added (they're classed as postals but paper postals come on Thursday) as well as provisionals and a trivial number of absent votes.  In Huon Glade-Wright's position has further improved with the primary vote gap down to 2.53 points.  In Rosevears Palmer has done fine on the phone votes and now needs 22.6% of preferences to win.  I expect this target to come down after paper postals.  

Sunday night: Premier Rockliff has claimed victory in Rosevears.  I am assuming on this basis that the Liberals have scrutineering of the Monson flow such that they're certain they have won.  I have checked the booth figures for irregularities and found none (there is a curioisity of Labor beating the Greens 87-48 in two alphabetically adjacent booths, but neither is wildly out of whack with expectations anyway.)

Sunday: A few booth comments on Huon while we wait for more figures tomorrow.  Harriss topped every booth in the Huon Valley council area except for Cygnet topped by Glade-Wright and Dover which was McKibben's sole booth win.  Glade-Wright topped every Kingborough booth except Sandfly where Harriss was slightly ahead on primaries but I suspect not after preferences.

In comparison to 2022 Harriss increased his vote in most booths - as one would strongly expect him to in the absence of a Liberal candidate - but actually went backwards in Kettering, Middleton and Woodbridge, the very green tree-changy booths that are strongly anti-salmon (that said, not much Liberal vote to gain from in those).  In general he didn't pick up much in the Channel area booths, whether they were in Kingborough or Huon Valley.

I wasn't sure Glade-Wright was going to match the Peter George vote from the state election but in fact she beat it by several points!  This happened particularly in the upper Channel booths (Margate, Howden, Snug etc) more so than the very green booths.  

Late night wrap:  What have we seen here in these Tasmanian contests?  Well not a great night for any of the parties.  For the Greens, a couple of par results.  For Labor, what looks like a pretty good result in Rosevears depending on preferences, but a definitely bad one in Huon, a seat they won six years ago.  For the Liberals, they'll be relieved to hold Rosevears, but it probably won't be a big win, and voters in Huon are still giving them a kicking over salmon, or something.  It's the left independent side of things that has had the best night with Glade-Wright in with a serious shot of winning though we'll have to wait a fair while to see where that ends up.  

10:20 I've seen some scrutineering figures for Huon from one of the prepolls that are very positive for Glade-Wright, projecting her to over 52% 2CP.  If she wins it will be the first case of an indie unseating another indie ("Independent Labor" types excluded) since Norma Jamieson beat Geoff Squibb in Mersey 2003.  

8:49 ROSEVEARS FINAL FOR NIGHT Palmer 42.68 Mckinnon 24.73 McLennan 16.59 Monson 16.01.  74.81% of enrolment counted.  Palmer needs 22.5% of preferences to win.  Extremely difficult to see how that doesn't occur, plus Palmer's position should improve on postals.  Actually I think I'll hold off on calling for now just because the votes are still subject to rechecking and I've seen zero sampling of Monson but it very much looks like Jo Palmer has retained.  

HUON FINAL FOR NIGHT Harriss 30.60 Glade-Wright 27.83 McKibben 16.49 Gibson 15.08 Rowan 5.38 Petersen 4.61.  Hard to see the Greens preferences not breaking at very least 70-30 to Glade-Wright, which puts Glade-Wright ahead and then Harriss would need a lot off McKibben.  But while Labor's vote may still include some industry types, McKibben is also a candidate with some teal appeal, plus gender preferencing can be a factor, so I'm not sure the Labor votes will do much.  Glade-Wright is definitely close enough to win this.  

We await word on where the counts will go from here.  Sometimes the TEC does provisional distributions to establish who will win.  In the case of Rosevears, McLennan and Monson are too close to be sure yet who is last, so the TEC would currently need to do alternative throws as they did in Elwick recently.  Huon has a somewhat similar issue with McKibben vs Gibson for third and fourth.   The way through in terms of basic primary counting is here.

8:30 Second prepoll added - Palmer now leads 42.84-24.92 and needs only 22.2% of preferences to win.  I'm warming up for you know what.

8:26 One Nation have got into second on primaries in Nepean but they can't stay there after preferences and it wouldn't help them if they did.  A good win for the Victorian Liberals.

8:12 Legana is in and Palmer has 41.82% from Mckinnon 24.96%, meaning at present Palmer needs 24.6% of preferences to win.  Postals and prepolls should improve her position somewhat.  I've heard two reports of Greens flows at 18% and 25% (the former with more sample size detail), I've seen no reports of Monson flows.  It's not easy to see why Monson's preferences should break that heavily so I believe Palmer wins, but it can be close.  

8:06 And Glade-Wright wins Blackmans Bay South booth!  There is still a second prepoll to be added, with that to come Harriss's lead is only 3.2%.  In Rosevears there are two prepoll centres and Legana (which will be very strong for Palmer) to come.  

