Essential Report Microblogging Disclaimers

Frequently I post federal polling results and calculations to the microblogging sites Twitter (X) and Bluesky (links to my accounts in sidebar); here is an example I posted today:

The standard items I include are the primary votes for all parties, any two-party preferred or Labor vs One Nation "shadow 2PP" issued by the pollster, and what I call "my conversion".  "My conversion" is a 2PP figure I get by applying my own estimate of 2025 election preference flows to the primary votes released by the pollster, and is the figure I use in my Labor vs Coalition 2PP aggregate and my Labor vs One Nation 2PP estimate, both of which can be seen on the sidebar together with a link to the methods page for them.   I have been including primary vote changes recently because of interest in whether One Nation is going up or down, but probably won't keep doing so for long.  (In fact the one shown has a typo in it, the Greens are down 1 not up 1).  

In the case of one particular pollster, Essential Report, I have to add a lot of disclaimers because of the unusual properties of that poll.  And I'm tired of typing them out so often so I have decided to put them in article form to link to in the future to save the time of doing so.  If this has the effect of causing or coinciding with some changes in some of the less credible aspects of Essential's polling, I will take that too.

So here we go:

1. Different Scale: Every other significant pollster publishes primary votes with undecided respondents in some way removed or reallocated.  However, Essential does the following: if a voter picks "Don't know" on the first voting intention question they are asked which party they are leaning towards.  If they again pick "Don't know" they are left in, creating an undecided figure that is usually 5% or 6%, so the primary votes attributed to parties and independent/other total 94-95 instead of c. 100.  

In theory this should mean that the parties all get slightly lower primary votes from Essential than on average from other pollsters.  In practice this doesn't happen because of:

2. Very Low Independent/Other readings:  Essential measures the independent/Other vote via a voting option of "Independent or other party" which appears near the bottom of the voting options list.  For whatever reason this attracts way lower numbers than other pollsters' independent/other options - numbers too low to be believable.  The average for the first half of 2026 has been 5.7% (6.0% after reallocating undecided) compared to 10.9% from all other pollsters.  This category polled 15.1% at the 2025 federal election, although it is very likely that other pollsters are right in finding a substantial slice of that has since moved to One Nation.  (I would not rule out some other pollsters having Ind/other a bit low too.  I think about half of the 5.5% minor right vote would have gone over; I am not sure how much of the independent or left minor vote has.)

3. Unusual 2PP Method:  Essential calls its Labor vs Coalition method "2PP+".  Instead of presenting a two-party figure that sums to 100 such as 51-49, Essential leaves undecided voters as undecided in the 2PP so the figure might instead be 48-46 with 6 undecided.  Essential started doing this after the 2019 election polling failure, arguing that in a close election it was necessary to stress that a slim lead was not conclusive and undecided voters could yet cause the trailing party to win.  As I pointed out at the time this reasoning placed too much weight on the apparently spurious excuse that undecided voters caused polls to be wrong in 2019.  The 2019 failure was more likely caused by bad sampling, overly simplistic weighting practices and herding or a herding-like phenomenon.

4. Aberrant Respondent Flows: Essential's 2PP+ is largely based on asking voters who support minor parties which of Labor and Coalition they would preference highest; if the respondent then says they don't know then the last-election preference split for that party is used.  This is basically a respondent preferences method but for whatever reason it produces flows to the Coalition that are stronger than the respondent flows from other pollsters (how much stronger varies) and much stronger than last-election preferences.  On average the Coalition in the 2025-8 term is doing around two points better on Essential's "2PP+" (with undecided removed) than it is on my last-election estimates.  At the same time, Morgan's respondent preferences on average have the Coalition doing one point worse than last-election preferences - something that there might actually be a reason for if One Nation are taking voting intention from the right-wing end of the Others pool.  These preference flows in Essential are so odd that they should have a careful look at their operations (in particular spreadsheet calculations and whether their panel adequately controls speeding respondents) to see if they are doing anything wrong.

5. House Effect: Even after using last-election flows for Essential to negate the impact of its weird respondent flows, Essential still has better numbers for the Coalition overall than other regular pollsters - it tends to get the Coalition's primary on the high side and the Greens on the low side compared with the average.  This doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong about these primaries but is worth keeping in mind when I post conversion figures for it that are lower for Labor than those for other regular pollsters.  For the term so far, Essential is running 1.3 points better for the Coalition on my 2PP conversions than my aggregate at the time of its releases.  Some less regular pollsters (Freshwater, Spectre and Fox&Hedgehog) may have similar properties but have only released a few polls each.  

The combined effect of aspects 4 and 5 is that Essential had the Coalition ahead in four of its five 2PP+ readings in the first half of 2026.  But only one other pollster (Fox&Hedgehog in late May) has had the Coalition ahead on a pollster-released 2PP at all (51-49), and that was also the only poll by anyone that converted to a Coalition lead even to one decimal (50.3-49.7) on my conversions.  Every other poll that released a 2PP had Labor ahead at least 51-49, and for polls without a pollster-released 2PP all converted to ALP leads, though one of these (late May DemosAU) would have rounded to 50-50 to the nearest whole number.  

I also note that Essential doesn't have a good accuracy record in recent years.  It was at the bottom of my final-poll accuracy tables for federal 2019, federal 2022 and the Voice 2023 and 8th out of 10 (ahead only of Freshwater and the once-off Ipsos) for federal 2025, which is not to say it cannot perform well in the future or should be entirely ignored.  

