The Flat Field: Another "Polls Are Wrong" Vid Gets It Wrong!

Five years ago I debunked a drippy poll denial video by the supposedly left wing West Media. Now here from Topher Field (not that he deserves that link) is the nearest right-wing equivalent to West's cavalcade of cluelessness.  In a video entitled "Preference Discipline is EVERYTHING" but advertised with images that say "THE POLLS ARE WRONG [AND WHY YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT]" Field, a glibertarian, sets out to show that polls that estimate One Nation vs Labor "2PPs" are underestimating One Nation.  The funny thing is that there are quite strong arguments that that is true.  He doesn't make them.  Within the first ninety seconds, Field has already showed he is totally out of his depth.

Field Doesn't Know How Polls Work

While talking in front of tweeted results of recent Redbridge and Morgan polls, Field says that these pollsters - and not just these pollsters but all the national and state polls - are using out of date data or guesses to calculate preference flows.  But in the case of One Nation vs Labor, neither of these pollsters does this.  Both calculate their preference flows simply by asking respondents which party they would preference higher.  This is hardly obscure information either - Morgan prominently states it uses this method in all its weekly polling reports, and reports on Accent Research's website make it very clear for Redbridge/Accent (see p. 3 on this one, where both methods have results shown for Coalition vs Labor but only respondent for One Nation vs Labor).   The funny thing is that very briefly some pollsters were attempting to use 2025 House of Reps preference flows but were dissuaded from doing so after I and others pointed out that this would make the flows to One Nation too high.

Currently five federal pollsters are releasing One Nation vs Labor federal shadow-2PPs - Morgan, Redbridge/Accent, YouGov, Spectre and Fox&Hedgehog.  All of them use respondent preferences.  Respondent preferences are actually problematic for estimating One Nation vs Labor because close to half of Coalition voters conventionally copy how to vote cards.  So if the Coalition recommends preferences to One Nation again then many of the Coalition voters who say they will preference Labor will actually end up preferencing One Nation.  This is the argument Field should be making if he wants to have a go at pollsters' One Nation vs Labor figures, but he hasn't bothered to do the most basic reading on how polls are actually working so he cannot do that.

He's therefore tilting at a strawman when he claims at around 2:20 that old preference flow data can't be valid when One Nation's primary has jumped fourfold, but even then he misses his imaginary opponent.  In the South Australian election despite the massive primary vote shifts, the flow of preferences involving the Coalition and One Nation was largely as expected based on modelling off the 2025 Senate election where One Nation polled a way lower vote.  And the reason his claim here is wrong is that while Coalition voters who used to rank Labor above One Nation could have become more inclined to put the now more popular One Nation ahead of Labor, that can easily be cancelled out by the Coalition voters who used to rank One Nation above Labor becoming straight 1 One Nation voters.  Every time a voter flips from the Coalition-ON-Labor ordering to ON-Coalition-Labor, the overall preference flow from the Coalition to One Nation vs Labor weakens.  Some people are quite obsessed with the idea that this means the Coalition to One Nation flows will actually be much weaker than implied by past Senate flows - as if only moderates are still voting Liberal - but I'm extremely unconvinced of that.  I think the two things roughly cancel out.

If Field had actually bothered to learn how polls actually do the One Nation vs Labor figures, he would have seen that a voter for some other party who had switched to putting One Nation above Labor without switching to voting 1 One Nation would have actually been picked up by the pollster based on the methods the pollsters are actually using.  And he would have realised that the fact that pollsters get relatively weak flows to One Nation - even if they are wrong in so doing because of how to vote cards - is actually fatal to his argument about why flows should have shifted.  So three minutes down, and two complete blunders by Topher.

Field Doesn't Know How Preferences Flow

From the fourth minute of the video he is going to tell us that the Secret Harbour results show that preferences are now flowing from the Liberals to One Nation in "unprecedented percentages".  This is in spite of the general psephosphere reaction to this by-election having been that the preference flows to One Nation were actually somewhat weaker than we were expecting!  (Something that may have been explained by many things including the Liberals having the donkey vote which flowed to Labor on a long ballot paper, overlapping federal MP Andrew Hastie's criticisms of One Nation, the Liberals picking up votes from Labor that then returned to Labor as preferences, the One Nation candidate being a former cocaine user and so on ... the reason doesn't matter, what does is that nobody has previously claimed the preference flow to One Nation from the Liberals was strong.) 