7:57 Have heard indirectly that Palmer is doing better on Greens preferences than normal.  If this is so she will be fine, Monson's preferences won't break strongly.

7:45 Two booths to go in Huon, Blackmans Bay South and Geeveston (the latter will be good for Harriss).  At least some prepolls are in and Harriss's lead is only four points.  There's a reason I'm not talking much about Labor here by the way, they haven't been in the mix at any stage and are currently fighting with the Greens for third.  

7:41 60.3% of preferences to Marsh at Blairgowrie, a weak One Nation booth.  I don't see how Marsh doesn't win Nepean.  

7:36 Five booths in in Nepean now and little change to the previous picture, it is looking like a Liberal vs independent 2CP.  We have a 2CP count from Waterfall Gully where the Liberals are getting 61% of preferences albeit with a higher than usual One Nation vote.  This is looking super strong for Marsh at this stage and it could well be that this gets called tonight.

7:33 Glade-Wright closing the gap in the last few booths and still has Blackmans Bay to come.  Green preferences will surely favour her substantially over Harriss.  Let's see where the night finishes especially after prepolls but Harriss's position looks shaky at the moment.    In Rosevears it now looks like Monson will finish fourth.  Currently Palmer needs 26% of Green and Monson preferences.  This number should go down with prepolls and postals.  LegCo preference flows tend not to be that strong.

7:22 Labor now second in Rosevears with Monson still narrowly fourth.  Palmer seems to be doing OK here as if she keeps her primary well into the 40s she shouldn't be caught.  

7:20 More booths coming in in Huon.  Harriss is about seven points ahead, my projection says that will go up to nine, but I doubt it will as most of the rest are in Kingborough.  Barring high quality scrutineering we will probably not know the Huon result tonight.  

7:14 A couple of booths in in Nepean and the Liberal candidate, Marsh, is at this stage in front.  Probably if things stay as they are he would be able to beat either Hutchinson or One Nation on the other's preferences.  At this stage One Nation are in third, noting they need to be well over Hutchinson to avoid being eliminated by Greens preferences.  So seems a good start for Marsh but this does depend on what One Nation's preferences do.  

7:10 Trevallyn Central does its thing and pushes Monson down to fourth.  The Liberals will be hoping that she stays there.  

7:07 Rosevears is weird.  My projection says the primary vote totals should finish about where they are except the Greens should come up a bit.  Palmer is probably going to need something close to a quarter of preferences against either Labor or Monson.  

7:02 Huon: huge numbers for Harriss in the Ranelagh booth (one of the Huon Valley booths).  I now project him around the low 30s to a lead of something like 10 points.  Is that enough?  Hard to say.

7:00 Prospective indies in Rosevears must be kicking themselves as they see Monson who was barely even findable at the start of the campaign move into second on primaries.  Palmer is projecting to low 40s at this stage.  

6:53 Strong Port Huon booth for Harriss sees him much closer to Glade-Wright now and I project him to improve.  Nothing from Nepean yet by the way.  By the way the booth I had as Margate was actually Middleton (not sure what happened there!) but Middleton is a booth that I would expect to be very good for Glade-Wright so the projections have shifted with that corrected.  I am now projecting Harriss for a substantial lead.  

6:49 One of the Legana booths is in and Palmer has gone above 40 in my projection (which would probably be enough) but an interesting thing here is that Monson is in third and threatening Labor for second.  What will Greens preferences do between Labor and Monson should it stay like that?

6:46 Glade-Wright wins Middleton booth (not Margate as previously advertised, not sure what happened there!)

6:43 Rosevears is going too! In the first two booths, Palmer roughly matched the Liberal state tally in one and was well below it in another, meaning I have her tracking for about 39, at which point the preferences of obscure independent Monson (who is getting a high vote so far by being the only independent!) would be important.  

6:31 And we're off!  In Huon, Glade-Wright tops two Bruny booths (not surprising) and Harriss tops primaries in Southport but not by much.  These are very small booths but look like a very good start for Glade-Wright who at this early stage projects competitively with Harriss for the primary vote lead (on average my very early, very unreliable projections put both of them around 31).   However Harriss may lift later.  Interesting start.  That Southport booth looks less than wonderful for Labor given it is not far from McKibben's home town.  

6:20 Have also noticed some Rosevears booths that weren't in action or were under other names in the 2025 state election: there are now two Legana and two "Trevallyn" booths.  Trevallyn Central is the standard (and very green) Trevallyn booth, Trevallyn is the previous Riverside West (not green!), and Riverside North was not at the state election.

