Victoria 2026: Legislative Council Prospects

It's a fine pleasure to be writing a preview for the Victorian Legislative Council that is not like this. It's also great not to need to write this.  Yes it would be nice if we could get rid of the regions as well but this is Victoria's first upper house election ever to be both adequately democratic and useful, and let's start with the great news that nature is already healing!  The abolition of Group Ticket Voting has seen candidate numbers for this year's upper house election fall by a third.  Eight parties are contesting every region and ten parties plus a few non-registered-party groups and ungrouped candidates are contesting some but not all.

The new system is similar to the Senate system, meaning that leads of more than about 3% will normally not get closed down on preferences, how to vote cards will probably be even less followed than for the Assembly, preference "deals" will mostly have little impact, and nobody is winning seats off 0-2% of the vote.  We might see parties winning off 4-6%, but that would be in situations where there is a race for the final seat with nobody with anything like quota.  More realistically parties will be looking for 8-10% to be in the mix in most cases, and even that much doesn't guarantee a win depending on what other parties have.  

A rare Upper House poll by DemosAU appeared this week but upper house polling is extremely difficult to get right.  No pollster ever seems to have found the magic trick for how to simulate the experience of a voter confronted with a two-dimensional ballot with a dozen or more columns.  In DemosAU's case they seem to be trying to do the right thing by listing plenty of parties, but for whatever reason the smaller parties end up getting overestimated.  (The more so in this case since the poll came before it turned out that Animal Justice were only contesting two regions.)  DemosAU's poll was also an outlier for the lower house (with Labor on 18% and another two polls this week have had them in the low 20s), so I'm not using it here.  And there was a Morgan poll in October based on interviews from July to September but adding up the totals by region for it puts Labor on 25.2% and the Greens 18.3%, collectively seven points higher than my aggregate and highly implausible now; the regional samples were also too small and too old to be of much use.  

There was a poll of Upper House districts by Lower House voting intention by Redbridge/Accent way back in June, however it was affected somewhat by said pollster's very low "others" votes.  Since that poll I have Labor down 4.0 points in my Lower House aggregate, Coalition up 3.7, One Nation down 1.9 and Greens up 1.6.  At the time of that poll, when I used it to model the Upper House contest (with some adjustements) I found One Nation on for as many as 12 or 13 seats and shaping to be the largest party.  However, a lot has changed since.

One of the complications in modelling Victorian upper house elections is that recent elections have seen the majors underperform in the upper house, more so than anywhere else that didn't have Group Ticket Voting.  Labor has underperformed by 3-4% in recent elections and the Coalition by 5-6%.  An obvious cause is micro-parties campaigning hard because they could actually win under GTV, and also nominating in large numbers.  I expect this major party underperformance to abate this year, but by how much?  In South Australia this year Labor underperformed upstairs by 0.78% and the Liberals by 1.17% with One Nation overperforming by 1.46%.  All this seems to be largely about personal votes for major party incumbents.  Labor overperformed in the Senate in 2025 because of voters who voted for teal or similar independents in the Reps and Labor in the Senate.  I have assumed the Coalition will continue to underperform its polling in the upper house to a reduced degree, and that Labor will about match its polling.  With Labor currently looking at about a 14.5% swing against in the lower house, I'm assuming about 11.5% against in the Council.

As a first pass for eyeballing possibilities I have used Alex Jago's Senate-based 4CP estimator; I used my current aggregated primaries and allocated Ind/Other (which in Victoria is now mostly independents and left micros) 30% to each of the Greens and Labor, 22% to the Coalition and 18% to One Nation.  This gives an impression of what Senate results may have looked like scaled to the current primaries - but only between the four big parties.  This seems to me especially to be the best way to put some kinds of estimates on One Nation's likely strength without going into vastly detailed modelling.  (It isn't useful to simply project the ON vote upwards from 2022 since in some regions, especially Northern Metropolitan, other parties like Labour DLP competed heavily for the same vote.)

It is important to bear in mind that Senate experience suggests that upper house how to vote cards (HTVs) are not much followed.  This applies especially to those for minor parties.  In the 2025 Senate election for Victoria, the proportion of above the line voters following the cards (see full figures here) was just 20% for Labor, 30.6% for Coalition, 12.4% for Greens, and generally single figure percentages for other parties.  If you see models that use how to vote card flows to assign seats then just ignore them, they are useless.

Labor have in general pursued what appears to be an anti One Nation strategy on their upper house how to vote cards (as well as their usual bizarre habit of including the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers on their regional tickets for nothing.)  In general they've included the Coalition at 6 (interesting with only 5 required).  However at this stage I am not seeing scenarios where this matters.  I may consider the impact of the Coalition cards, if any, when they are released.

For each region I give:

- the leading 2022 vote-getting parties with primary quota totals 

- the actual 2022 seat result

- the notional result for 2022 if the same primary votes had been cast without Group Ticket Voting.  

- the Senate-based 4CP Model for the region based on my Assembly aggregate.  Note that these numbers are not comparable to the 2022 state results, nor to a party's actual likely vote share, as they include the preferences of every other party that ran in the Senate.  

- a current estimate of what would happen in an election held now

- a list of the parties running in the region other than Labor, Coalition, One Nation and Greens

- some analysis of the chances in the seat

In general the high quota means that it appears hard for parties other than the big four to win seats.  The main ways this was going to happen were a 1-1-1-1-1 result where nobody had much in the race for the last seat, or someone getting over the Greens in a region where that could be a win.  However strengthening polling for the Greens and Coalition have made both these scenarios less likely.

This article is an assessment launched on 12 November.  It is not a final prediction as polling may shift further in the final weeks, and in particular One Nation's vote may or may not be solid.  I may or may not have time to edit in any significant changes in my assessment; if so these will be date stamped.  

The initial version of this article has been written fairly quickly and may contain some errors and typos which should not affect the overall assessment.  In general, this is likely to be a quite proportional system as concerns the "big four" parties and it's no surprise given the current state of polling that I find a right majority in the Council to be likely.