He claims he'll do this (while boasting about being "nerdy" - no mate, nerds don't get their numbers wrong, this is the difference between nerds and cranks) by comparing the data from Secret Harbour to data from Farrer to show that things are quickly changing to One Nation's benefit.  

After a few minutes of waffling Field claims that in Secret Harbour One Nation got about 89% of the preferences from the Liberals, Libertarians, Australian Christians and Shooters Fishers and Farmers combined.  Where did he get these numbers?  He's actually done this - and please remove any sharp objects from a radius of 20 metres before you read the next bit as you could well roll at least that far on the floor laughing - he's observed that One Nation went from 39.04% primary to 57.15% 2CP, a gain of 18.11 points.  He's observed that those parties together got 20.31% of the vote.  And he's divided one by the other!  

That would work if every other parties' preferences flowed 100% to Labor.  But they don't, and if Field had bothered letting even the slightest research get in the way of his theory he would have, like, looked at past elections to see what they do - just like he looked at Farrer.  So in Hunter 2025 Stuart Bonds (who scraped into the top two against Labor) got 48.5% of Legalise Cannabis voter preferences and 12.6% from the Greens.  But Field has set these both, as well as Animal Justice, four independents and even the fairly right wing Western Australia Party, all to a flow rate of zero!  

Suppose I set the flow rate from the Greens and Legalise Cannabis at the same as Hunter and implausibly assume everyone else flowed 70-30 to Labor, then suddenly Field's 89% preference flow from the mainly Liberal right wing sources falls to 69%.  Before too long we will see an actual preference flow from the Liberal exclusion point (which includes voters for other parties who put the Liberals above One Nation and Labor) and it will be nothing like 89% to One Nation.  [Edit: Antony Green has reported the flow from Liberal from a sample of about half the votes was in fact 70.2% - and that's a sample where the overall flow is higher than average for the seat.]

The Problem With Poking The Bear

And oh dear.  I didn't know this was coming when I drafted the above text but eight minutes in Field has mentioned me, at length!  He starts by claiming that a psephologist is "an election forecaster and political pundit", which suggests he didn't do his work on that bit either - most of psephology is not forecasting, and all of it is the opposite of punditry.  

He then goes on to dispute my twitter bio claim to have "no party loyalties" but becomes yet another person to misunderstand it.  Amazingly it means exactly what it says: that I am not loyal to a party.  It doesn't mean that I am politically neutral, or have no views against any parties, or regard all equally.  If I meant to say "apolitical" I would have said it.  As I noted on the recent Poll Position pod, which Topher could have watched if he was so fascinated by me or had the slight interest in not making an even further twit of himself, the point of that line is just to warn people who are followers of any party that sooner or later I am going to have a go at it.  Some parties more than others of course, and currently One Nation about a dozen times a day, but you get that.  So Topher, you can take your advice about how to act while claiming to be neutral and give it to someone who actually makes that claim; I don't.  What I do claim is that I can have political views while also delivering neutral and accurate analysis of election results.  But thanks at least Topher for publicising my views, in particular on the rampant sookery of One Nation and the problem of fake patriots!

(He also suggests I treat Crikey as a reliable source.  In fact I treat all its pieces like any other media on their merits; he should see what I've said about Bernard Keane lately.)

Topher gets so fired up about his misinterpretation of three words in a microblogging bio that after a few minutes of this nonsense he declares that he has "no respect for [me] as a human being"!  Oh no I am so wounded, as if I would want the respect of anyone who is unable to read.  And then he declares I haven't done the work to understand myself, when he has so far showed that he has not done the work to understand: pollster preferences, the preference shift argument he is using, how preferences actually flow in elections, or what I mean by a term that actually means what it says.  And that's all in the first eleven minutes! To be accused of intellectual laziness by Topher Field, well ...

Now we're on to Field's next blunder.  Having blathered on about owning biases while failing to disclose that I have criticised him in the past and somehow ended up residing rent free in his head - accuses me of attempting to "control the narrative coming out of the Secret Harbour by-election" about One Nation's preference flows.  For some reason he does this by highlighting a tweet where I'm pointing out that One Nation's preference flows were actually not so bad as it looked earlier in the night, which is hardly the action of someone hellbent on claiming that their preference flows were crap.  Also if he actually bothered to read more of what I had said about the by-election, then far from using Secret Harbour to build a narrative of weak flow to One Nation, he would see I have repeatedly disputed attempts to generalise from it to predicting flows at other elections, and rejected calls to weaken flows in my own model because of it. So again, Topher cannot read, he doesn't do his research, and he doesn't care if he represents people he is criticising accurately.  