Hungry Lies: One Nation's Food Security Fibs

Please explain!

Yesterday I was posting some comments about how tweets on the Pauline Hanson twitter account mostly are not written by her, despite being frequently written in the first person.  Tweets signed "PH" or "-PH", the supposed signs that they are actually hers, seem to have largely dried up; after 23 in 2023 (mostly re the Voice) there were according to the advanced search function just two in 2024, none in 2025 and only two so far this year.  In the process I had a broader look at what else One Nation's social media was tweeting and came across a two-minute video for One Nation's current "Fire the Liar" campaign.  One claim, voiced in what appears to be Hanson's voice, caught my attention:

"Seven million Australians can only afford one meal per day.  In a country as prosperous as we used to be.  People are screaming out for change"

Of course, times are tough and food security is a problem for too many.  But the idea that there are seven million Australians only eating one meal a day, and doing so for purely financial reasons rather than as a chosen diet or because they are too busy working and/or parenting to eat, seems exceedingly far-fetched.  Interested to see if there was anything behind this at all, I posted the following challenge:

Many One Nation supporters on Twitter are extremely defensive if there is even a whiff of criticism of their party so I got quite a bit of abuse for this challenge.  At the printable end of these contributions were people suggesting I was loaded and overpriveleged, that I was a Labor supporter, that I did that not care about the poor, that I had never been poor myself, that I should "get out of Sandy Bay more often", and that I lived in an insular Tasmanian bubble and did not see disadvantage (ha, I'm closer to Glenorchy City than I am to Sandy Bay, and I spend far more time there at the moment).  None of these claims were even close to true and I would rather like to look some of these people in the eye and tell them the facts about these things in person, because it might surprise them, but really they do not deserve to know.  

The Foodbank report

Among those who tried to argue in defence of the claim (some honestly but most being much too confident that they had found me out), the commonest source was the Foodbank reports, which most recently held that in mid-2025 20% of households (less than in 2022 or 2023!) were experiencing severe food insecurity.  But that probably isn't quite seven million people, and crucially, unwillingly averaging only one meal per day is a far more severe level of food insecurity than the average severely food-insecure person's.  The ABS definition of severe food insecurity is:

"Generally characterised by one or more members of the household having missed meals or reduced food intake and, at the most extreme, gone at least one day without food due to a lack of money for food." (My bolding).

So a household can be severely food insecure if even one member (not necessarily all) has missed or cut down on some meals, and that might mean it has only happened now and then rather than regularly.  A person who only averaged one meal a day for economic reasons would quite likely now and then miss meals entirely, and is certainly at the extreme end of the spectrum.  The Ipsos report notes that respondents were classified according to a USDA module on food security and looking at that module makes it clear that respondents can easily tick enough boxes to qualify as severely food insecure without having ever been reduced to a single meal per day, let alone on average.

Furthermore, for many households that do qualify as severely food insecure, that status at any given time is transitory or intermittent, as shown in Fig 29.  Only 18% of severely food insecure households reported frequently being in that status for several weeks at a time.  

And it is worth adding that the Foodbank survey estimates from the Ipsos panel are for whatever reasons way higher than the ABS's for the most recent comparable year (2023) which found 8.5% of households to be moderately or severely food insecure, a fraction of Foodbank's rates.  So Foodbank may not be a reliable source.  

The Salvation Army report

Some friendlier repliers helpfully suggested that the "seven million" claim had something to do with claims about food security made in Pauline Hanson's recent National Press Club speech.  In that speech the "seven million" claim does not itself occur, but there is a lengthy passage referencing a Salvation Army report.  Here is the start of it:

"Now let’s talk about the cost of living.

The Salvation Army’s latest Red Shield Report released in May this year is not easy to read.

It reveals the plight of increasing numbers of low-income Australians who now need help just to get by.

Thousands of Australians are seeking this help every day. Organisations like the Salvos are so overwhelmed with demand they’re having to turn people away.

Of the 4,400 people surveyed:

• 19 per cent said they’d eaten food from rubbish bins in the past 12 months;

• 60 per cent said they’d eaten expired or spoiled food;

• 91 per cent said they had skipped meals and 32 per cent said they do so on a daily basis;

• 35 per cent said they survived on only one meal a day;"

But at no point does Hanson actually inform her audience of who the people surveyed were. She makes it sound like it could be an ordinary poll or perhaps a sample of low income Australians.  It is not.  The respondents were "4,400 Australians seeking emergency relief support from The Salvation Army".  This is a survey of people who are on the whole highly disadvantaged to begin with.  The Foodbank survey claimed that 25% of food insecure households (just over 8% of all households even if we accept their high estimate of insecurity) had accessed help during the past year.  And those who frequently access such help would be more likely to be in the sample for the Salvos survey than those who had done so once or twice.   So the Salvos sample is most likely on average the most food-disadvantaged few percent.   (Hanson's description of what the report found is also slightly incorrect, since it actually said that 35% of respondents "reported on most days, could only afford one meal per day".)  Even on that level, the number of Australians in this category could be, say, hundreds of thousands.  Way too many but it isn't even one million on the numbers as published, let alone seven.

Where did the "seven million" figure come from?  It's hard to tell because it seems to have not appeared anywhere else at all before the "Fire the Liar" ad.  But it seems quite plausible that some nong staffer simply took the 35% from the Salvos report and multiplied it by, say, the adult population.  Or maybe someone just handwaved and made it up.  

But their heart is in the right place ...