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EASTERN VICTORIA

2022 L-NP 2.18 Q, ALP 1.59, Greens 0.48, LCP 0.25, LDLP 0.23, ON 0.21, SFF 0.18 etc

2022 Actual 2 Coalition, 2 Labor, 1 SF+F

2022 Notional 2 Coalition, 2 Labor, 1 third right seat (see below) or Greens 

4CP Model ALP 1.2 L-NP 2.3 ON 1.7 Greens 0.79

2026 Current Estimate 2 Coalition 1 Labor 1-2 One Nation 0-1 Green

Also running: Victorian Socilists, Legalise Cannabis, Labour DLP, Animal Justice, Sustainable Australia, Shooters Fishers and Farmers, one non-party group.  

In Eastern Victoria the right will easily get at least three seats and might press for four.  However since the Coalition is most likely to underperform it is doubtful that there will be spare preferences to One Nation.  This could on current polling be a tight contest between the Greens and One Nation for the last seat; this is also what I get off the Redbridge/Accent sample adjusted for polling changes since.

Legalise Cannabis were the best of the rest with 4.15% in 2022 and would need to massively increase that for any chance to overtake the Greens; this would require the Greens to poll badly enough that the survivor probably lost to One Nation anyway.  I see no serious prospect for anyone outside the big four here.

(A note that while I've tended in the past to cast the 2022 notional result here as a simple 2 Coalition, 2 Labor, 1 Green, with more experience of Senate preference flows from some of the One Nation charges in 2025 I now think it's more likely that one of the many right wing parties here would have caught the Greens even from 4% or so behind. There were just so many right preferences and the few left preferences would have split between Labor and the Greens)

NORTH EAST METROPOLITAN

2022 ALP 2.02 Q, Lib 1.82, Greens 0.62, LDLP 0.31, LibDem 0.25, LCP 0.19 etc

2022 Actual 2 Labor, 2 Liberal, 1 Green

2022 Notional 2 Labor, 2 Liberal, 1 Green

4CP Model ALP 1.66 Lib 2.14 ON 1.18 Greens 1.02

2026 Current Estimate 2 Coalition 1 Labor 1 One Nation 1 Green

Also running: Legalise Cannabis, Victorian Socialists, Sustainable Australia, Labour DLP, Family First, Libertarian, one non-party group, Democrats.  

Both the Senate 4CP model and an adjusted read of the Redbridge/Accent sample highlight 2-1-1-1 with the Coalition getting 2 as the mainline scenario here.  The confusing-name parties (Labour DLP and the then Liberal Democrats) had a great ballot draw in 2022 but don't this year.   A win from outside the big four seems extremely unlikely.

NORTHERN METROPOLITAN

2022 ALP 2.00 Q, Lib 1.13, Green 1.12, LDLP (Somyurek) 0.29, VicSoc 0.28, Reason 0.22, LCP 0.18 etc

2022 Actual 2 Labor, 1 Liberal, 1 Green, 1 Labour DLP

2022 Notional 2 Labor, 1 Liberal, 1 Green, last seat Labour DLP, VicSoc or less likely Reason

4CP Model ALP 1.66 Liberal 1.29 One Nation 1.13 Greens 1.92

2026 Current Estimate: 1 Liberal 1 Labor 1 One Nation 1 Greens.  Fifth seat between multiple contenders including at least Labor, Greens and possibly Victorian Socialists or others.

Also running: Legalise Cannabis, unnamed Socialist Equality group, Sustainable Australia, Socialist Alliance, Labour DLP, Democrats, another unnamed group, Victorian Socialists, Family First, 1 ungrouped

Until I looked at the 4CP model I hadn't realised just how strong Northern Metro has been getting for the Greens brand; as they got barely over one quota in 2022 I hadn't realised I had to consider their second candidate as a contender for the last seat.  But with their polling on the up and Labor's being now so bad, it's at least possible that the Greens can get over Labor here.  The secret is that a lot of the Greens' 4CP vote share is hidden in minor left parties, primarily Victorian Socialists (themselves contributing 18% of it at the federal election) who polled 4.7% last time and could plausibly improve on that.  If the Greens don't get as big a boost as I think that they might, it's possible to see a Greens vs Labor vs Vic Soc contest for the final seat.  However Vic Soc are not great at getting preferences in this system even without group ticket voting.  They will have the benefit of being ahead of the Greens on the Labor HTV but it will probably not be much followed.

Labour DLP won with Adem Somyurek last time and could have done so even without GTV but their problem this time is likely to be that even if they don't lose votes directly to One Nation, One Nation will suck up most of their preference sources and probably won't poll that close to quota by itself, so will also be sucking up part of any Liberal excess.  Also they tend to profit from confused Labor voters but there won't be as many of those to confuse (they have drawn to Labor's left on the ballot though).  And Somyurek is no longer there.  Voters over the age of 900, which is about the median age for non-confused Labour DLP voters, may know that their lead candidate John Kavanagh is the brother of former MLC Peter Kavanagh; also he was somehow at two stages mayor of Moreland (now Merri-Bek).  

Legalise Cannabis did well in the Northern Metro footprint at the federal election with Fiona Patten as lead candidate but she is not contesting this time.  If there is a seat outside the big four, I think it will be challenging for them to outpoll Victorian Socialists.  

While the Senate-based 4CP model seems to imply that three right seats is unrealistic I don't think it should be ruled out entirely.  I'm really struggling to make it fly though, since the 2022 right result without GTV would have been only one seat or very barely two.