5:40pm:  The usual "yes this thing is on" post.  A few things of note.  Firstly in Huon there is a third Bruny Island booth on North Bruny, which will be called North Bruny; probably it will behave like other Bruny booths (very green/left).  TEC have told me it's a reinstatement of the former Barnes Bay booth.  For Huon I'll be projecting Labor and the Greens off the 2025 election, Glade-Wright off the Peter George group total at the 2025 election (noting that I expect that to be unreliable to a degree) and Harriss off both his 2022 result and the Liberal 2025 result (I don't expect either to be great but the truth may be somewhere in between!)  

As concerns Nepean there will be a very low day vote which may be highly unreliable and we don't have useful comparative data for One Nation's likely performance on prepolls and postals in an absents-free by-election, so things will be a bit rubbery.  One Nation will also perform much better in lower socio-economic booths and Nepean is quite a mixed bag economically.

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Intro (Saturday 2 pm)

We're here again, it's counting night for two more Tasmanian Legislative Council seats with first-term incumbent Dean Harris (IND) facing Labor, Green and tealish IND challengers and fellow first-term incumbent Jo Palmer (Liberal) up against Labor and the Greens.  You can see my seat previews here:

Huon

Rosevears

and also my assessment of Legislative Council voting patterns

I've had less time to cover the LegCo election campaigns than normal as I was overseas for two weeks in April.  During this time I had very little spare time anyway but my ability to update the site was further affected by my laptop charger expiring in smoke and my phone charger being unreliable.  However all is back to normal now.  

As I note, a Labor opposition that normally votes with the government (hmmm) means that the government isn't often troubled on the floor of the chamber, but its proposed greyhound racing ban is one where it may need all the numbers it can get and won't be wanting to see any wins for the red team tonight.  Nor would it be keen to see independent Dean Harriss replaced by an independent to his left in Clare Glade-Wright.  Tonight will be an interesting test of how everyone's travelling, noting that Labor tends to do badly in these contests in the north and would do well by historic standards to get anywhere near winning Rosevears.  

Also tonight is an interesting by-election in Victoria where the Liberals are trying to fend off One Nation and a teal in the seat vacated by former deputy leader Sam Groth, who won the seat impressively in 2022 and has been a problem magnet ever since.    I'm not really sure whether it's better to run separate threads or cover them on the same thread; I've decided to do the latter to reduce the risk of me getting confused between threads, noting that the LegCo is my primary focus until it settles down.  The Nepean contest has been marked by more Victorian Liberal chaos though the One Nation campaign has also run into some problems; see William Bowe's rundown.

I would expect first LegCo figures from around 6:30. Note that in Huon the first booths that arrive are often on Bruny Island and these are very green/anti-salmon booths that are highly unrepresentative.  When I consider there is no realistic doubt about the fate of the LegCo seats the magic word CALLED will appear in the header.  Until then it will contain a brief summary of how the count is going in each seat, which may at times be out of date.  

Early in the night I'll be projecting party totals in Rosevears off the 2025 state election until numbers settle down.  I have a range of projection ideas for Huon and I'll announce which ones I've managed to implement in time once the count gets underway.  Note that we will not get postals tonight for the LegCo seats as Tasmania does not count postals til midweek.  We should however get plenty of prepolls.

The Amazing 2026 South Australian Election: Final Lower House Results And Poll Performance

SA 2026 ALP 34 (+5) Lib 5 (-9) ON 4 (+4) IND 4 (-)
(Changes from pre-election/notional; Labor gained two seats from Liberal during 2022-6 term)

Estimated 2PP ALP 57.89 vs Liberal (+3.3)

Estimated "Shadow 2PP" ALP 58.19 vs One Nation

The 2026 South Australian lower house was remarkable in so many ways.  It makes Queensland 1998 seem almost boring by comparison, except that Queensland 1998 was there first.  Maybe all elections are going to be like this now and this soon will not seem so unusual but if that's so my colleagues and I are going to have a very busy time in the future!

All manner of curious things happened here.  Finally, someone (Lou Nicholson in Finniss) won a state or federal seat from fourth on primaries; hooray we have lived to see it.  Both majors missed the 2CP in Stuart and Mount Gambier in the first such cases since Nicklin 2001.  The Liberal Opposition missed more 2CPs (29) than they made (18) and were outpolled by One Nation (unprecedented) but are still the Opposition.  Worse than that they missed nine 3CPs as well and even managed to finish fifth in Port Adelaide and Black - Black being a seat they won at the previous election!  And so on.  It was obvious this was going to be a very messy election - a little while out I thought how on earth will we ever make a pendulum from THIS - but aspects of it were even more unique than I saw coming.

Legislative Council 2026: Rosevears

ROSEVEARS (2020 margin Lib vs IND 0.57%)

This is my second guide to the Legislative Council this year.  My guide for Huon is here and my latest guide to voting patterns in the upper house is up.   

I expect to be doing live coverage of the Legislative Council elections on this site on election night, scheduled for Saturday May 2.  However, updates to this page in the lead-up will probably be less frequent than normal. 