He goes on with some pseudomathematical babble about the 49% flow of preferences to One Nation being a supposed irrelevant denominator.  After several minutes of him again pretending to be a nerd with a brief break for flogging his merch, his complaint about this is that I am talking about an overall preference flow.  At present it's the only flow we have.  The fact is that overall flow to One Nation was somewhat lower than I would expect based on how the preferences of all the parties contesting have flowed in other contests.  And it's not just me who got that either - all the sources doing on the night projections were expecting the overall flow, given who the primary votes were for, to be over 50%.  In doing those models we were all already factoring in that voters for the Greens have very strong "preference discipline" to Labor.  But very strong is not 100%, or even nearly 100%, and even the difference between 100-0 and 90-10 can be a big deal in these cases.  As for the rest of the left, only Victorian Socialists nationally really display similar preference flows to the Greens.  Animal Justice were only 66% to Labor vs Coalition at the last federal election, Legalise Cannabis only 61% (and there is a lot of overflow between their support base and One Nation's, so the figure to Labor vs One Nation is probably weaker) and so on.  So Field just doesn't have a clue because, again, he hasn't done his research.  He has also chucked all the very random independents in this seat and even the WA Party in with the "left".

He gets back to Farrer where he claims the flow of 38.1% of preferences at the 3CP point from the Liberals to Michelle Milthorpe ahead of David Farley is evidence of preference indiscipline on the right.  But Farrer is a very local electorate and some people may have chosen the order Liberal-IND-ON based on which candidates they knew.  Another factor here is that the Liberals drew top spot on the ballot and the donkey vote flowed to Milthorpe.  Some Liberals may have been unconvinced that Farley was a real right winger anyway.  Candidate gender could have affected preference flows especially with Farley's past comments about Julia Gillard.  And so on.  Eventually he admits to some of these factors in one of the video's few moments of passing sanity, as well as noting that Farrer was independent vs One Nation and not a valid baseline for a Labor vs One Nation flow.  So, why did he even mention it?  I should also note on Farrer that breakdowns of preference flow by party voted for exist (and show the 1 Liberal flow to Farley was only 59% while the 1 Nationals flow was 69%); there is no need to just use the Liberal 3CP flow to talk about these things.  

26 minutes in he spells out what I'd already worked out - that he has assumed every single one of the preferences received by One Nation came from the right, although this assumption is patently ludicrous and shows him up as someone who should just shut up about election statistics forever.

Field then gets back to the Morgan poll.  He takes the 29.5 for Labor and adds the 13.5 from Greens (with their alleged 100% preference flow) and gets 42 (it's actually 43).  Then he queries where Labor gets the rest from.  And here he makes a still further blunder in thinking that Others is entirely other parties (left and right).  He ignores the fact that much of it is independents (or the ex-independents in Community Strong), whose preferences flow increasingly to Labor.  Indeed if he was being consistent with his Secret Harbour methods he would give Labor all the independent preferences, at which point Labor are getting more like three-quarters of others and even off his (wrongly low) 11% off the right Labor would get to something around 55-45 vs One Nation anyway.  Field wants to have his cake and eat it too - he wants to give Labor 8.8 points out of 11.8 for Others in Secret Harbour on a platter (a flow of at least 74.5%) but when it comes to the national polls he suddenly wants to cut Labor's flow from others down to half because he's forgotten that teals exist.   

This whole video by Field is a self-parodying shambles but it has somehow had a hundred thousand views.  I previously reviewed one of Field's marbles videos on here and while it had some serious flaws I think I gave it a fair go, and pointed out that Field at that time wasn't being angry and dumb about preferences and was at least trying to do the right thing by the so-called freedom movement.  But his latest video is angry and dumb about everything it touches and strongly recalls the crankery of the failed 2012 US Unskewed Polls movement - and such a waste when there was actually a valid point that was begging to be made against respondent preferencing.  Not one that would lift One Nation to victory at the moment, but one that could be worth, say, two points for them nationwide compared with the average of the respondent polls.