NORTHERN VICTORIA

2022 Coalition 2.1 Q, Labor 1.73, Greens 0.42, SF+F 0.31 LCP 0.29 One Nation 0.22 etc

2022 Actual 2 Coalition 1 Labor 1 Animal Justice 1 One Nation

2022 Notional 2 Coalition 2 Labor 1 Shooters Fishers and Farmers

4CP Model ALP 1.16 Q, Coalition 2.33, One Nation 1.77, Greens 0.75

2026 Current Estimate: 2 Coalition 1 Labor 1 One Nation, 1 One Nation vs Greens (One Nation favoured)

Also running: Citizens Party, Family First, Shooters Fishers and Farmers, Labour DLP, Sustainable Australia, Animal Justice, Legalise Cannabis, Victorian Socialists, 1 unnamed group, 1 ungrouped

On current polling Northern Victoria is a serious chance for the right to bag a slate of four.  The 4CP model only says it's close between One Nation and the Greens for the final seat, but One Nation polled a ridiculous 37% in the Redbridge/Accent sample earlier this year, and while that was surely overdoing it

The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers are traditionally strong in this area but are likely to lose support from One Nation, and will have nowhere to get preferences from anyway.  (Frequently the party most desperate to give them preferences in rural seats is Labor, but I don't see them having much if any excess here anyway).  Legalise Cannabis can potentially outpoll the Greens but if the vote is split between them like that then it's likely leakage and exhaust are killing them both and in any case the right may get four anyway; I also think One Nation will compete more for their vote here than in most regions.  I don't see anyone beyond the big four winning here.

SOUTH-EASTERN METROPOLITAN

2022 Labor 2.36 Q, Liberal 1.61, Greens 0.40, LCP 0.32, LDP 0.22, LDLP 0.20 etc

2022 Actual 2 Labor 1 Liberal 1 Legalise Cannabis 1 Liberal Democrat

2022 Notional 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green

4CP Model Labor 1.8 Q Liberal 1.88 One Nation 1.41 Greens 0.91

2026 Current Estimate: 1 Liberal 1 Labor 1 One Nation, 1 Liberal leading One Nation, 1 Greens leading Labor

Also running: Christian Alliance Party - Reform AU, Citizens Party, Victorian Socialists, Legalise Cannabis, Sustainable Australia, Libertarians, Democrats, Labour DLP, 1 ungrouped

South-Eastern Metropolitan is the region where Legalise Cannabis, whose remaining incumbent Rachel Payne is recontesting, could seriously outpoll the Greens if they have not such a good election.  However at the moment the Greens are travelling too well for that to appear likely.  The 4CP model also suggests their brand might be in better shape here than it used to be.  The Redbridge/Accent sample agrees.  And there is also here a familiar story, that if the Greens are outpolled then whoever outpolls them probably isn't winning anyway.  But I would keep half an eye on this one because Payne is an incumbent (for what that's worth in the upper house, which might not be that much) in a region where her party polled spectacularly well (5.25%) in 2022.  

Although the Liberals seem to have One Nation shaded in the 4CP model, the Liberals are more likely to underperform in the upper house, so it's possible ON will be competitive, especially as about half the Assembly seats in this region are One Nation targets of some kind.  Most likely there will be a swing to the Greens and a Labor vs Greens fight of some kind for the other seat.

SOUTHERN METROPOLITAN

2022 Liberal 2.17 Q, Labor 1.78, Greens 0.92, LCP 0.17, LDP 0.15, LDLP 0.13 etc

2022 Actual 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green

2022 Notional 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green

4CP Model Labor 1.47 Q, Liberal 2.37, One Nation 0.91, Green 1.24

2026 Current Estimate: 2 Liberal 1 Labor 1 One Nation 1 Green

Also running: Democrats, Legalise Cannabis, Family First, Victorian Socialists, Sustainable Australia, Labour DLP, unnamed group headed by Melissa Lowe.

Southern Metropolitan is One Nation's weakest region on paper but even so they'd have to underperform badly on current polling to not at least scrape a seat.  Southern Metro is noted for its vivid disinterest in voting for micro-parties and I can't get excited about anything here at the moment.  

The very small Morgan sample (from a poll that was generally massively skewed to the left compared with current polling) did have One Nation missing out here with either Labor or the Greens getting two.  However once that sample is scaled to current polling One Nation wins the final seat with something like the 4CP model above.  

WESTERN METROPOLITAN

2022: Labor 2.22 Q, Liberal 1.47, Greens 0.48, LDLP 0.31, LCP 0.26, VicSoc 0.21, FF 0.19 etc 

2022 Actual: 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Legalise Cannabis

2022 Notional: 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green

4CP Model Labor 1.82 Q, Liberal 1.68, One Nation 1.37, Greens 1.12

2026 Current Estimate: 1 Liberal 1 Labor 1 One Nation 1 Greens, 1 Liberal vs Labor, but with micro-party possibilities

Also running: Labour DLP, Legalise Cannabis, Victorian Socialists, Democrats, Sustainable Australia, Family First, The Republican (short for The Republican Make Australia Great Again), West Party, 1 ungrouped

There's an awful lot going on in Western Metro.  A once pretty ordinary area for the Greens has been greening up around the edges giving them a very good shot at a seat on current polls.  There's Moira Deeming running as the lead Family First candidate after finally parting ways with the Liberal Party.  There's the pesky Labour DLP drawing the first column, which could very well keep their vote high through name confusion though it's hard to see them going anywhere with it even if it goes even higher than last time (and they'll probably lose vote share to One Nation anyway).  There's the unknown quantity that is the West Party (ticket led by former indie Joe Garra) - will it actually get significant votes?  There has been some focus on Victorian Socialists here where they averaged 5% in the Assembly (this alone rendered the Redbridge/Accent breakdown with only 5% for Others here implausible) but I don't think they have strength across enough of the seat to be a serious threat here in the absence of an obvious opening into a contest.  I suspect this is looking at a major party contest for the final seat but there are enough rogue scenarios here to keep things interesting.