Oh no it isn't, and even if it was, that's no excuse.  The MO of One Nation forever has been to scare people into believing the country is going directly to hell and that only shunning an endless list of outgroups and retreating into their tedious flagtwiddling "monoculture" can save us.  (They're cherrypickers about this anyway since they want to degrade the compulsory preferential voting system that has been at the core of Australia's electoral culture for over 100 years.)  It's working particularly well for them at the moment because after COVID and then years of cost-of-living crises, voters are very discontented - the huge challenge for establishments is a general feeling that human life just isn't getting better anymore.  But I hope it is going to stop working quite so easily and move to a phase where the voters expect One Nation to get serious and demonstrate competence - because the nation has suffered far worse with a lot less of this nonsense.  I've even had One Nation supporters saying that 2026 is the worst time in our nation's history, that it is almost impossible to stay alive ... spare me.  Real concern about a problem begins with an accurate grasp of the size and nature of the problem so you know how to address it, not with a dystopian poverty porn schlock story where the problem is too large to do anything.  

And the other thing here is that anyone with the remotest grasp of social reality should hear something like seven million Australians only being able to afford to eat once per day and think "that cannot possibly be right".  While I learned more than I ever thought was out there about often dubious "one meal a day" diets in researching this article, on the whole eating one individually insufficient meal per day on a regular basis won't be good for most people.  If a quarter of Australians were really doing it, we would be constantly hearing about what the undereating epidemic was doing to our health system.  Instead we hear far more about people eating too much of the wrong stuff to the point where two thirds of Australian adults are overweight.  If a quarter of all Australians were also eating only one meal a day there would be hardly any normal eaters left!

An MP of ministerial let alone Prime Ministerial ability should be able to grasp that this claim doesn't make sense in seconds.  Pauline Hanson (if that's really her and not an AI facsimile) either doesn't realise this doesn't make sense, knows it doesn't make sense and says it anyway, or doesn't care if it makes sense because she is dependent on her staffers and can't think for herself about this stuff.  It's hard to really say which of these is worse.

Disclaimer For Extremely Foolish People:  The author does not believe that this article will cause the electoral downfall of the One Nation political party.

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PS (26 June): In relation to David Farley voting incorrectly on a division, the Hanson account has now tweeted "I'll tell you upfront, One Nation won't always be absolutely perfect.

We'll make a mistake here and there, but we'll be upfront about it." 

and also:

"For decades, this country has been driven into the ground by politicians who won't admit they've done anything wrong, and still won't admit they're currently doing wrong.

It's time to change direction."

When will the party admit they have made a mistake with this ad?  

PS 2 July: I could now list every time Pauline Hanson or One Nation bags someone else for failing to admit they were wrong, while failing to admit One Nation was wrong about seven million Australians eating one meal a day.

Today re Moira Deeming's failure to apologise to Matthew Guy, Hanson: "It tells me a person is not prepared to admit that they got it wrong.  I want a person with integrity and honesty.  And I don't see that." 

Is Pauline Hanson prepared to admit that she got it wrong re seven million Australians eating one meal a day.  Or does she lack the integrity and honesty to admit she got it wrong?

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"Independent Australia": The Worst Website In Australian Politics?

In an article way back in 2015 I noted that the faux-progressive website "Independent Australia" was independent of "Quality control, consistency, accuracy and editorial skill."  Has it got better since?  Well no, if a recent attempt to soothe reader concerns about the One Nation surge is any guide, it seems to have got even worse.  I've decided to write a whole piece about this trainwreck to explain how abysmal IA's standards are and why nobody should be enabling their output in any way.

The most recent case is an article attributed - I have no idea whether correctly - to a Dr Jason Foster of RMIT.  Even the qualifications of the claimed author are something IA cannot seem to get straight.  The RMIT website states that Foster "holds a PhD in Media and Communication from RMIT, focusing on the representations of history in film and other media."  IA however claimed his PhD covered "media representations, politics and national consciousness", a claim that has since, without acknowledgement of error, been removed.

Before I deal with what is uniquely bad about this article and IA's failed attempt (?) to fix it, I will pick off a number of the low-hanging fruit, many of which are common myths about elections.

Begging For Debunking: A Silly Article Re Stafford Preferences

It was as sure as night follows day, as sure as daylight savings fading the curtains (oh wait) that the Stafford by-election result would see the Queensland right again beating the drum for optional preferences.  On cue we have an op ed by Morgan Begg from the IPA in the Courier-Mail trying to argue that compulsory preferential voting is some kind of aberration that has saved Labor's seat with the aid of obscure leftoids.  Begg's arguments contain a remarkable number of errors, but are also typical of the misguided and poorly debated push to return to full OPV in Queensland.

Begg is probably not responsible for the headline but for starters compulsory preferential voting is hardly an "Absurd Qld voting quirk".  Rather it is the standard form of preferential voting as it exists federally and currently (with very minor differences) in four states - and as it has existed federally, continuously, for 108 years.  (OK between 1984 and 1996 we did have a federal savings provision which allowed for a voter to deliberately exhaust their preferences, but few voters knew about that). 

Pre And Post Budget Federal Poll Roundup

2PP Aggregate 52.4 to Labor vs Coalition (term low, -0.8 since last week)

Shadow-2PP 52.9 to Labor vs One Nation (-0.6 since last week)

Labor would win election"held now" but most likely with only a small majority

This is my usual annual post about federal voting intention polling after the Budget, plus a summary of what's been happening in the months leading up.