The current numbers in the Council are three Liberal, three Labor, one Green and eight independents, with the independents ranging fairly evenly across the Green to Liberal spectrum.  Labor gives up one vote on the floor and in the committee stages because it holds the Presidency.  As the major parties frequently vote together, the Government has not had an especially difficult time of it in the upper chamber lately, most notably getting the hugely controversial Macquarie Point stadium through 9 votes to 5.  But that is not to say the Liberals get everything their own way, for instance having their legislation to wind up greyhound racing referred to an inquiry.

This year sees just two Legislative Council contests, being the first defence for independent Dean Harriss in Huon and likewise for Liberal Jo Palmer in Rosevears.  

Tasmania Redistribution: The Reaction

Yesterday the AEC released public feedback on the proposed radical redistribution as previously covered here (Draft Scraps The Franklin Divide).  Frankly I thought there might be more complaints than there were, but some of those that there are are pretty punchy.  Of the 90 distinct submissions received, exactly half by my count discussed the proposed boundaries at all, and of these I counted 14 as purely supporting the proposal (one or two noting some initial reluctance in doing so) and 31 objecting, nearly all of these proposing something substantially different if they proposed anything at all.

Predictably the most common objections concerned the condition of Lyons and especially the placement of Glenorchy in it.  Objectors raised Glenorchy's disconnection from the bulk of Lyons through the inclusion of Brighton in Franklin, argued that neo-Lyons was thematically incoherent, complained about the severing of Glenorchy from Greater Hobart and also objected to rural Tasmania being fragmented into majority urban seats.  Submission 34 by Mark James is a good representative of the objections:

"Under the proposed model, rural/regional voters will be outnumbered by city voters in all five electorates. There is no community of interest at all between Glenorchy, Sheffield, and St. Helens. - For a state with a famously decentralised population, in which the majority of the population live outside the capital city, voters in the capital city will form the bulk of three out of five electorates."

Legislative Council Voting Patterns 2022-6

In the leadup to the 2026 Legislative Council elections for Huon and Rosevears (link TBA when I've written it) this article is my annual review of voting patterns on divisions in the upper house in the previous four years.  But before I get into it, I need to deal with some methods nerdery at the start.

Shy Division Losing

Some Labor MLCs aren't particularly fond of my findings, and they were especially defensive about a stat that in the small sample added to the mix last year Labor had voted with the Liberal Government 90% of the time.  (Fear not, in this year's sample it is 86%).  This even led to an attempt on election night live TV to shoot down (but not shag or marry) my methods in which it was falsely claimed that if there were thirty divisions on a single Bill I would include them all in my assessment.  Fortunately the incorrect claim has since been retracted.  

What in particular the Labor MLCs do not like goes to an unfortunate quirk of the LegCo's standing orders. When votes are called for on a motion they are initially taken on the voices.  The President or whoever is in the chair at the time declares a provisional result, eg "I think the ayes have it".  At this point someone can call for a division - but only if they are voting on the side that lost the call on the voices.  

In a case where the Government has no friends on a vote they might vote one way on the voices, but then not bother having that vote recorded to avoid embarrassment.  And in this case, while Labor voted the other way, there is nothing Labor can do here to cause a division such that them voting on the other side shows up in my figures.  This does sometimes happen, though no evidence that it happens often has been presented.  (I had thought this was in contrast to federal parliament because of something that happened in the same-sex marriage vote, but was mistaken - see comments.)

South Australia Postcount 2026: Finniss

FINNISS (Lib vs ALP 6.7%, Lib vs IND 0.7%)

David Basham (Lib) vs Lou Nicholson (IND) 

Nicholson wins from fourth position on primaries.  Unprecedented in state and federal elections

(Link to tallyboard thread)

The Victor Harbour/Goolwa seat of Finniss sees a similarly messy count to Kavel with four candidates with currently very similar primary votes, as I start this thread with the prepoll not yet in and sadly only 33.1% of enrolment counted.  It may be very different after prepoll and it was very different in 2022.  On the night Lou Nicholson was on 54.7% 2CP vs Basham and the doubt seemed to be would she make the final two or not.  She ended up making the final two but very poor numbers on prepolls and absents resulted in Basham winning (just) 50.7-49.3.  Now, the rematch ...

As with Kavel this is another seat where nobody has a quarter of the primary vote.  Currently One Nation's Greg Powell (23.6%) leads Basham by six votes, with Nicholson on 20.5% and Phoebe Redington (ALP) on 17.6%.  The Greens have 7.2% and the top of the ballot paper, and have recommended preferences to Nicholson.  The others are Bron Lewis (a tealish sounding independent on 4.3%), Animal Justice 1.6%, Aus Family 1.2% Fair Go 0.4%.