WESTERN VICTORIA

2022: Labor 2.13Q, Coalition 1.62, Greens 0.52, LCP 0.30, SF+F 0.23, LDP 0.20, ON 0.16 etc

2022 Actual: 2 Labor 2 Coalition 1 Greens

2022 Notional: 2 Labor 2 Coalition 1 Greens

4CP Model: Labor 1.45 Q, Coalition 2.05, One Nation 1.59, Greens 0.91

2026 Current Estimate: 1 Coalition 1 Labor 1 One Nation 1 Greens 1 Coalition vs One Nation

Also running: Sustainable Australia, Democrats, Victorian Socialists, unnamed group, Libertarian, Socialist Alliance, Labour DLP, Shooters Fishers and Farmers, Family First, The Republican, 1 ungrouped

Western Victoria is the weakest of the non-urban regions for the right; most of the Assembly seats in it were won by Labor by a fair margin in 2022, though some are strongly Coalition such as Lowan.  This may explain why the Redbridge/Accent sample had the Coalition lower house vote here on a very low 19% with One Nation on 37% - rather hard to believe that was correct with only about four of the seats here are being treated as serious One Nation targets.  Here I am also a little sceptical of the 4CP model and I suspect the Coalition might have done relatively better in the federal election than it has been travelling in Victoria in this area.  Given that the Coalition may underperform its polling this is another one where it's possible that One Nation could get two at its expense.  This is another region where it is very difficult to find a seat for anyone other than the big four.

Tallyboard

This is what I have at present as concerns the likely winners and the expected right/left composition.

If current polling holds then it appears overwhelmingly likely that there will be a combined Coalition/One Nation majority in the Council.  There would also be a combined Coalition/Labor majority.  A Coalition/Greens majority is possible but would require the Coalition and Greens to between them win four of seven contests where I have flagged them as possible winners; I have flagged them as favourites in two of these contests and trailing in one other.  Three of seven could lead to a situation where the Coalition/Greens and Labor/One Nation each have a combined blocking majority.

Appendix: Redbridge/Accent regional poll

I note here the vote shares in the June Redbridge/Accent poll, taken at a time when One Nation and Labor were polling higher than now and the Coalition and Greens not as high.  I note that I believe this poll underestimates Others in many regions, especially Western and Northern Metros.  This was a poll of lower house voting intention by upper house region.

(Redbridge/Accent June 2026 primary votes for lower house by upper house region)

Victoria 2026: Majority, Minority ... Or Blowout?

Victoria Aggregate Labor 22.0 Coalition 31.0 Green 14.6 One Nation 21.8 Others 10.6 

2PP estimate 54.5 to Coalition, shadow-2PP 50.5 to One Nation vs ALP (subject to Coalition recommending preferences to One Nation)

Currently Coalition would most likely win a majority, perhaps with 50-55 seats

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I last had time (sigh!) to write about the Victorian election polling outlook way back in July.  At that point the Coalition was the better placed of the two major parties but were still a few points off a high enough primary vote for majority government.

What has happened since then in polling overall is that Labor's leadership change from Jacinta Allan to Ben Carroll has delivered less than nothing for the government.  In fact Labor's polled primary vote share is down, One Nation's is also down, and both the Coalition and the Greens are up.  None of these changes are massive, but they don't need to be - as the Coalition pushes into the low 30s its chances of majority government become serious, especially if One Nation goes down.    In recent months the Coalition has gradually edged from being in the box seat but not yet up to a majority in live polling, to a majority being more seriously likely, and now there is even some focus on the potential for a blowout and for Labor's vote to be devoured on all sides.  Ben Carroll has continued to make the increasingly ludicrous claim that polling shows the Coalition cannot govern alone, even while polling suggests that if the election were held right now it almost certainly would.  No doubt at least three people in some focus groups somewhere have implied this scare campaign is solid but I wonder if what it's really doing is scaring voters who actually care to the Coalition as the only party that looks like it might get a majority.  

Steve Bracks this weekend made the even more ludicrous claim that the three main parties are all polling around 30% - neither Labor nor One Nation has broken 25 in any poll since August!  Labor's high for the year in any poll is 28 and One Nation's 27, and both of those were a long time ago.  Bracks also claimed this was the first genuine three-cornered contest in Victorian electoral history, which would be news to those who voted in pretty much any Victorian election between 1935 and 1955, or watched the formation of government in that time.  

In the polling in the last few months Victorian Labor has overall looked more and more like an ex-government, and there is a sense of chaos similar to the final days of Rudd 2 as the party tries to work out how you sell yourself after a messy leadership split when the new leader has not had time to get settled, nor the party to settle its campaign around him.  Much of their output seems to be chasing voters lost to One Nation with weird law and order policies that for anyone even listening are likely to be seen as too little too late.  That said, not all of the readings are bad and there have been some polls (especially the Resolves) where one could argue that if everything went well the government might survive on those numbers.  Overall though things have been getting worse, and it is historically not surprising.  A third term federally dragged state government, with the federal government's own polling increasingly iffy (no surprise there given high petrol prices, an interest rates rise and recession talk) and with the state government having made its second leadership change of the term only a few months out.  Ben Carroll is already polling very unflattering personal ratings with a Newspoll net satisfaction of -28; not as bad as Jacinta Allan's final -46, but still no precedent for survival.  

This is what my estimates of the implied Labor vs Coalition 2PP in particular polls have looked like for the government in the last few months.  This may tighten again in the final weeks as the Coalition comes under more serious scrutiny as the government-in-waiting but a recovery from here for Labor to form any kind of government would be remarkable.  Nonetheless if Labor do pick up a few points and the polls have them too low for some reason, it can't be totally ruled out.  

 

At the head of this post I have some aggregated estimates of polling, using basically the same methods as my federal aggregate except for the following variations.  Firstly I have set the decay period (in which a poll loses about 40% of its weighting) to 10 days instead of 7 because of the relative scarcity of polling (Labor's numbers would be even worse if I had not done this); I will reduce it to 5 for the final week.  Secondly while SMS polls are banned from my federal aggregate, here I am using them but downweighted by 50% and with a maximum of one per pollster.  Thirdly I am using an arbitrary 55% Others to Labor flow. 