The briefest summary of what happened in the months leading up is "not much".  In terms of my Labor vs Coalition two-party preferred aggregate, Labor dipped down to the high 52s in mid-January (off not a lot of polling at the time) but got back above 54 during Coalition leadership tensions in early February.  Since Angus Taylor replaced Sussan Ley Labor's 2PP has bobbed around the 53s with no real evidence of signal.

EMRS: The State Where No Party Has Votes

EMRS Lib 25 (-4) ALP 24 (+1) ON 19 (+5) GRN 14 (-1) IND 16 (+1) others 2 (-2)

Seat estimate off this poll if election "held now" Lib 8-9 ALP 10 ON 8 Grn 4-5 IND 4 others 0

The funniest thing about this week's EMRS poll is that it was taken before.  Before we found out on Friday that, in proof of assurances that TT Line couldn't possibly be insolvent because the government could just keep throwing it money, the embattled shipping company would be flicked a lazy half a billion dollars to keep it afloat.  Or perhaps I should better say, adrift.  Before we found out, also on Friday in federal budget week, that TasInsure, a "state-backed insurance company" floated out of nowhere in the 2025 election campaign in a desperate attempt to talk about anything at all except the stadium, had gone to the great bus mall in the ground and was being refashioned as a watchdog-shaped object.  And perhaps most significantly of all, before whatever lurks in this week's state Budget.

Stafford By-Election: Prospects and Live

Stafford (ALP 5.32%)

Luke Richmond (ALP) vs Fiona Hammond (LNP) and others

Cause of by-election: death of Jimmy Sullivan (ALP/IND)

ALP retain with c. 4.4% swing to LNP

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Monday:  Not much more to see

Casey Briggs has tweeted that he understands there are not more than (and probably less than) 2000 postals to come, so further changes to the current 51.2-48.8 margin will be in tenths of a percent if that.

Sunday: Excuses excuses...

Steven Miles has been quoted offering a bizarre excuse for his party's poor result, claiming it was due to One Nation not running and saying "We will never know what the result would have been if they had run and not directed their supporters to vote for the LNP,".  Stafford is one of One Nation's worst seats in the state, had they run I estimate they would have got about 8%.  Most of their voters would have preferenced the LNP anyway.  Care of the 2017 election we have a window on what happens when One Nation recommends preferences to the LNP in some seats and Labor in others - the flow difference was around 10-12%.  So for an open ticket, half that.  This argument if it works at all isn't worth half a percent, it might be worth a tenth of the swing if that.  In fact not all One Nation voters would have even been aware that their party recommended (not "directed") its voters to vote for the LNP, so probably even less.  And some of those who were aware would not have obeyed.

Miles has also referred to Fiona Hammond's local profile, but that was already present in the baseline since she was the candidate last time.  Indeed her time as a councillor was more recent then.  

Another excuse quoted by The Australian is “Right-of-centre voters, after the deal with One Nation, weren’t left with many alternatives in a field of nine candidates, and so we have seen a splintering of the vote amongst other left-of-centre parties.’’  But in fact there were four right wing candidates (up one from 2024) and the three minor righties between them got a 0.3% swing on the combined One Nation and Family First primary from 2024.  It is true that Labor's primary suffered from the extra competition on the left - but that does not explain half of the primary vote swing against Labor flowing through to 2PP swing as well.  

Farrer By-Election Live

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

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

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

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

Monday 11th: We don't quite know the flows by party yet but what we can track is the proportion of Coalition voters whose votes would need to be switched by a different HTV recommendation for the Coalition parties' decision to preference One Nation to have decided the seat. Currently that number runs at 33.6% (this is Liberal and National combined).  As noted below, while normally it's quite feasible that an HTV decision would carry that much weight, in this case I think probably not.

Although David Farley has obviously won Farrer very easily the mathematical proof that he has done so will require a distribution of preferences meaning he's a fortnight or so from taking his seat.  See here.

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

Does this look like a Labor front to you?

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

Would Scrapping Group Ticket Voting In Victoria Help One Nation?

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

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

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

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

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

Rosevears: Jo Palmer (Lib) retain. 

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

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Live comments (scrolls to top)

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

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

3:03 All over, Palmer wins 52.8-47.2 after a 79-21 split to Labor on the Greens exclusion. A very respectable result for Labor in the north despite losing.

12:00 Palmer didn't cross off Monson but needs a trivial 7.8% of Greens preferences. Based on the scrutineering estimates she will probably end up with a 52-54 2CP which is reasonably close. Maybe at or above the higher end because the Monson-McLennan prefs will be weaker for Labor.

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

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

Estimated 2PP ALP 57.89 vs Liberal (+3.3)

Estimated "Shadow 2PP" ALP 58.19 vs One Nation

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

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

Legislative Council 2026: Rosevears

ROSEVEARS (2020 margin Lib vs IND 0.57%)

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

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

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

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

Tasmania Redistribution: The Reaction

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

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

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

Legislative Council Voting Patterns 2022-6

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

Shy Division Losing

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

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

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

South Australia Postcount 2026: Finniss

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

David Basham (Lib) vs Lou Nicholson (IND) 

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

(Link to tallyboard thread)

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

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

South Australia Postcount 2026: Hammond (And Ngadjuri)

Hammond (Lib 5.1%)
Robert Roylance (ON) vs Simone Bailey (ALP) vs Adrian Pederick (Lib)
Roylance expected to win

