Tall Cories: Bernardi's Bunkum About Preferences

I was going to leave a comment about this until the next SA roundup but I feel that Cory Bernardi's nonsense about compulsory preferential voting should be dealt with a little faster than that.  Normally writing a whole article about what may well have just been a two-word misspeak might be considered mountain/molehill territory.  However Bernardi's statement has been reported uncritically by at least one media source, circulated by the party, and strangest by far, given a free pass on social media by some people who have brains.  

One Nation have also claimed off the back of Bernardi's comments that "we will make preference deals a thing of the past by giving voters the choice to distribute their preferences or not. "  But in fact optional preferencing doesn't do that.  It reduces the rate of deals as some parties choose not to recommend preferences, but many parties do still recommend preferences (which is what people often mean when they say "preference deals") and may negotiate about these decisions (actual deals).  There were several accusations about "preference deals" in the 2023 NSW state election.  

Bernardi in an interview from Sky (where else) said this re One Nation when asked about what preferencing decisions One Nation might engage with for the upcoming SA election:

One of our actual key policies this year is to make compulsory preferential voting actually optional, so that people don’t have to, or are not forced to, vote for a party that is against their values, or is against their lifestyle or how they want to live their lives.

Now, firstly here, the hide of him!  This is Cory Bernardi spouting the virtues of people not having to have the slightest imposition that might be claimed to cut across their values, their lifestyle or how they want to live their lives. Cory Bernardi is best known for trying to stop same-sex couples from being allowed to get married.  

And secondly, the hide of him, again! This is Cory Bernardi who, seven months after being re-elected as a Liberal, ratted shamelessly and set up something called Australian Conservatives.  Did he ask those who voted 1 Liberal as to whether they minded having part of their vote in effect elect a party that was for sure against many of their values? (Not that they deserve that much sympathy).  

So we will not be lectured about respecting voter values by this man.  And indeed if I was voting in SA I would number every box on the Legislative Council ballot to put him absolutely last, because I don't forget.  Not that it would make any difference, but I must ask those who think his statement was OK, would I really then be "voting for" the person I put second-last?  

It's going to be eight years like fingernails dragging down a blackboard for SA voters of good taste to have Bernardi back in politics (if he lasts that long) and you all have my profoundest sympathies.  

The Misuse Of "Vote For"

But I do want to address Bernardi's rationale, because it is typical of the misleading emotional tactics employed by many OPV supporters, CPV objectors and so on.   That's not to say there are no valid objections to CPV (primarily, way too high uninteded informal voting rates), just that this is totally not one of them. And OPV is a superficially appealling but very overrated solution.  There are no shortage of better alternatives.

I called out much the same claim for the same reasons when it was made by David Crisafulli in the leadup to the Queensland election.  The core problem here is that Bernardi is using the term "vote for" to taint CPV with the idea that it is forcing someone to express positive approval of a candidate they do not like, which would if true be a morally bad thing to do.

But that simply isn't what "voting for" means.  You vote for the candidate you put 1.  You preference the candidates you put in high positions, particularly the candidate you put 2.  In a two-party context, you preference whichever major you put above the other.  You certainly don't "vote for" the candidate you put last, as despite putting a number in their box you've actually done everything in your power to vote against them and your vote can never reach them.  And it doesn't make the remotest sense to say you've "voted for" the candidate you put second last either, since the only thing you haven't done to vote against them is to put one even worse candidate below them.  For instance if there are 10 candidates in a seat, there are 45 possible final-two pairings, and your vote will only reach this candidate in one of those.  Nobody much when asked "who did you vote for in the election?" reels off their entire list of preferences.  They reply "I voted for X" or maybe "I voted for X and preferenced Y".

What one is really doing with candidates near the bottom of the ballot is not "voting for" them, it is ranking them.  And on that basis, the moral outrage Bernardi, Crisafulli et al are playing for with this loaded "vote for" nonsense just collapses, because what can be so bad about giving a bad candidate a bad ranking?  

In fact, your vote only gets down to the bad candidates if the good and mediocre candidates have all been excluded, and at this point a bad candidate is certain to win anyway, so you'd not actually assist any cause you care about by leaving a few nasties unranked.  Indeed, if some of the nasties are nastier than others, if you do so you could be helping the nastiest nasty to win.  

It is true that when you rank one bad candidate above another, that can cause your preference to reach that candidate.  It contributes to their final vote tally after preferences - but that doesn't make it a vote for them.  Rather it's a vote that reaches them, although you tried your best to send it to others.  But the typical audience for Bernardi's claim is a voter who hates both Labor and the Greens, and there won't be many seats (if any) in SA where a vote putting those two parties in the last two spots hits either of them.  

Such claims are also often applied to voters who hate both the major parties and put them in the last two spots, but I think such voters are actually quite rare.  Fringe right voters rarely find the Coalition worse than very disappointing and minor left voters ditto re Labor.   And plenty of either rank the major party on their side in the first few places.  