Current Exclusion

I am currently not aggregating the Lighthouse Political Monitor tracking poll reported by the Herald-Sun and conducted by News Corp's Growth Intelligence Centre.  The reason for this is that the Herald-Sun has persistently displayed very poor poll reporting transparency and a lack of standards about what it calls a poll, and there is not yet sufficient public information to establish firmly that this is a scientific poll.  In all probability it is, but I can't be sure.  I will however test it in my post-election poll ratings, but for me to include it in an aggregate I need to at least know what polling method it employs (online, phone, etc) and to have some indication of the question framing.  I am also concerned that the Herald-Sun continues to allow its poll reporting to be done by James Campbell.  While he is not alone in being terrible at it (and often in precisely this manner, ie not enough basic methods details) he has what should in any sane business be a dealbreaking conflict of interest as the husband of a Liberal candidate for the election.   

There is a lot of uncertainty about what will happen with preferences from both One Nation and others at this election.  Respondent preference samples have at times found One Nation flowing to the Coalition as strongly as the high 80s (but a cautionary note that some low-grade polls had the same thing at the federal election and it turned out not to be the case).  On the other hand, the right wing of the Others vote could be so hollowed out by competition from One Nation, and the Others vote so dragged left by things like Victorian Socialists running everywhere, that the flow from Others to Labor might climb to something like 70%, or even more.

There was an interesting possible pointer to the latter in the most recent Newspoll, where a seemingly remarkable 77% of Others voters chose "Labor majority" or "Labor-Green" over "Liberals-Nationals-One Nation" or "Liberal-National majority" when asked who they preferred to govern.  Perhaps however the framing was a little harsh on the right as the option including One Nation could be read as strictly a formal coalition option that excluded an L-NP minority government supported by One Nation.  That at least might partly explain why a third of those with a Coalition majority as their first choice next preferred one of the Labor options over the Coalition-One Nation option.

For what it's worth though, only the Redbridge/Accent respondent preference polls are lately showing large differences to my last-election-ish estimates off the primary votes.  The last two Redbridges came out with 56-44 two-party leads to the Coalition off numbers that my estimates put around 53.4.  Other respondent polls have been landing within 1% of what I have.

Overall Picture

My model off 54.4% 2PP for the Coalition (Labor 22.2 Coalition 31.2 One Nation 21.6 Greens 15.0) puts them on about 53.7 2PP seat wins.   This model was rerun after today's DemosAU reading with Labor on an 18% primary and I expect Resolve shortly which may be more moderate.  The Coalition winning that many seats on 2PP doesn't mean they would necessarily win all those seats.  In some outer suburban and regional fringe seats, it's quite possible the Coalition would win the 2PP in seats that were actually won by One Nation.  But all else equal for the Coalition to not win a majority, One Nation would have to achieve this in a lot of those seats.  Considering, for instance, the seats that are at least considered to lean One Nation in William Bowe's model, my expected Coalition 2PP-winning 2PP total is currently 10.3 seats.  So One Nation would have to win nearly all of these, or win some seats in which it is an underdog, to stop the Coalition getting a majority.  

There is also an emerging possibility that even with a vote over 20 One Nation may not win more than a few seats.  Labor going down and the Coalition going up on primaries is bad news for One Nation.  To win seats they firstly need to be in the top two after preferences, but they also need either the Coalition to be third or to have a lead over the Coalition that will hold off Labor preferences.  And with the Coalition polling well and Labor poorly, and One Nation slipping down a bit, it's possible that those stars just won't align in any serious number of seats.  For sure if One Nation are getting over 20 statewide they will be breaking into the high 30s in some seats.  But if those seats are deep rurals where Labor is third or fourth and the Nationals are also around the same vote, One Nation doesn't generally win those seats.  Based on SA, however, it shouldn't be ruled out in vacant rural seats.

This I think is what Kos Samaras is getting at when he has One Nation getting just a single seat (Morwell) to the Coalition's 52 off quite similar primaries to my aggregate.  That could well be understating it because (i) Redbridge/Accent has very weak respondent flows to One Nation off the Coalition and will tend not to flag them as winners in any seats where the 3CP is Labor leads One Nation leads Coalition (ii) I would expect natural variability in the results from any projections such that One Nation randomly gets luckier than expected in a few seats.  Nonetheless there is an argument there.  

There is a common belief that Victorian Coalition voters are unusually moderate and hence very averse to preferencing One Nation.  Senate preference flows provide no evidence this is the case.  In 2025, of those Victorian Senate voters (above and below the line) indicating a preference between Labor and One Nation, 73.8% preferred One Nation.  This is lower than NSW (78.2%) and Queensland (77.1%) but the same as Western Australia, and higher than South Australia (71.2%), Northern Territory (70.3%) and Tasmania (63.4%).  We've already seen that Coalition voters in South Australia did quite readily give preferences to One Nation in the state election.  In cases where the Coalition finished third, 66.6% of Liberal exclusion preferences flowed to One Nation over Labor there, and this is a flow that includes votes the Liberals picked up from other sources, so the flow from 1 Liberal votes would have been stronger.  

It's true that Alex Antic and co have destroyed the Liberal brand in South Australia driving away many moderate voters, but that was also true at the federal election.  It's also the case that Labor in the SA state election were a far less offensive proposition for traditional Coalition voters than they are in Victoria.  So I don't think there's the slightest thing in this argument ... unless the Coalition decide not to recommend preferences to One Nation.  Predictably the federal seats where the flow of Coalition preferences to One Nation over Labor was weaker in the federal election were generally seats where Labor polled strongly and/or One Nation weakly.  Calwell was one exception but there a lot of Labor's support was taken by a very strong vote for Australia's Voice most of which returned to Labor as preferences.  In the Goldsteins and Kooyongs the flow was normal, but in seats of that kind One Nation will be eliminated anyway.  

I have not had the time yet to attempt a detailed Lower House seat model of One Nation prospects in Victoria; it is more difficult for me than it was in SA because One Nation polled so negligibly in the Victorian upper house in 2022.  Between various predictive enterprises out there (some are nowcasts, some are forecasts) it's interesting to look at the variations in where One Nation is considered favourite.  