(Link to tallyboard thread)

The rural lower Murray seat of Hammond was one of those that stood out in pre-election modelling as being a seat on a relatively low Liberal vs ALP margin but nonetheless being apparently fertile ground for One Nation.  And this looks like this is how things have panned out.  As I start this article Simone Bailey (Labor) holds a thin lead with 27.5% over Robert Roylance (One Nation) on 27.0% with incumbent Adrian Pederick in third on 22.1%.  The most significant preference source is independent Airlie Keen on 10.4%.  Keen ran competitively in 2022 but there has been a large swing against her with the rise of One Nation.  The rest: the Greens 4.5% Legalise Cannabis 3.3% FF 1.9% Animal Justice 1.4% Lucas Hope (IND) 1.0% Aus Family 0.5% United Voice 0.4% Fair Go 0.1%.  Yes there is a candidate in this seat who actually at present has 27 votes, their presence on the ballot paper probably costing thousands of dollars in staffing costs.

South Australia Postcount 2026: Kavel

KAVEL (Retiring IND vs Lib 25.4, notional Liberal vs ALP 3.5)

Matt Schultz (IND) vs David Leach (ALP) vs Bradley Orr (Lib) - Schultz expected to win

Link back to summary page

Sunday 22nd 11:50am: I really wanted to wait til the prepolls were in before unrolling postcount threads for the messy seats, because prepolls often put scenarios to bed.  But as it's taking a while to get there on Sunday, I will start the Kavel thread before that point (and probably the Finniss one too) and if things do later simplify then this is at least a time capsule of how insane this seat looked.  

The problem with the Mt Barker / Adelaide Hills seat is simple; nobody has any votes.  The succession war for the former conservative Liberal turned indie/Speaker/Minister Dan Cregan has produced a splatter of primaries with nobody with even a quarter of the vote (I'm wondering if this is some kind of record for a mainland state seat if it persists).  With just 39.5% of enrolment counted, Labor's David Leach leads on 23.9%, Cregan's nominal successor Matt Schultz has 20.7%, Christiaan Loch of One Nation has 19.7% and the Liberals' Bradley Orr has 17.3%.  The Greens have 12.8% and the detritus (ballot clutter makes good snail food) is Family First 1.7% Animal Justice 1.6% Real Change 1.1% Australian Family 0.5% Jacob van Raalte (IND) 0.5% and Fair Go 0.2%.  

South Australia 2026: Postcount Summary, Links Hub and Basic 2CP Contests

SEATS WON ALP 34 Lib 5 ON 4 IND 4

Seats covered

Finniss (Liberal) - Liberal vs One Nation vs IND, IND has won from fourth

Kavel (IND vacancy) - Labor vs IND vs One Nation, IND stayed in top two and won easily

Hammond (Liberal) - ON win staying in top two and beating Labor on preferences

Heysen (Liberal) - Liberal vs ALP or Green, Greens narrowly missed final two with Liberal defeating Labor (Liberal probably would have won anyway)

Light (Labor) - close but Labor win

Mackillop (notional Liberal) - One Nation narrow win over Liberal

Narungga (IND) - One Nation appears to have very narrowly won subject to recount.

Morphett (Liberal) - narrow Labor win

Ngadjuri  One Nation win.  

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL  5 ALP 3 ON 2 Lib 1 Green

South Australia 2026 Postcount: Heysen

HEYSEN (Lib 2.6%)

Josh Teague (Lib) vs Marisa Bell (Labor) and Genevieve Dawson-Scott (Green)

Teague very narrowly leads Bell, but Bell not sure of making the final two.  No direct information on Liberal vs Green flows

Link back to summary page

The first of my postcount threads focuses on the Adelaide Hills seat of Heysen, which was the Greens' biggest target seat at this election.  What do you get if you take Prahran 2014 and throw in a One Nation candidate with 14% of the vote?  Well something like whatever this is.  Because of the slow count in other threads and the relatively settled picture for the night in Heysen I've started writing this one on the night, and it will run ahead of the tally board thread.

South Australia 2026 Live

START POSITION*: LABOR 29 LIB 14 IND 4

Labor re-elected with several seat gains.  Liberals and One Nation fighting for opposition status with Liberals currently best placed.  

Seats apparently changing (not all absolutely confirmed):

Liberal to Labor: Colton, Hartley, Unley, Morialta

IND to One Nation: Narungga

Notional Liberal to One Nation: Mackillop

Incumbents in trouble:

Liberal vs Labor: Morphett

Messy seats: 

Hammond (Liberal - exclusion order issue, Liberals currently trailing to One Nation)

Finniss (Liberal - Unclear if Nicholson makes 3CP or whether she defeats Liberal or One Nation if so)

Heysen (Liberal - Labor narrowly leads Greens for making 3CP, winner competes with Liberals for seat)

Kavel (IND - Schultz needs to make final two to win but could potentially be pushed to third behind Labor and One Nation)

Ngadjuri  (Liberal - unclear which of Liberal or One Nation is third, the other probably winning)

In doubt (not necessarily complete list)

Light (Labor) vs One Nation

South Australia 2026: Final Polls Still Have Liberals Third

Average of final week polls ALP 37.1% Liberal 17.6 One Nation 23.3 Greens 11.2 others 10.8

If polls are accurate, Labor wins election easily making several seat gains, with Liberals and One Nation probably winning a few seats each.  Independents could win a few to several seats.