Those coming at the issue from a left perspective lately often raise the example of voters who can't stand the Coalition but are disgusted by Labor's stance or lack thereof on Gaza as a case of voters who should be able to withhold their preferences from either major, as a form of conscientious semi-objection to the voting process.  But it seems from Senate voting that where they had the chance to do so in 2025, these voters largely didn't do it anyway.  The main party supported by such voters was the Greens, but the 2PP rate of Senate exhaustion from Greens voters in fact went down substantially in every state (and was below 10% everywhere but Queensland) though these voters could have easily avoided ranking either major if there was an upsurge in desire to do so.  (The drop was probably largely caused by a reduction in the number of columns.)  

It is not new that One Nation have this position; I have seen them express support for OPV on their website going back several years.  However, whinging about preferences of any kind from the non-Coalition right has got particularly feral in the wake of the 2025 federal election, which is bizarre given that One Nation won two Senate seats on semi-optional preferences from behind.  It is so common to see One Nation supporters support first past the post that if the party ever did win government I wonder if that base would let it get away with stopping at OPV.  (Not that they would know the difference anyway. I have corrected numerous posts that hail Crisafulli for "scrapping preferential voting" when he is actually just saying that his government will make it optional.)  This continues even while we're looking at polling numbers like the latest SA DemosAU (Labor 44 One Nation 19 Liberal 18) in which the further one moves away from full preferences the worse the right could be obliterated.

Can false claims on this matter be illegal?

Bernardi's comment has in effect made the electoral system an election issue, however small the scale on which it does so.  This claim was something he said in a media interview, not party advertising.  But if One Nation attempts to repeat this claim in campaign advertising, they could be in breach of the law.

The reason for this is that South Australia has fully fledged truth in electoral advertising legislation.  Under S 113(2) of the South Australian Electoral Act, during the campaign period:

" A person who authorises, causes or permits the publication of an electoral advertisement (an "advertiser") is guilty of an offence if the advertisement contains a statement purporting to be a statement of fact that is inaccurate and misleading to a material extent."

Bernardi's statement is certainly inaccurate - indeed as read literally it's flat out false.  And it is materially misleading too because even if one accepts that when he says "vote for" he cannot really mean "vote for", it still implies that the current system forces voters to take a generally positive action in respect of a party they deeply oppose.  In fact the system does no such thing.  

Although Bernardi's claim misleads about the voting system, I doubt it would be found to fall within the narrower laws elsewhere re "misleading a voter in relation to the casting of their vote".  It is a false statement about the voting system, but not one that goes obviously to the mechanics of the voting process.  And this is not saying such advertising would be prosecuted in SA either, the normal initial response of electoral commissions to material that even looks like it might be in breach being just a firm request not to do it again.  

Added: The Wimpiness Of One Nation!

The One Nation twitter account now has a long statement up backing up its support for OPV and I'd like to quote this one in full: 

"What many Australians do not find fair is being forced to number every box on a ballot paper, including having to choose between the final two candidates when they may strongly reject both.

Under compulsory preferential voting, you are required to help decide between parties you may equally oppose. For many One Nation voters, the Greens and Labor are two toxic and repulsive choices. In inner city contests it often comes down to exactly that choice. Greens or Labor.

Being compelled to direct your vote to one of them, even if it is your last preference, means your ballot ultimately lands in a pile that helps elect a party you fundamentally disagree with. That does not sit right with a lot of people.

An optional preferential voting system allows Australians to rank only the parties they genuinely support. If there are parties they consider equally toxic, they can simply leave them off. Their vote would not be used to prop up someone they reject.

That is fair. That respects voter intent. That is democracy. Democracy should not be about making a choice between who they dislike the most. For many people, being forced into that position actually turns them off democratic participation."

Now firstly, if the voter equally opposes two candidates, then it doesn't matter to them which one wins (if those two are even the final two anyway) and so there's no reason for them to care which one they put above the other.  The Royal Australian Mint produces calibrated high-tech devices that can help them with the making of such choices.  

Secondly only 3.3% of all One Nation voters in 2025 even voted in a seat that finished Labor vs Greens, and by the time I take out those who can be easily shown to have put one of these above the Liberals, that figure drops to at most 2.4% (and some of these votes were cast in Grayndler and Sydney where the winners won on primaries anyway).  But these voters had already strongly rejected these two parties by leaving them to the final two positions.   If they both deserve to go last then surely putting one of them there is better than putting none.

But thirdly what I find most notable about all this is its wimpiness!  One Nation is notorious for inflammatory statements that have offended any number of ethnic and other groups in our community yet here we are told that One Nation voters (men among whom often masquerade as rough-hewn alpha males on social media)  have feelings about putting numbers in order on a piece of paper and are too weak to handle it.  Nooo not choosing which of Labor and the Greens to put last!  Save us from this terror!

No, Wuss Nation.  Harden up and number all the boxes.  

EMRS: What Happens When You Take A Mess And Then Throw In One Nation?