(At the time of writing Australian Election Forecasts doesn't have One Nation as a forecast favourite in any seat but still has a median total of seven.)

The table above compares the Pollbludger model, Australian Election Forecasts nowcast, Kos Samaras' recent AFR assessment of the current polls, Swing Is On, Earth Elects and current betting.  For the Pollbludger column S equals Solid and L equals Lean.  For everyone else O indicates an odds-on favourite (after adjusting for bookie rake for the betting) and F is any kind of other favourite or favourite of unspecified probability.  In all, 24 seats have come up in at least one of these sources, but only the usual suspects of Bass, Melton, Morwell and Ripon in half or more of them.

The Greens are now pretty consistently polling 14 and above and are also lately on a very obvious surge in Victorian federal samples where they are averaging about 16.  Depending on just how bad the Labor primary is and the distribution of the swing there is a prospect Labor that could be knocked out of the count in a bunch of inner city seats handing the Greens several wins in their second tier targets.  However for those seats that do remain Labor vs Green we are still waiting to see what the Liberals do with their how to vote recommendations.  

The above is an overview that I will add updates to for polls that come out through this week, and I intend to move on to an article about the Legislative Council this week.  With the Coalition and One Nation clearing 50% combined in every lower house poll recently there is a high chance of a combined Coalition/One Nation upper house majority, but the Coalition could now do well enough that it could have legislation passed with the support of either Labor or the Greens instead.  However the Coalition tends to historically underperform in the upper house so I will have a detailed look at this when I have the full list of nominating tickets.

Update Resolve:  Previous Resolve polls were fairly benign for Labor but this week's was actually very close to my aggregate, which has been edited in the header.  I estimated the 2PP for this week's Resolve at 54.8 to Coalition.  With Labor scrapping for second on primaries with One Nation (and in DemosAU for third with the Greens) there has been renewed speculation about Labor doing so badly that it is not even the Opposition.  I should point out again that this is not something we can read off the primary votes alone, since so long as Labor is ahead of the Greens they will be boosted above One Nation and are therefore well ahead of One Nation on a 3CP basis.  But there are scenarios on some readings of the DemosAU poll in isolation where Labor does so incredibly badly that they actually win fewer seats than the Greens as much of the inner city turns into Liberal/Green contests - this at this stage remains a very extreme scenario.  

Tas Labor's Spending Caps Bill Kneecaps Independents

Tasmanian Labor wants to stop people from buying elections, but they're happy for independents to be senselessly outspent.  This is my conclusion from their Electoral Disclosure and Funding Amendment (Spending Limits) Bill 2026 (49 of 2026).  I'm not sure if they're trying to wedge the Liberals, wedge the independents, or if they actually really think what they've come up with here is fair for Tasmania; it's not.  

An issue of Hare-Clark spending caps having the potential to advantage parties over independents in a way that could inspire independents to create front parties to rort the funding caps is not new.  I raised it (and more in person) at the Tasmanian JSCEM inquiry into the Greens' Electoral Disclosure and Funding Amendment Bill 2024 (No. 9) just a couple of years ago. In that case I pointed out that a proposed spending cap of $83,000 for independents and $830,000 for parties created a perverse incentive for big-spending independents to register front parties in order to avoid the lower spending cap.  

I noted also that lifting a dollars-per-candidate model from the ACT was not a good idea for Tasmania, especially because parties in Tasmania tend to run filler candidates to get their list to seven for formality reasons, while minor parties in the ACT don't need to do that.   There is also another important difference between the ACT and Tasmania - ACT parties run five candidates per electorate, not seven.  

So what does Tasmanian Labor do?  They come along with a Bill that has a spending cap of $60,000 for independents (in 2026 terms) and $1,750,000 for parties, of which a party can spend up to $525,000 on campaigning directed at a particular electorate.  

Overall, Labor's Bill does seem closely modelled on the ACT's spending caps.  It is slightly more generous to independents in some ways in terms of allowing them 1.2 times the spending cap per party candidate, and also because it has a limit on party spending per electorate.  However the ACT is an inappropriate model for Tasmania because its system discriminates hugely against pure independents.  A pure independent in the ACT cannot get their own ballot column no matter how popular they are and is lumped in the ungrouped column on the right of the ballot with other such independents.  With that and the spending cap laws, intending serious ACT indies now register front parties like Fiona Carrick Independents or form parties of quasi-independents with policies and preselections such as the former "Independents for Canberra". 

What is the problem being solved by Labor's Bill?  It seems there are two different rationales.  The first is the hobgoblin of someone being able to "buy an election".  The idea that particular elections in Tasmania have been "bought" is an election denial trope and conspiracy theory, "bought" being just a soft version of "stolen", that pops up here every few cycles.  It especially appears in connection with elections like 2006 and 2018 where the oppositions' losses were self-inflicted on policy and tactical grounds but there were also expensive non-party campaigns in favour of the government.  I don't think any Tasmanian elections ever have really been won by a party just because more money was spent on its behalf.  But at the moment there's a big concern that somebody will try it: One Nation.

Voters aren't actually sucked in by big-spending campaigns (by major or minor parties) that are bad.  Money helps when the campaign is saying something voters are actually receptive to, but maybe not as much as people think. The strongest argument for not letting a Clive Palmer spend megabucks on a Tasmanian election isn't that it actually works, it is that such overt spending is annoying in a way that makes people feel democracy is being laughed at. But let's say that Gina Rinehart throwing $20 million at a One Nation Tasmanian campaign would be a big problem - fine.  Identify an amount of money that anyone but the most dogmatic libertarian would agree is way too much to spend on a Tasmanian election and ban anyone from spending more than that amount.  That problem's solved.