Libertarians for Fascism Unite!

One final thing I will say here.  I may not have that many libertarian bones in my body these days, but I do still have a lot more than One Nation.  And one thing I remember about this movement is that you're not supposed to hand it to the fash, or anything resembling fascism in any way.  A week after One Nation were whinging about the PM calling them dangerous, and on the same day of Topher's latest drooling about the rise of this party who he considers to be mostly freedom's friends, Cory Bernardi ripped off Trump (again) and tweeted "We will end the transgender movement."  Many within Australia's struggling libertarian movement made common cause with the alt-right and the far-right during the lockdowns.  If they are to stand true to the principles they claim they need to unmake it and fast.

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Updates 

Antony Green has published this.

I've been alerted to a second Topher Field video with more nonsense, posted to Youtube four days ago and Facebook yesterday.  In this one he starts by claiming One Nation outperformed their polling.  There simply was no seat polling for the Secret Harbour by-election (and as for betting markets being wrong, Sportsbet was wrong, Bet 365 was right, and who cares about betting anyway).  Field also wrongly says that no-one saw the result coming; local expert Martin Drum for instance correctly predicted that One Nation would win easily.  

Otherwise the video is just the nonsense I have dealt with above plus more tryhard attempts to call himself a nerd and general guff in favour of One Nation.  He also claims that 2-4% of voters cast donkey votes from top to bottom.  The donkey vote is generally at most 0.5% these days.   It was higher before party names appeared on the ballot.   If Field was actually capable of mathematical thought he would realise his claims were inconsistent here - if 2% of voters donkey vote then that caps the Liberal to One Nation flow at a maximum of 88.4% even if every other Liberal voter preferences One Nation, which of course wouldn't happen.  

Secret Harbour By-Election: Prospects And Live

Secret Harbour (ALP 11.54%)
George Tree (ALP) vs Luke Herdegen (ON), Ryan Robertson (Lib) and way too many others
Cause of by-election: resignation of Paul Papalia (ALP)

CALLED (9:34) One Nation gain from Labor

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Commentary (Comments scrolling up with latest first - refresh for latest comments)

Sunday 10:50 am I am not sure we'll ever see a Labor vs Liberal 2PP for this seat but I estimate that the Liberals would have won it, around 52-48 (by normal preference flows it would be around 53 but I have reduced that on account of it being a normally weak seat).  This suggests Labor would have lost this seat even without the One Nation surge.  Given that the average swing in government by-elections is around 5% an implied swing of 13.5% is high, but also Labor are coming off a still high baseline from the last election, which would account for some of it.  

With results like this there is always a lot of talk about high swings, but the 2CP swing is not meaningful as it is not the same combatants.  The swing against the Labor 2CP is what I call a pseudo-swing; both the pseudo-swing and my estimate of the 2PP swing are lower than in Rockingham 2023.

Sunday 6:00 am What has happened in the prepolls is that Herdegen has actually got a preference flow more like I was expecting for the by-election as a whole, 52.8% (which is not surprising given how strong the prepolls were on primaries for One Nation), and so the result has gone back to the high 50s, 57-43 at present, that was expected before the bad preference flows came in.  Overall now One Nation has 49% of preferences.  From the primaries I would have expected them to get about 52.7% without considering the ballot order, which would close at least a little of the gap.  

10:30 End of night wrap: The story of this by-election is mostly in the primary votes.  It was to be expected that all else equal One Nation could push well over 30 while Labor would drop into the same sort of range, but there was more to see than that:  39% for One Nation is above expectations and sub-25 for Labor isn't acceptable.  The Liberal primary is slightly higher than expected and I think they might have taken bites from Labor too, though it appears that for whatever reasons the Liberal flow to One Nation was quite weak.  This is a result that will resonate beyond WA and beyond Labor's candidate choice issues here because it does suggest that outer suburban seats with conventionally high One Nation votes are at risk.  

10:17 Just as I was thinking the prepoll would surely be many more hours or tomorrow it has dropped!  Herdegen is on an extremely strong 42.3% in it and One Nation have obviously now won.  They may well end up pushing 56-44.  

10:11 A riveting battle for last between Paul Gullan (23 votes) and Peter Dunne (26).  Legalise Cannabis have done okay and may or may not get their deposit back depending on prepolls.  