EMRS Lib 29 (-5) ALP 23 (-2) Green 15 (-2) IND 15 (-4) ON 14 (new) others 4 (-1)

Seat estimate off this poll if election "held now" Lib 10-13 ALP 9-10 Grn 5 ON 4 IND 4-5 SFF 0-1

EMRS have released basic details of the first Tasmanian voting intention poll to include One Nation in the readout (I will add a link to the full report when it is up).  One Nation are in the process of registering for state elections but are not registered yet.  This follows a federal poll for the state they released on Friday.  

The addition of One Nation has immediately seen them record a substantial 14%, but this is well below the 24% they recorded in the Tasmanian federal poll, with the Liberal vote in particular holding up much better.  One Nation's gains have come from across the board, but especially from a government that was already down on its election result in the previous poll, meaning that when this poll is compared with the election, most of the 14 points is at the expense of the Government which is down 11.  Labor and the Greens are not so far off their state marker, Independents may in effect be down somewhat given that Tasmanian state polls offering a generic "independent" option tend to overestimate election support for independents by about 4 points.

As I write this article I have not seen any electorate breakdowns, which should be treated with considerable caution anyway because of the low subsample size.  My seat by seat view of what would happen in each seat off the statewide figures is as follows:

Bass: One Nation would get quota and win a seat at the expense of either the Liberals or perhaps more likely independent George Razay.  

Braddon: One Nation would get close to two quotas and win two seats, one at the expense of the Liberals and the other at the expense of either major party (I suspect they would eat into Craig Garland's vote but that he would also cushion their surge and that he would most likely be OK with the help of Greens preferences)

Clark:  Possibly the same 2-2-2-1 result as 2025.  While Helen Burnet leaving the Greens is very bad news for the party's ability to win two, on these figures it doesn't look like anyone in particular would be stopping them (unless it was Burnet herself).  The One Nation vote would be too low to win a seat.

Franklin: This could also be a status quo result as although One Nation could expect half a quota or a bit more this doesn't seem like a threat to any of the incumbents.

Lyons: One Nation would win a seat here too, at the expense of either the Liberals or Carlo Di Falco (SF+F).  

So overall the Liberals would be likely to remain the largest party, though a 10-10 seat tie is faintly possible.  The broad left could potentially get away with no or only one seat loss but would face the same hurdle to forming government as before: Labor would have to talk to the Gr**ns.  (One might flippantly imagine this dynamic dragging on to 2037 and the Liberals still governing with, say, eight seats because nobody else will cut them down.)

Would this actually happen at an election?  The past history is that One Nation surges frequently collapse and also that the party tends to underperform even compared to its final polling.  It's an endlessly long way to the next election if this parliament goes nearly full term and nobody knows where the current realignment in Australian polling will end up by then - will One Nation have faded? disintegrated? merged with the Coalition?  surged further?  Who can say.  What I will say is that for now One Nation would be likely to win four seats even if it only got, say, 11%, and even if its candidates were obscure.  We have seen with Jacqui Lambie Network how voters attracted to a brand simply linear-voted for its ticket and some obscure and surprising MPs were elected.  

I think state Labor could be mildly relieved by this poll because there was potential for more of the appearance of One Nation to be at their expense pushing them into the teens but that has not occurred. The soft landing for Labor in this one is especially as Josh Willie has polled a reasonable net -4 net likeability score, not -10 or worse, and similar now to Jeremy Rockliff on +1. The gap on preferred Premier (results not released in November because of a readout error) has also narrowed to 40-26, mainly because Willie is now more established in the role.

 The Liberals have more room for concern, but also their vote is holding up better than in states where the party is in opposition.   And they were also on 29% (and trailing Labor, which they are not now) in the last public poll before the July 2025 election, yet polled 40% at that election.  

Federal poll

The EMRS federal poll was released on last week's Poll Position episode which also includes a lengthy interview with Lee Hanson, who is the effective Tasmanian leader of the party and appears a very likely future Senator.  Hanson jnr is a significant figure because she is able to present One Nation in a more temperamentally modest way than Pauline Hanson or Malcolm Roberts, and able to appeal to a younger audience.  

Again not too much should be read into the federal seat breakdowns but with the exception of Clark if Andrew Wilkie runs again I think they are reasonably indicative and post them below:

The ALP/Liberal and ALP/One Nation figures are respondent-allocated.  There is a particular issue with respondent preferences for Labor vs One Nation shadow-2PP estimates which is that they do not take into account the substantial portion of Liberal voters who follow how to vote cards.  In Tasmania this is less of a thing than elsewhere with the Reps follow rate for Liberal HTVs likely to be less than a quarter compared to around 40% elsewhere.  Nonetheless if the Liberals recommend preferences to One Nation they can do better than respondent preferences suggest (and if the Liberals recommend against them they may do a fair bit worse).  My estimates for Braddon on the above primaries would be 51-49 to One Nation vs Labor, Bass 54-46 to Labor vs One Nation, Lyons 52-48 to Labor vs One Nation - all very close.  In all cases (well, assuming Anne Urquhart recontests) Labor has incumbents while the One Nation contenders would be low-profile and that plus the tendancy of ON to underperform means that probably Labor would hold all these seats.  But all these are on paper marginal Labor seats vs One Nation in the current federal polling environment, and this is not surprising as several projections around the psephosphere have had Braddon especially as a potential seat for One Nation.