That concern in no way justifies limiting an independent to $60,000. There would be some amount that politics-watchers generally would agree is a silly amount for an independent to spend, and that amount would be several times lower than it would be for a party statewide.  But that amount would also be a lot higher than $60,000.  Indeed, a cap of $60,000 for an independent puts them on a similar level to the Legislative Council's very restrictive spending caps given that the lower house divisions are three times more populous.  And this is in an environment where there is expensive statewide party advertising everywhere.  

So the second idea here seems to be a general push for "getting money out of politics" by winding back what everyone is spending.  But that presumes that major parties and independents are overspending to a similar extent.  That might seem true and then some if one considers the major parties' spending on a per-candidate basis, but that's the wrong way to look at it, because there are so many uncompetitive, and in some cases blatant ticket-filler, party candidates.  Even if all a party's candidates were serious there are major economies of scale in promoting several candidates together compared to advertising a lone independent.  

The major parties and Greens always run full slates of candidates (at least) in each electorate because Tasmania's pointlessly strict formality rules mean that to run fewer invites your voters to not vote formally, and makes explaining what to do harder for the low-electoral-literacy end.  But on current vote shares a major party is no longer seriously competitive for more than four seats in one electorate, and even four is now uncommon.  Labor in particular had well-known problems filling out its slates of candidates for 2025.  

Why should a major party that on the best of days these days might yet scrape up 18 seats (in Labor's case, in the last two elections they won 10) have a spending cap that is just under thirty times that for a  sole independent?  Why should a party be able to outspend the indie by a factor of 8.75 in a particular electorate (at some detriment to its spending cap for others) if it is only seriously in the mix for two or three seats there - or in a minor party's case, maybe just one?

Here my concern is not only with giving the indies a fair go to whatever extent spending actually matters, but also with avoiding perverse incentives for ballot paper clutter.  There are already way too many unnecessary candidates running in Tasmanian state elections.  The Braddon ballot in 2025 was especially excessive and confusing for voters and the TEC was extremely lucky to avoid having to print double-decker ballot papers in any division. Under the Bill as it stands any indie who wants to can simply circumvent Labor's spending caps by registering a front party and running a bunch of non-serious candidates alongside themselves just to boost how much money they can spend on getting themselves elected.  But some indies will prefer just to run by themselves, and I don't see why they should be disadvantaged.

In the 2025 election Peter George ran a non-party ticket with six likeminded independents, who were so low profile in the campaign that a hypothetical "recount" (casual vacancy countback) for George's seat would most likely see it go to the Greens.  Under this Bill if this group were to be registered as a party they would then have access to the same spending cap per candidate as other parties, and could in realistic terms spend whatever they liked.  

Labor's response to such concerns - well so far, failed ad hominems not only aimed at me but also Jack Milroy instead of tackling the substance!  Very strange indeed!  

With the numbers in the parliament the way they are, this may well actually get somewhere, even if the government opposes it.  Parties and candidates who in principle support caps are likely to have a majority in the lower house.  Caps of any kind could well be welcomed by the upper house where members have long been displeased by being subject to strict caps themselves while the lower house is not.  The Greens - who are potentially greatly advantaged in fighting with lone indies by this Bill (but will probably never have enough money to fully realise that) - have called it "great electoral reform".  So we may yet see deals done in which this gets passed with amendments, even if the Liberals oppose it.  Perhaps if the multiplier for lone independents was simply much higher - say, 2.5 instead of 1.2, then that would be enough to solve the problems.

At the very least I suggest this at some point be referred to Tasmanian JSCEM for an inquiry as was also done with the Greens' Bill.  But an alternative would be to refer the general question of finding fair spending caps with a term of reference that any solution must respect distinctive aspects of Tasmanian electoral culture.  

For information, the Bill also includes a spending cap of $75,000 statewide for third party campaigners and associated entities.  I may discuss that further later.  

Candidates Matter: The Blues Strike Back On Hobart Council 2026

This is a review piece of some themes from the just concluded 2026 Hobart Council elections.  The election count just finished featured some very close multi-way battles for councillor positions with winners ducking in and out through the different distributions.  Then we had the crowning oddity of the non-election of Ben Lohberger to council after he won the Deputy Mayoral ballot, which means that he now cannot serve as Deputy and the position will be filled around the table.  This event has previously happened in three smaller councils, but never in a city.  I now expect a lot of debate about solutions, most of which won't have been thought through. The result will for sure be used by those who think we should just ditch direct Deputy elections, a proposal I can make strong arguments both for and against.  The problem has become more likely this year because of the reduction in the numbers of councillors and it could very well keep happening.  

The Poll Position pod had some comments about this election along the lines of "campaigns matter", coming from a winning perspective after Brad Stansfield worked on the winning Charles Wooley campaign.  And campaigns do matter, in that Wooley won the mayoralty by in effect 2.3% over a main opponent (John Kelly) who announced pretty late and then ran what looked to me like a pretty similar and lower profile campaign compared to 2022.  I think that under other circumstances this result might have gone the other way.  For sure Wooley had big advantages as a high profile outsider who was more able to sell himself ambiguously.  I'm also far from believing all he did on the campaign trail was brilliant (especially his line about being home from council for the six o'clock news was a gaffe for the few of us who know that council meeting work is hard) but his campaign did things to keep voters interested, had good signs and made lively use of social media to cover a wide range of issues.  By doing this he was able to get away with skipping a lot of the candidate questionnaires and forums as he had got the message across that he was genuinely trying and wasn't just hoping to lazily cruise in on his profile.  

2026 Hobart City Council Count

Any numbers that may be noted here based on scrutineering are reports of unofficial sampling - which is not necessarily representative - and are not results.  For official results see the TEC website.

MAYOR (Vacant):  

CALLED 4 pm Thursday Charles Wooley wins from off council.