The 2026 SA election has been a weird one for polls.  There's been a very decent amount for a state election, but there were four polls tightly clustered around the start of the formal campaign, Morgan a little later, then nothing til the final days.  Also while the early polls had quite a range of figures, the last-week polls by Fox&Hedgehog, YouGov and DemosAU came out with almost identical primaries.  All have Labor on 37-38%, Liberals 17-19%, and One Nation 21-23%.  Newspoll stood out a bit more with a 40 for Labor and a miserable 16 for the Liberals.  

In my previous article I outlined a way of using the 2022 Legislative Council results to roughly look at where the Liberals and One Nation might make the final two if the polling is accurate, and assuming a swing that is two-thirds proportional and one-third uniform.  I have a few more observations on this model based on the vote share average at the head of this post.  

Legislative Council 2026: Huon

HUON (IND vs ALP 2.55%)

This is my first guide for the Tasmanian Legislative Council for this year.  An assessment of Legislative Council voting patterns has been updated and a guide to Rosevears has also finally appeared.

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

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

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

Nightcliff By-Election (This May Be A Very Short Thread)

Just a quick thread on the Nightcliff by-election (NT) caused by the resignation of the Greens' Kat Macnamara. NT elections don't have many booths and at present we're waiting for the big prepoll which is most of the count, with Suki Dorras-Walker (Grn) leading Ed Smelt (ALP) by 22 votes 2CP 536-514 on the 2CP votes counted so far., with a small number counted only to primary  The big EVC could put this one to bed once it reports on primaries and 2CP... or it could be on we go.  

8:05 The primaries from the big prepoll are in and Dorras-Walker 1220 leads Smelt 1051 Paudel (CLP)  738 Scott (IND) 629.  With almost 1000 votes from Paudel and Scott to add, if the flow so far continues Labor will move to a substantial lead.

9:30 Long wait for the bomb to drop ... (apparently the count is done but has not been posted yet)

10:40 Finally up and subject to checking if the votes so far counted it appears that Labor have won as Smelt is 141 ahead after preferences.  Margins over 100 in general stick in the NT.

Sunday: If Labor's lead holds this will be another relatively rare case of a major party beating a non-major from behind on preferences. But this particular scenario (Labor beats Greens on Coalition preferences) is becoming more common.

Monday: A check count has increased Smelt's lead to 158 and confirmed that he will win. A very welcome urban gain for NT Labor after being reduced to four bush MPs in 2024.

Tasmania Redistribution: Draft Scraps The Franklin Divide

 

The much-awaited proposal redistribution of Tasmania's federal (and by normal standards, state) electoral boundaries has been published.  I discussed the challenges facing the Redistribution Committee in my piece Clark Must Expand, But Where?  In the draft proposal, the winner is "south".

The Committee (note, it is not correct to refer to the Committee as "the AEC" as two members are AEC and two are not) has proposed one of the more radical options that was considered in the process.  Somewhat against my expectations based on the large movement of electors, they've decided that the further creep of Clark into Kingston, cutting parts further south off from their urban centre, really was unsustainable and it is now time to bite the bullet.  They have recommended the southern boundaries of Clark, Lyons and Franklin as proposed by former Clarence Mayor Doug Chipman (there was a similar proposal by current Clarence Councillor James Walker).  Clark becomes Hobart City, Kingborough and the Huon Valley, Franklin becomes Clarence, Brighton, Sorell and the lower and central east coast and Lyons becomes, well, whatever that is.  In the north they've gone for the orthodox approach of Blackstone Heights and Prospect Vale into Bass, so I don't think anybody got their exact suggestion in full.  

Why Did One Nation Win 11 Seats In Queensland 1998 But None In 1998 Federal?

The One Nation party (which I am on the verge of restyling Wuss Nation after its sobbing about its poor supporters being traumatised by filling out ballot papers) has been attacking compulsory preferential voting in the leadup to the South Australian election.

Linked into this I came across a narrative from Pauline Hanson which I thought deserved detailed examination.  Interviewed on Sky (and yet again, where else) Hanson told the tale of how in 1998 her party won eleven seats from scratch in the 1998 Queensland election and noted that it was optional preferential voting.  Then she moved on to the 1998 federal election where although her party won over a million votes, all the other parties recommended preferences against One Nation and they didn't win any seats.  Famously she lost Blair where the major parties cross-recommended against her.  

She doesn't in this excerpt mention what became of those eleven Queensland seats.  Every single one of those MPs quit the party or the parliament by the end of the 1998-2001 term, though One Nation did retain two of those seats and win a third with different candidates.    But my interest here is, is there really any causal link between the current OPV/CPV debate and what happened in those two elections?  Or are the explanations different?  A warning that this article is very numbery and has been graded Wonk Factor 4/5.

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.  

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.

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.  

Farrer By-Election 2026

Farrer (Lib vs IND 6.2%, Lib vs ALP 12.9%)
By-Election 9 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 will be providing live coverage on the night of May 9.

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?

There are five four possibly competitive forces in Farrer.  Comments re candidates will be added when known but this is not intended as a candidate guide.   All candidates can be seen in a debate here.

* Liberals.  Contesting.  Justin Clancy (MP for Albury (Lib 16.3%)) was reported as a possible Liberal contender (setting up a scenario where he and Helen Dalton might both resign their state seats to run) but isn't running.  The candidate is Raissa Butkowski, an Albury councillor.

* Nationals.  Contesting.  The Nationals candidate is Brad Robertson, a former military commander.