In Clark there is a long history of Andrew Wilkie's vote being massively underestimated in polls that do not name him.  As a career average I think he would have polled about 1.7 times the generic independent vote.  This Clark sample (and the 16% for One Nation seems too high) looks more like a window of the massive Labor/Green/left-indie bunfight that can break out for this seat whenever the incumbent does retire.

There is a great deal more detail in the episode for those interested and see the full poll report here which has a lot of detail including a One Nation only special on respondents stated rationales for supporting said party.

I may add more comments later especially if more details of the state poll come out, but for now, welcome to Tasmanian politics.  A total mess one day, then even messier the next.  

South Australia 2026: What Can The Right Still Win?

Polling for SA election is very lopsided with right very fragmented

Estimate if Newspoll is correct: approx 1 Liberal and 3 One Nation seats

Off YouGov: approx 4 Liberal and 1-2 One Nation seats

Polling may moderate by election day

------------------------------------------------------------

I've been hoping for enough material to start substantial coverage of the South Australian election and it's finally arrived with polls by Newspoll and YouGov.  Prior to that there had been a string of extremely lopsided polls last year, and a Fox&Hedgehog poll in a similar vein early last week.  The YouGov poll pretty much replicates Fox&Hedgehog's finding that the conservative side is split in two with the Liberals bleeding greatly to One Nation while Labor enjoys a massive lead.  The Newspoll is even worse for the Liberals and could (if it happened) even wipe them out completely.  My estimate is that on average for the Newspoll voting intentions the Liberals would win one seat and One Nation about three, and for the YouGov poll that the Liberals might manage three or four and One Nation just one or two; it's possible there will be about as many (or more) independents as right-party MPs.  However there is a lot still to unfold with where One Nation support goes during the campaign and whether the Liberals can improve.  

What is suggested by the polls so far really aint supposed to happen.  The Malinauskas government is only at the end of its first term, but it is federally dragged, and not even by a first term federal government at that.  John Bannon in 1985 was the last State Premier to get a seat share swing at all in that circumstance.  But these are incredible times in polling and Peter Malinauskas is very popular (with a +40 Newspoll netsat).  At the same time we have what looks like a severe disruption if not a realignment on the right nationally and the SA Libs are a disaster zone.   One has to roll one's eyes repeatedly at news that "Liberal strategists" are hoping for a sympathy vote they don't deserve and trying to argue that a viable opposition is needed.  That worked so well for the similarly hapless outfit that was reduced to two seats in WA 2021.  

This is what we have at present:

It is important to bear in mind here that One Nation often don't hold their polling to polling day.  In Queensland 2017 they were polling around 17% at the start of the campaign and finished up with 13.7%.  In Queensland 2020 they polled 9-12% during the campaign and only got 7.1%.  So it would not be surprising if they fell short of their current numbers - campaigns tend to expose their candidates to scrutiny (or simply reveal that voters haven't heard of them) and they often don't have the same level of campaign machinery of the majors.  Third party flops are also a more general thing.  Prior to last night's Victorian Morgan SMS poll, SA-Best were the last third party to lead a state poll (a Newspoll in late 2017).  In the 2018 campaign, SA-Best opened with 21% and ended up polling just 14.1% and winning zero seats.

But suppose the current polling played out in full, what could happen?  One Nation only ran in selected lower house seats in 2022 but they did run in the Legislative Council, in which their vote by seat varied from lows of 1.3% in Bragg and 1.4% in Unley to highs of 8.8% in Chaffey and 8.5% in Frome.  If they poll 24% statewide, that's not going to be spread across a narrow uniform swing band from the mid-20s to the low-30s.  In Queensland 1998 when they polled 22.7% of the vote, their vote in particular seats ranged from 8.0% to 43.5% (and that's without contesting eight of the inner city seats where they would have polled at or below the low end of that range).  

To try to model how One Nation's vote shares might compare with the Liberal Party's, I've used the Legislative Council election from 2022 as a rough base and redistributed the combined Liberal and One Nation votes so that One Nation gets a swing that is one-third uniform and two-thirds proportional from their 2022 result and the same comes off the Liberal vote (noting that the combined Liberal and One Nation vote in polling is pretty similar to 2022).  This is to get a rough idea of where the Liberals and One Nation might lie relative to each other only, in the current Liberal-2PP seats.