DEPUTY (Incumbent: Sherlock): 

CALLED 12:20 Saturday Ben Lohberger wins Deputy Mayor subject to retaining his councillor seat, which appears likely [UPDATE: Lohberger loses councillor seat, position is VACANT and will be elected by council round the table]

COUNCILLORS (9 recontesting incumbents, 9 vacancies):   

Called off Tuesday scrutineering: Wooley, Kelly, Harvey

Called off 20% count: Posselt

Expected: Lennon [Has been elected]

Likely: Dutta [Has been elected]

Contest 1: appears to be Lohberger substantially leading Sherlock for one left seat [UPDATE Sherlock wins]

Contest 2: appears to be Elliot, Behrakis and Zucco for two right seats, incredibly close [UPDATE: Behrakis and Elliot win]

Three incumbents defeated, for now (Bloomfield, Lohberger, Zucco)

2026 Tasmanian Council Counts: General And Councils Other Than Hobart

Numbers noted here based in scrutineering are reports of unofficial sampling and are not results.  For official results see the TEC website.

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Introduction

This is my general page for commentary on the 2026 Tasmanian council counts.  Specific comments on individual councils will be added where time permits below (my main focus being on the Hobart count) and there will also be some comments on general themes.  Don't expect to see much on this page on Tuesday; comments will be added on Wednesday especially on Wednesday night.  I aim to cover all mayoral races at least to the extent of one line.  

On Tuesday ballot papers will be removed from envelopes and there may be some computer data entry for some large councils but don't expect any official figures.  I may have some indications from scrutineers depending on the pace of counting but the main counting activity for Mayors followed by Deputies together with the start of data entry is on Wednesday and first figures are expected by Wednesday night. The TEC expects to have at least provisional 20% distributions for all councils and 50% distributions for smaller councils at some stage on Wednesday evening.  These provisional results are what would happen if only the votes entered to that point were used to decide the election.  Usually most of the candidates who are provisionally elected at the 20% stage end up winning, but often some of those elected to the last few positions change.  It is common to see media misreporting that candidates "elected" in these 20% and 50% interim counts have "won" but it is only when the final, 100%, count is done that the winners are official.   Mayor counts will occur at least to the first primaries stage before the Deputy counts.  

Requiring Local Government Candidates To Declare Party Membership

As you're voting in the Tasmanian council elections there's a fair chance that some of the non-Greens candidates on your ballot are also members of a party.  You might have a good idea who some of them are, because they've run in or tried to run in state or federal elections recently, or because they're very open and loud about their party membership (this is the case with a few One Nation members at the moment).  Beyond that it can be hard to find out.  I've listed several of them for Hobart to the best of my knowledge but there are a few I'm not sure about, and there is only one of me and I don't have time to do this work for every council.  

For some councils there will be local coverage of community forums or candidate surveys where candidates may have been asked to disclose if they are a member of any party, and most candidates will actually be upfront about their memberships when asked.  However for the average voter who doesn't know where to look, this information can be difficult to find.  Tasmanian Times has asked candidates what parties they are a member of but several have not filled out the survey, have declined to answer the party membership question, or in a few cases have claimed to be independents when I strongly suspect they are actually party members.  In total, eleven Liberal, eight Labor, two One Nation and one Nationals members have so far publicised their unendorsed party status on the TT survey but of these 22 candidates, nine had recently run as endorsed candidates at other levels, or sought endorsement.  

Attrition Rates In Tasmanian Councils: The 2022-6 Term And The 2026 Elections

At the end of the last Council term I wrote an article called Have Tasmanian Local Council Attrition Rates Increased?  The point of this article was to assess whether Tasmanian councillors had become more likely to quit.  I found that both Mayors and Councillors (especially Councillors elected at the previous election) had been more likely to stand down in 2022 than 2018.

In 2026 there's an obvious reason why Councillors might be more likely to quit: there aren't as many seats.  The number of councillors is being reduced from 263 to 213 so the chance of winning is lower.  On the other hand, the seats pay better.  There has been a decline in the number of candidates (very welcome in the case of the large councils) but there are also more candidates running for mayor or deputy, probably because winning councillor seats is harder so they are more inclined to try to get some extra publicity.

Here are the attrition figures for this term and the upcoming election.  I should note one other change is that in 2022 councils were elected by compulsory voting for the first time.  

Mayors

Of the 29 Mayors elected at the 2022 elections, two were elected to Parliament during the term and three resigned.  Seven are retiring from their councils at the election.  In all 17 original Mayors and four replacements are recontesting their positions, for a total of 21/29 (72.4%) of Mayors recontesting, up from 19/29 last time. All of George Town, Hobart, Huon Valley, Latrobe, Meander Valley, Kingborough, Waratah-Wynyard and West Tamar have a vacancy in the top job.  

Sorell Council Voting Patterns 2022-6

 A few times on this page I have teased readers with the prospect that I could do a voting patterns analysis for a mystery third council this year as well as Hobart and Clarence.  And here it is, the lucky winner is Sorell!  Now, why would I bother analysing Sorell when Launceston, Glenorchy or Kingborough would surely be more obvious candidates, and even West Tamar could be amusing?  The reason I'm doing this is its relevance to the Hobart contest.  For the Hobart incumbent councillors (or recent former incumbents) there's very strong evidence of factionalisation based on their voting record, except for arguably one - but for outsiders they can say whatever they like about how they would vote on council and it is often hard to test.  

This is particularly relevant in the case of Charles Wooley, who a lot of people think is one of the frontrunners to be the next Hobart Lord Mayor.  Wooley has made plenty of comments dismissing right and left wing labels and suggesting he is motivated by "reason".  At the same time his endorsements are coming overwhelmingly from the blue/right side and his signs often appear on the same fences as that side's candidates.  He also self-describes as a "libertarian", a position in Australia largely associated with the right (left-libertarians in Australia tend not to call themselves that), though I am not sure he means it in a Libertarian Party style sense.  Wooley was, however, recently on Sorell Council for a few years and I hoped that his form there would provide a useful guide as to how he might vote if elected to Hobart Council.  In this I was to be largely disappointed, but it didn't take me long, and so here it is, with a warning that this might be the most underwhelming voting patterns analysis ever!  I'm releasing it anyway.