* One Nation.  Contesting.  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. The One Nation candidate is David Farley, a prominent agricultural businessman.  As is common with One Nation candidates he already has a problematic past comment that has resurfaced - but this one is also attracting more endorsements than most.  Oh, more trouble - he claims it was an accident.  (Three times?)

Further debate broke out with news that Farley had sought to join and run for Labor in 2022 and had also donated to them as recently as 2023, although this seems to result more than anything from a dislike of the Coalition.  One Nation supporters have been defensive about this but the fact is that the party has a woeful defection rate and their habit of slurping up other parties' rejects is an obvious contributing factor to this.  

In the final days of the campaign perceptions that Farley is going to become an independent at some point, perhaps sooner rather than later, if elected are growing.  

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

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.  

* The Greens' candidate is Richard Hendrie. 

* Family First (v 2) immediately announced they would re-run Rebecca Scriven who polled 2.15% in 2025. I have not been able to verify from her S44 declaration whether Scriven is eligible for election or not - though she plausibly could be - as this apparently depends on her year of birth.

* Gerard Rennick People First announced they were running, to the vivid interest of nobody; they came last with 2.02% in 2025.  Their candidate, James Bonniefin, as best I can tell has never lived in the electorate.

* Sustainable Australia is running Lucas James Ellis.

* Gary Pappin is an independent and a councillor on Murray River Council.  He has experience in mining, farming and water resource management.  Pappin is a Mutthi Mutthi man who has had a significant role in management of the Mungo National Park and the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area.  Pappin doesn't seem to be any kind of easily classifiable independent, I would probably have put him under group 5 (others) in my federal election article.

* Legalise Cannabis are running Aimee Lee Pearson.  It appears she is ineligible for election as her S44 checklist says that she has applied to renounce New Zealand citizenship but has not received the renunciation yet.  

* Roger Woodward is a serial independent candidate with a pretty random collection of policies who has also run in Cook and Berowra.  He does not live in the electorate (in fact he lives in Hornsby in Berowra).  

* The Shooters Fishers and Farmers candidate is Peter Sinclair.

Not Contesting

* Dalton (IND) 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.  On Mar 6 Dalton confirmed she would not contest.  

* Labor:  I did not believe Labor could have be competitive if they ran and I could not see much reason for them to risk embarrassment by doing so, so I was not surprised they decided not to bother.  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 have squeezed out independents and stopped them winning.

* Jordi Queiruga (IND): Announced running, has notified me he has withdrawn, website taken down.

* The unregistered Riverina State Party (which supports a new state covering the Victorian/NSW border areas) expressed interest in running but this may have been contingent on its registration being approved in time, which didn't happen.  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 froze once the writ was issued for the by-election.  (I've heard they may have passed AEC checking prior to advertising.)

Prospects

This section will be edited where needed to update it.  As of 15 March we have a messy four-way battle where it is not obvious who the final two will be.    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, though there has been one poll suggesting One Nation could make the final two.)

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%.  If their national polling swing is real and flows through to Farrer they should be looking at a primary of at very least high 20s and probably much more (because One Nation tend to get inflated swings in strong areas) - but it's not that simple.

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 - but it is also a problem for the independent.  

It is possible that Milthorpe could get a large enough primary from many of the seat's non-conservative voters to lead on primaries, with the question then being how strong are the flows between the conservative parties and in what order they are knocked out.  Butkowski seems a good choice by the Liberals to attempt to cover off against Milthorpe.  

Dalton would have been a dangerous opponent on preferences had she run and made the final two, but with a splintered vote and having to sit between Milthorpe and One Nation it could have been hard for her to do so.

The South Australian election showed generally not very good performances by rural/regional independents, with One Nation polling fully as well as their polling implied.  

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.  

Polls etc

Single-seat polling is unreliable.

An Australia Institute seat poll (presumably a uComms poll) was reported on 9 Mar taken sometime between 5 and 9 Mar with "One Nation topped the count at 28.6 per cent of the total, followed by independent Ms Milthorpe (23.3 per cent), the Liberal Party (19.1 per cent), Labor (not running - 9 per cent), undecided voters (8.6 per cent) and the Greens (3.9 per cent), and the remaining 2.3 per cent favoured another party or candidate."  The news.com.au report omitted a feeble 5.2% for the Nationals.  While the media report said 64.1% of the non-One Nation voters would not consider voting for them at all ... which doesn't necessarily mean they won't preference them.  After reallocating Labor and undecided thanks to the full poll report (with a few minor design issues not helping) I estimate the primaries at One Nation 31.4 Milthorpe 29.4 Liberal 21.7 National 7.4 Green 5.4 other 2.7 (an underestimate as other was excluded from the undecided voter follow-up), unaccounted for 1.8.  Note that Milthorpe's support could be overestimated by her being named, so there's actually a good chance here that the final two would be One Nation vs Liberal, making it possible the Liberals could retain on Milthorpe and Greens preferences.  As with many uComms polls the 18-34 age group is curiously conservative looking in this poll.  A question in the form "who do you least want to win" gets One Nation 37.1 Milthorpe 29.5 Liberal 22.2 National 11.2. 

A second uComms commissioned by Milthorpe and taken April 9-10 has One Nation ahead - on raw primaries ON 30.9 Milthorpe 30 Lib 16.1 Nat 7.1 Greens 3.8 FF 1.2 SAP 0.1 (yay!) Others 2.9 undecided 7.9, coming out to 52.7-47.3 to One Nation by respondent preferences (which I would expect to underestimate the margin because of Coalition how to vote cards favouring One Nation).  The sample has Farley 14.6 points ahead on primaries of male voters with Milthorpe 12 points ahead among female voters.  I have not found a distribution of the undecided.  The major candidates were named.  One Nation's social media account has misleadingly published the breakdown for male voters as if it was the overall poll.