10:04 All booths except Secret Harbour EPP (day booth and prepoll) are in and it's still 53.9-46.1.  At the present rate I don't think I'll be staying up to see if the EPP reports tonight.  

9:50 I momentarily posted that I was calling this but that was based on a massive miscalculation of what Labor needed off the prepolls, so I've removed that - they simply need to about reverse what One Nation has done so far.  Nonetheless I think there is pretty much no chance anyway that Labor can do well enough to pull back the One Nation lead.  

9:27 Herdegen now out to a live lead 53.9-46.1. 

9:05 Another pile of postals has arrived (not yet counted to 2CP) which has done nothing for Labor's position; indeed my live projection is out to 53.3.  (Edit: Coastal Lakes College primaries have put it back to 53.1 but I think that's too low because of the size of the postal vote).  

8:57 William Bowe says the prepoll will report in two stages, firstly its day booth numbers and then the prepolls.  

8:40 Now projecting the two booths with outstanding 2CPs to turn a current 53.2 into 53.1.  Some more theories on the weak preference flow to Herdegen - firstly as a youngish candidate with a drug history he might not be playing well on preferences with older Liberal voters, though it seems not to be hurting his primary vote which is super-strong.  Secondly his position on the ballot paper is poor for catching preferences from the Liberals (indeed a few percent of the Liberal votes will just be donkeys).  

8:14 With the strong postal preference flow added to the model my live count estimate is now 52.6.  Closely matching the live total because there are not that many booth votes to be added to the 2CP.  Labor would need to comfortably win prepolls although they are probably losing day votes and that seems incredibly unlikely so I've now put One Nation back to expected win status.  

8:10 I've now got a variable flow model going and I'm projecting One Nation to 51.6 on the currently counted primaries - excluding the two remaining booths and prepolls.  The prepolls will decide if Labor has any chance left.  

8:02 Couple more booths in were pretty horrible for Labor on primaries.  Off the booths counted to primaries I'm projecting One Nation to 51.4% but that's on the preference flows from the booths counted to 2CP, and I think the flow to them will go up.  So One Nation clearly favoured again but I doubt it will be the huge win it earlier looked like.

7:57 I think the flows to One Nation may improve with more counting - both the booths counted have high Green votes.  But still, while they may be ahead it's probably not by a lot.  

7:46 And now some preference flows.  In Comet Bay College Herdegen is getting 43.9% and in Port Kennedy Primary he is getting 35.8%.  These are way, way weaker than I expected - maybe there's a Hastie factor here!  This aint over yet.  If these flows continue it will project to close to the wire - need to see more booths.

7:37 Couple of booths in, Comet Bay College with Herdegen 36.9 Tree 26 Robertson 14.4 Greens 9.6 and Port Kennedy Primary with Herdegen 32.9 Tree 28.2 Greens 14.0 Robertson 9.4.  Overall Labor are now 8.6% behind on primaries with the Liberals way ahead of the Greens so this is looking like a big win for One Nation.  

7:31 Mobiles have been added, highly unrepresentative with a strong Liberal vote.  (PollBludger was showing these as the WAEC prepoll but this has been corrected.)  The postals have been augmented with 2597 in now and now Herdegen has 35.5% to Tree 25.6% so a slight improvement for Labor there.  Notably the Poll Bludger projection has already called the seat.  

7:17 VOTES! We have 1277 postals and they are very nice indeed for Herdegen, he's on 35.9% to Tree 25.0% Robertson 18.8% the Greens have 7.8%, Legalise Cannabis 3.0% and the rest have nothing much (Paul Gullan has literally one vote).  Of course postals will favour the conservative side so this will come back but when the postals are projecting at something like 57-43 to One Nation (my estimate) this is going to take some serious coming back from.  Especially as postals are likely to favour the Liberals more than One Nation.

7:00 First hour down and nothing to see.  

6:35 Casey Briggs notes that 50.1% of enrolment voted before today, turnout will probably only be 80 or so so that doesn't leave much for the booths.  

6:05 Game on! Awaiting first numbers, this could be a while unless we get a little drop of mobile votes or something.  William Bowe relates that the WAEC doesn't disclose who the 2CP count is until they're confident they have the right pair, though in this case there's a good chance that won't take long.  While we wait you may be amused to note that in the 1990 Maylands by-election one Arthur Galletly (IND) scored a heroic 0.07% (12 votes), which I think even the worst of this lot could have their work cut out to get under.  He was one of six indies to get less than 1% in that one.  