Based on the margins provided by Antony Green in his helpful 2PP pendulum here (that is code for me saying that mixed pendulums are an abomination) there are twenty seats where the Liberals notionally lead the 2PP based on the 2022 results.  However two of these have since been lost in by-elections, and with a 2PP swing to Labor of any size will be retained by Labor.  Indeed, as both were won by Labor by more than their election margin, I would treat them as notionally Labor seats based on my "disrupted seat" formula.  I have noted the remaining eighteen below with my estimate of which of the Liberals and One Nation would be ahead based on the YouGov poll (with a 2-point lead for One Nation over Liberal) and the Newspoll (with a 10-point lead).  Projected primary leads below 5% are shown with a ? and a couple were so tiny I have deemed them to be ties.  Notes of points of interest are added for each seat.  The IND column shows if there is an independent running (inc = incumbent independent, * = controversial)

DISCLAIMER: Please note that neither Newspoll nor YouGov have projected individual seats off their polls and also that the Lib/ON projection column references only a projected primary vote state of play between these parties, not who would actually win the seat (in several cases Labor or an independent would be more likely to win).  Furthermore this is an overall indicative model that is likely to be ignoring on the ground factors in various seats; it's an "all else being equal".  

Here I especially want people to note the wall of ON in the Newspoll column for the seats on double-digit 2PP margins.  If One Nation polls 24% statewide then my projection is that they would swamp the Liberal vote in all the Liberals' safest seats, leaving their safest seat as Bragg on 8.2% 2PP.  But the Newspoll is so extreme (I estimate it at a conventional 2PP of around 63-37 to Labor) that if the swing is uniform Bragg would be slightly underwater too (about a 50-50 chance to hold), and the seats lower down the line where the Liberals are holding off One Nation are all likely to fall.  The median outcome for the Liberals would be about one seat. The model expects that One Nation wins Chaffey and Schubert (it thinks they have enough to eliminate the Liberal leader Ashton Hurn - and no she doesn't get over Labor to get their preferences) and takes their chances against the indies in Mount Gambier, Narungga, Flinders and Mackillop (and in some of those their chances don't look good).  There is a possibility here that the Liberals and One Nation combined are only good for, say, four seats.

Things are somewhat better for the right parties if the numbers are more like YouGov's.  YouGov projects a 59-41 ALP vs Liberal 2PP.  All else equal on this the Liberals would win Bragg and (with Hurn's personal vote bonuses getting them over One Nation - or perhaps getting Labor preferences if not) probably Schubert.  Flinders in theory, but Flinders has at least one significant independent (Megan Petherick). Mackillop would be a probable win on Labor preferences assuming Nick McBride is not returned (is he beyond even SA limits for returning defecting indies in legal trouble?) and they would be about 50-50 in Morphett with some hope in Hartley and Colton.  So maybe four seats on average. One Nation would like their chances in Chaffey but might find independents in the way everywhere else and so might not win much.  I may adjust these outlooks after I have time to look at what regional breakdowns are available.

When trying to apply 2PP swings to those seats where the Liberals should be able to stay over One Nation, a problem is that any 2PP swing could be massively non-uniform.  If the swing is being driven by Liberal voters defecting to One Nation and not all returning as preferences then the swing against the Liberals could be weaker in the urban seats.  But my suspicion is that this is just a lazy reading and what's really happening is the Liberals are losing votes both to Labor and One Nation, with Labor's gains being somewhat offset by also losing some support to One Nation. (Whether Labor are up or down on 2022 depends on which poll you look at.)

This is an opening offer for how this sort of polling we are seeing can be interpreted.  I expect I'll be back through the campaign with a look at other aspects, perhaps at some stage including the Legislative Council.  

Farrer By-Election 2026

Farrer (Lib vs IND 6.2%, Lib vs ALP 12.9%)
By-Election date TBD, perhaps late April/early May
Cause of by-election resignation of Sussan Ley (Lib)

The rolling of Sussan Ley as leader of a floundering Liberal Party has led to a fascinating by-election for her seat of Farrer.  This guide will be updated from time to time with any polling news and with items of interest re candidates etc.  I aim to provide live coverage but I will be overseas for two weeks in late April and may or may not be able to do so if the by-election is on then,  

Farrer

Much of the electoral history of Farrer has been told in Antony Green's post here.  It has had just four MPs since 1949, three Liberals and a National.  Until very recently it had only ever been of the slightest interest when vacant.  Tim Fischer easily won the seat for the Nationals at the 1984 general election.  On his retirement in 2001 Sussan Ley gained it for the Liberals by 206 votes after preferences, the result being so close only because Labor ran and recommended preferences to the Nationals.

The seat has never been 2PP-competitive, only sneaking into technical 2PP-marginal territory by a handful of votes in 1972.  It saw its first serious independent attempt when Albury Mayor Kevin Mack ran against Ley in 2019.  This attempt was so hyped that betting agencies gave Mack a roughly even chance of winning but Ley won very easily, clearing 50% on primaries with a 60.9% 2CP.  

Until the 2025 election Ley had the longest active streak of wins on first preferences in the parliament (seven) but the challenge from Voices of Farrer and Climate200 endorsed Michelle Milthorpe severely dented Ley's primary vote and Ley finished up with only a 6.2% margin after preferences.  However, Farrer remained one of the most conservative seats in the country, ranking 11th on Coalition House of Reps 2PP down from 8th in 2022.  Some might think its 2PP being near the top of the list was down to Ley's personal vote but this is actually not true at all; on above the line Senate 2PP Farrer was in fact the Coalition's fourth best seat nationwide. 