Sky News said that "leaked" (by which they mean given away) Liberal polling had One Nation winning easily but provided no further details, other than it sounds like One Nation are ahead on primaries.  

In non-poll news:

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

5 Mar: Ind 1.91 Nat 3.40 ON 4.33 Lib 7 ALP 51 Greens 101

As of 13 Mar the above odds hadn't moved, a different site had Ind 1.65 ON 2.75 Nat 4.50 Lib 8.00.  On 15 Mar Ind was out to 1.75 and Nat in to 3.75 on that one.  

16 Mar: Second market now at Ind 1.90 ON 2.40 Nat 3.75 Lib 9.00. 

18 Mar: Both markets similar now: Ind 2 ON 2.60 Nat 5.10 Lib 8.00 vs Ind 1.85 ON 2.5 Nat 5.50 Lib 9.00 

24 Mar: 1.95/2.39/6.40/8.50 vs 1.80/2.30/7.50/8.00

8 April: One is offline, the second is 1.75/1.95/9/13, so the market increasingly sees this as a Milthorpe vs One Nation race.

24 April: Not sure when it finally flipped (had done so by April 20) but now ON 1.40 vs 2.80 and 1.38/3.10

30 April: 1.33/3.30/19/51.

7 May: 1.18/4.75/19/51.  Another site had 1.09 vs 6.50

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.

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.  

What's the most federal electorates you have been to in a day?

A trip from Brisbane to Sydney in one day takes you through about 24 federal divisions.

This is a sequel to How many federal electorates have you visited?  The rules of that article don't count electorates one is just passing through for purely travel purposes, because you're not really visiting them as such.  This one is different.

For this article the challenge is to work out the most electorates you have ever been in in one day, excluding flying.  Any form of being effectively on the ground (or water) counts - driving, rail, walking, cycling, bus, boat if you are sailing through electorates with water boundaries and so on.  Flying doesn't count because flying over 14 extra seats in Sydney because your plane had to go around is just not interesting and unless you're paying insanely close attention to the flight tracker on a flight that has one you won't know which 14 anyway.  However, being on a plane that's on the ground for a stop en route is fine.  I also suggest defining "day" as a calendar day based on the current time in each electorate when passed through, but we could also count continuous trips within a 24 hour time period that don't include any overnight stopping.  

Why Hunter 2025 Can't Be Used To Do Last-Election Labor vs One Nation Preference Flows

With the very rapid rise of One Nation in recent national primary voting intention polling we are starting to see some pollsters offer a national alternative Labor-vs-One-Nation two-party figure.  DemosAU did this in its national Jan 5-6 poll where it found One Nation tied with Labor 50-50 while Labor led the Coalition 52-48, this off primaries of Labor 29 Coalition 23 One Nation 23 (more on that later) Greens 12 others 13.  A newish outfit curiously polling on the same dates, Fox&Hedgehog (founded post the 2025 election by a former Peter Dutton staffer) reported 56-44 to Labor vs One Nation off fairly similar primaries of Labor 29 Coalition 25 One Nation 21 Greens 14 others 11, compared to 53-47 for Labor vs Coalition.  So DemosAU has One Nation two points more competitive than Labor on a head to head with Coalition basis while Fox&Hedgehog has them three points worse.  (I'll add that by my last election preferences 48% 2PP for Coalition is pretty generous on the published DemosAU breakdowns, I get 47.4 as the average for their primaries.)

DemosAU attempted to use last-election preferences by using the flow in the seat of Hunter 2025 (the only federal case ever of a Labor vs One Nation finish) to model Coalition to One Nation flows, by assuming the Greens to One Nation vs Labor flow would be the same as the Greens to Coalition vs Labor flow, and also by assigning flows from Others 50-50 between Labor vs One Nation "As the composition of Others is not known".  (That last bit did strike me as a little curious unless they were also doing the same thing for Labor vs Coalition, given that the 2PP flow from others in 2025 was about 54.7% to Labor).  Fox&Hedgehog simply used respondent preferences.  

This Person And Why They Are Wrong: Episode 1, Wasted Vote Guy

 

The gloriously cooked tweet above reminded me of a series I'd been intending to start where now and then I would cover someone known in the online psephosphere who has a particular gimmick that I haven't previously addressed in detail.  The rules for inclusion in this series are:

1.  the person in question needs to be a published author on elections and not just a rando twitter pest  (though this first one is really scraping the barrel on the first bit) 

2.  they need to have some defining pet argument or recurring MO that makes covering what they do in one article worthwhile and effective.

3. they need to be someone who I've not already written multiple articles debunking, so no Dennis Shanahans will feature in this series.  

I should note here that the subject of this article has written Substack articles unsuccessfully criticising my comments about his nonsense on multiple occasions.  (This did come after I blocked him on Twitter in May 2022 for bogus triumphalism and misrepresenting my arguments - he not long after deleted his side of that exchange.) He may be small fry, but from time to time I do come across someone who has taken his eccentric claims seriously.  Often these are well-meaning people who do share genuine concerns about the under-representation of the Greens in the House of Reps and just don't realise that this particular version of those concerns is silly.