Who's in the mix?

So far there are five possibly competitive forces in Farrer.  Comments re candidates will be added when known but this is not intended as a candidate guide.  I do not believe Labor will be competitive if they run and I cannot see much reason for them to risk embarrassment by doing so.  Independents will miss that portion of their Labor preferences that comes from how to vote cards, but it is also possible in such a crowded field that an ALP run could squeeze out independents and stop them winning.

* Liberals.  Will contest.  Justin Clancy (MP for Albury (Lib 16.3%)) has been reported as a possible Liberal candidate; he would have to resign his state seat to contest.

* Nationals.  Will contest.

* One Nation.  Will contest. Sooner than they might have liked, One Nation faces a potential get off the pot moment.  If their national polling is still as high as at present following the change in Liberal leadership then they would be expected to poll strongly in this by-election and failure to do so would damage their momentum and raise some questions about their standing in the polls.

* Milthorpe (IND).  Will contest. Michelle Milthorpe immediately announced she would run for Farrer again.  

* Dalton (IND) (Unconfirmed)  Helen Dalton is the state MP for the district of Murray, which is the western end of Farrer.  She won the seat in 2019 as an endorsed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers candidate but running a largely independent-style campaign.  She quit said party in 2022 over water issues, and was returned as an independent in 2023 with an outright majority in a field of ten candidates.  Dalton was already canvassing a possible run for Farrer in 2028.  She would have to resign her state seat to contest.  

Also-rans 

Interesting by-elections often attract large fields of uncompetitive micro-party and obscure independent candidates, some of whom are often paper candidates from nowhere near the electorate.  Farrer could easily have a total field well into double figures.

* The Greens will run according to a post by upper house state MP Amanda Cohn.  

* Family First (v 2) immediately announced they would re-run Rebecca Scriven who polled 2.15% in 2025.

* Gerard Rennick People First announced they were running, to the vivid interest of nobody; they came last with 2.02% in 2025.  

* The unregistered Riverina State Party (which supports a new state covering the Victorian/NSW border areas) has expressed interest in running but this may be contingent on its registration being approved in time, which appears extremely unlikely.  The party submitted a list of 1646 putative members to the AEC in late October 2025 but has not been advertised yet.  The advertising phase followed by AEC assessment takes more than a month and party registration freezes once the writ is issued for the by-election.  (I've heard they may have passed AEC checking prior to advertising.)

I am aware of at least one possible minor independent but in the case of stray Facebook posts I like to wait until things get more concrete before reporting them.  

Prospects

This section will be edited where needed to update it but for the moment this promises to be a messy four or five way battle where it is not obvious who the final two will be.  I am assuming Labor will not run; they can't win and might be embarrassed by finishing fourth or worse if they do.  It might in theory be a case where the exclusion order is not obvious after election night, or it might end up as something more prosaic with a clear enough final two or three.  The AEC will have a challenging task in picking which candidate pair to use for the notional two-candidate count on the night (they may go with Liberal vs Milthorpe just because those were the final two last time, unless there is information to suggest something different).  

Farrer is a relatively strong seat for One Nation, but not super strong.  Their Reps primary of just an average 6.6% is misleading because it would have been affected by Milthorpe and the relatively large field.  In the Senate, One Nation polled 9.96% in Farrer, compared to a NSW total of 6.06%.  

At the 2025 election, minor right preferences did not assist Ley vs Milthorpe, with One Nation, Family First and GRPF breaking only slightly to her and Trumpet of Patriots and Shooters Fishers and Farmers preferences breaking to Milthorpe.  This suggests a lot of the voters in Farrer while anti-Labor aren't wildly pro-Coalition either and are looking for any alternative ahead of the majors (something we also saw with strong ON flows to independents in the 2022 SA election).  I'd expect on that basis that any independents that run and One Nation are to a more than obvious degree fishing in the same pond.  Perhaps this will make it hard for One Nation to get a really high primary.

Probably the most dangerous opponent on preferences if she runs and makes the final two would be Dalton as an independent as she has the right combination of right-wing and indie cred to gain in any matchup.  Whether she would actually make the final two as an independent with her profile much stronger in one end of the electorate is the question.  

Dalton as a One Nation candidate [EDIT: ruled out, she is not standing for preselection] would have a hybrid appeal that could make the Coalition parties' task very difficult.  Questions would be asked: do One Nation actually care less about water issues?  (I'm told that Malcolm Roberts does.)  She has quit the Shooters and retained her state seat massively, is there any reason to believe she would stay with One Nation if elected? (Then again given One Nation's historically woeful MP retention rates, that question should be asked very loudly re any candidate the party runs.)

As I start this article my feeling is that the final two won't both be Coalition.  

All kinds of modelling and calculations may be entered into as to what might occur here but in a rural electorate and with this being a by-election and not a general, I suspect a lot of it will be about candidate quality and the outcome could therefore be quite different from any modelling attempt.  I will have more comments when the field settles down.  

Polls etc

At the time of writing (15 Feb) no seat polls have been reported, nor are any useful at this time with the field yet to settle.

A projection tweeted by the 6 News @auspoll6 Twitter account (with One Nation very narrowly winning) was incorrectly claimed to be a poll by some accounts despite being explicitly labelled as a projection based off Newspoll and as not being a by-election prediction.  The tweet has now been deleted following criticism, including from Pyxis who conduct Newspoll.  What was not stated in the tweet was that the projection (with One Nation narrowly beating Liberal) was not even a uniform swing projection off Newspoll but was a projection of what would happen in Farrer if a general election was held now based on various (as far as I'm aware) unpublished assumptions about how the primary votes found by Newspoll would be reflected in particular seats.  There is a danger even if someone grasps that such a model is a projection of them thinking that there is one particular way to project a seat off a national poll, or even that projecting a seat off a national poll is any kind of reliable exercise.  

Other projections such as MRP outputs are of limited value too.  MRP outputs are meant to be collectively indicative of groups of seat types, and not reliable for a single seat at the best of times.  But also they are not designed for by-elections.  For a by-election what we want to see is seat-specific polling, preferably neutrally commissioned, transparent and certainly without any "aided vote" preambles.

Betting

Amusingly, seat betting has been seen.  Seat betting is not reliably predictive.  As of 16 Feb an early offering was NAT 2.00 Ind 2.99 ON 4.50 Lib 4.75 ALP 34 Greens 67.  

23 Feb: Ind 2.50 Nat 2.60 ON 3.50 Lib 7 ALP 51 Greens 101,

More will be added through the campaign.  

DemosAU: Status Quo-ish Poll, But Is There An Elephant Outside The Room?

DemosAU: Liberal 35 Labor 23 Greens 15 IND 17 SF+F 4 others 6

Although poll finds Liberals down five on election, most likely result based off this poll would be no seat change from the 2025 election

The new quarterly Tasmanian state DemosAU poll is out (link to Pulse coverage), with the pollster joining EMRS in regularly canvassing Tasmanian state politics being a most welcome development.  It's my habit to write a separate article for every new Tasmanian poll that appears at least outside campaign season, but I don't have a huge amount to say about this one.  It's actually quite similar to the November EMRS with primaries of 35-23-15-17-10 compared with 34-25-17-19-5.  

The slight improvement of the Independent vote compared to the election is of no consequence given that Tasmanian polls tend to overestimate the Independent vote anyway.  The Liberals have dropped 5% on the primary vote, which on a uniform swing places Braddon in danger to the Greens (given they beat the Greens by 5.3 points there in 2025) but I would expect some of the losses to go to candidates whose preferences would help the Liberals more than the Greens.  As for the Labor primary, hmmm ... 23%, that's not good.  DemosAU does have some tendency in polls elsewhere to have major parties a bit lower than other polls, but at this stage compared to EMRS this is not apparent here.

The most likely upshot based on the vote shares and making the dubious but hard to avoid assumption of uniform swing would be the 2025 election result again: 14 Liberal 10 Labor 5 Green 5 IND and 1 SF+F, with the Greens notionally recapturing their second Clark seat from Helen Burnet.  I have pointed out that the loss of Burnet is a big problem for the Greens (especially if she runs again) but on this particular sample by uniform swing the Liberals would not be threatening their ability to win two seats anyway. Of course, this might be a seat or two out but this poll is not suggesting an election held now would dramatically reshape the parliament.

On leaderships, the poll finds Jeremy Rockliff leading Josh Willie 43-32 as preferred premier, a number that won't keep either of them from sleeping at night.  The poll also finds Jeremy Rockliff as the only one of nine MPs listed to have a positive net likeability score on +2. All of those canvassed are down slightly compared to the November poll except that Dean Winter is up ten points to a still pretty gnarly net -23 as memories of the 2025 post-election phase recede.  

A question many could be asking at this point: what about One Nation?  Although they have stated an intention to run candidates, including potentially as early as the May Legislative Council elections, One Nation are still not at this stage a registered party at state level.  They have, in fact, despite previously being briefly registered, never contested a Tasmanian state electoral contest.  The DemosAU poll presumably for that reason offered respondents the options of Liberal, Labor, Greens, Independent, Shooters Fishers and Farmers, and "Any Other Candidate".  At the least, the number of voters who are so clamouring to vote for One Nation that they will choose the nondescript option without being bothered by thoughts of "hmm, are they actually running?" clearly is not large.

It looks like we will soon get some data on potential One Nation support as now EMRS owner Brad Stansfield has today tweeted "We will be including One Nation at State level. Odd Demos didn’t."  Most likely the next EMRS quarterly poll is not far away (it will be in the field next week, covering both Tasmania state and federal), so it will be interesting to see what One Nation do or don't register.  In Queensland state polling, the presence of a conservative LNP state government seems to be largely suppressing the One Nation surge seen elsewhere.  Is it the same here because the Liberals are actually in government, or is it different because they are so moderate?  Of course, once One Nation do finally get registered here, there will be plenty of time for DemosAU to include them should they choose to do so.  

In any case, at the very least I would expect an even remotely organised (OK that's far from a given) One Nation effort to be a significant threat at any time to the government's fourth seat in Braddon.  The next target after that is the crossbench seats held by George Razay and Carlo di Falco in Bass and Lyons, and of course there is much more that might be possible if the federal malaise gets over the moat.  But all this is potentially years, a redistribution, and perhaps even misguided attempts to change the electoral system away.  

Not-A-Poll Reset 1 of 2026: Ley Rolled

Well at least she lasted longer than Alexander Downer.

As expected by a strong plurality of voters in my sidebar Not-A-Poll, Sussan Ley, who replaced Peter Dutton, was the next of the canvassed leaders to depart.  However for a while prior to the 2025 Tasmanian election, Jeremy Rockliff was in the lead.  Rockliff would have got a fair few more votes except that I closed off the poll while the Tasmanian election was being resolved.  This is something I do so people don't get credit for voting for a leader who was in the process of losing an election in the count on the night, but in Rockliff's case the uncertainty about whether he had survived dragged on for over a month.  In recent weeks almost all the action has been on Ley, who between 28 and 31 Jan got 37 votes in a row, but there was still the odd flash of dissent (someone voted for Chris Minns on Tuesday!)

This is Not-A-Poll's fifth successful prediction in the last six changes, improving the overall record for this series to 7/14.  

The Low Impact Of Independent Preferences In Labor's 2025 Federal Win

At the 2025 federal election, more votes that were 1 One Nation or 1 Trumpet of Patriots (combined) finished up with Labor candidates as preferences than votes that were 1 Independent!

Among the various forms of whinging and nonsense I continue to see on social media about the election result, one of the commonest is that Labor were elected on "Greens and teal preference deals".  

Labor were, of course, ahead on primaries in 86 seats and would have won in any system (though well short of a majority without single-seat electorates) but the blaming of teals for the strength of their win reflects some limitations of looking at overall preference flows instead of examining the results seat by seat.

If one looks at the overall 2PP flow by party it appears that independents (particularly teals) were a huge contributor to the size of Labor's 2PP win and so must have had a lot to do with them winning so many seats.  After Labor's 5.35 million primaries and 1.67 million preferences from the Greens, independents (756K preferences) are easily the third biggest contributor, way ahead of the minority of preferences assigned to Labor from One Nation candidates (253K). 

Poll Roundup: What Do We Do With A Split Coalition ... Or A Rampant One Nation?

2PP Aggregate 53.5-46.5 to ALP (-1.3 since end of 2025, +0.6 in two weeks)

Shadow-2PP Trend Estimate 54.3-45.7 to ALP vs One Nation.  One Nation has made accelerating gains.

Labor would easily win an election "held now", probably losing several seats

The last few weeks have been remarkably messy ones for Australian politics- and poll-watchers.  Following the Bondi massacre the Opposition pressured the Government to recall parliament as soon as possible to pass measures in response, only to end up wedging itself when it got what it asked for, with the result that the National Party has again broken away.  So should analysts and pollsters still treat these parties as the same entity, and if we don't, what especially do we do in the case of Queensland where Liberal and National party room members run in separate seats under the Liberal National banner?  In the meantime, One Nation has exceeded the ex-Coalition's total in three of the ten polls released so far this year and tied it in two others.  An election right now would make Queensland 1998 look somewhat orderly, with all manner of messy multi-way seats and probably One Nation making fifty or more 2CPs with perhaps something like twenty wins - though this stuff is very hard to model.  So is it time for a Labor vs One Nation "two party preferred" figure as well?

Dear Anti-Preferencers, November 21st For Australia Day !!!

Support for changing the date of Australia Day has really been on the skids in recent years.  Partly this has been because referendums have consequences and the failed sloppy Voice referendum push seems to have reduced interest in reconciliation generally.  Partly it's because the cost of living crisis that was especially acute during 2024 has created a strong sense of 'now is not the time' and that there are bigger problems than symbolic stuff that doesn't materially affect lives.  It's also likely that in the wake of the Bondi attack, there is an even stronger feeling that now is the time for 'coming together as a nation and not having that old argument again this year'.   As a possible fourth factor I wonder if support for Invasion Day agitation was stronger a few years ago just because the Coalition was in power.  

While a lot of the polling out there on this issue is of low quality and/or conflicted, polling for change the date has overall been in freefall in recent years and my estimate is that support for change could be down below 25% nationwide, from pushing 40% a few years ago.  (Resolve recently even had it down from 39-47 support-oppose to a pathetic 16-68 but I'm doubtful that the change has been quite that large. Morgan's SMS poll still had 39.5% for change on a yes-no basis, albeit after a question that asked if Jan 26 should be called "Australia Day" or "Invasion Day").    Whatever the exact numbers, Australia Day isn't going anywhere any time soon, and I cannot remember a time for decades when the change the date campaign seemed less visible.