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This is another combined prospects/live (with added snark) post for a state by-election of unusual interest.  Since One Nation surged into contention in national polling, there have been three by-elections involving the party: Farrer where it was very obvious they were the favourites, Nepean where they were not given any real chance of winning, and this one which is on paper a lot more up for grabs.  This is a key test of whether One Nation can deliver in the kinds of outer suburban seats that need to be the second string in their bow alongside rural seats if they are to break into parliaments in a big way.  That said it is a by-election and a win will not necessarily guarantee that they can do it at a competitive general election.  

Secret Harbour, on Perth's far southern outskirts and overlapping just into Mandurah, is a traditionally very strong Labor seat versus Liberals (it and its predecessors Peel and Warnbro have never been even close to marginal). But is also a seat where One Nation poll way above their average.  In 2025 it was One Nation's sixth best seat statewide in the Assembly (with 8.43% of the vote, less than a point off their best, behind only four rural seats and adjacent Mandurah).  However that is a tad misleading as they drew the top position on the ballot.  It was still their ninth best Legislative Council seat (the more reliable indicator of party strength) with 6.07% of the vote compared to a state total of 3.84%.

In the just-released DemosAU state poll, One Nation is getting 21% statewide.  Experience in peak elections like Queensland 1998 and SA 2026 is that One Nation surge more than uniform swing would expect in areas they were already doing well in.  If a normal election were to occur right now, then based off that poll One Nation would expect something like 30% in Secret Harbour.  And this is a by-election which is an opportunity to kick an incumbent government.  So except perhaps for the large field size it is easy to put One Nation north of 30.

Labor for its part is coming off a 46.5% primary in 2025 but is down 8.4 points in the DemosAU poll and this would be without considering the usual by-election factors of a seat being vacant and any extra kicking of the government.  On this basis it's easy to put Labor and One Nation in close enough to the same place on primaries (maybe Labor just a little ahead, on paper) and at the mercy of the size and preference flow strengths from mainly the Liberals and Greens. The Liberals shouldn't get a large vote though they should beat their 13.2% from 2021, especially after drawing the top of the ballot.  The Greens polled 8.8% in 2025 and are unlikely to match that in a crowded field.  Legalise Cannabis tend to do well here though it will be interesting to see how much One Nation tread on their toes, and the rest including some of Australia's most infamous serial candidates will be scrapping for detritus unless any of the indies can get anything.  I'll be watching how many deposits come back, but more than five would be a surprise, it might not even be that many.

There has been no real polling for this seat, just the West Australian embarrassing itself again by pretending that 120 is a sample size.  As William Bowe notes the 2025 election did not go well for their "exit polls".

Candidate Factors

This by-election is unusual in that although Labor and One Nation are the obvious frontrunners on paper both are running questionable candidates.  I doubt the news that Labor's Georgia Tree is on leave from Woodside lobbying will concern more than a handful of voters in a seat infested with tradies.  The fact that she lives 60 km outside the seat, and worse still in inner suburbia, despite having grown up in Warnbro might not go down as well.  

On the One Nation side, gym owner Luke Herdegen has attracted ripples mainly for news that he spent most of 2016 in a bowl of cocaine, from which he took brief breaks to consort with the Albanian underworld and lose at least one multi-millionaire girlfriend, like you do.  He's turned his life around but it does irk me when people support tough on crime policies when they themselves would not have been running for office had they been caught.  (Not that One Nation really care about drugs that much anyway, with the exception of puberty blockers.)  The media trail has gone quiet since the initial revelations rather than it turning into an embattled candidate saga and we will see if the voters care about this stuff either.  

The Liberals have copped flak from Canning federal MP Andrew Hastie, whose seat overlaps most of this one, for not trying to beat One Nation.  If One Nation win or at least thrash the Liberals there will be a strong sense they are coming for him (as if an endless stream of MRP projections where he loses the seat to One Nation 40-60 isn't enough foreboding yet; not everyone believes them.)

My view of this one overall is a win is a win is a win, both for Labor and One Nation.  It would be nice to win by lots but unlike a lot of by-elections there is no such thing as winning by not enough.  A close loss is no disaster for either side but if it's a substantial loss (46-54 or worse) then questions will have to be asked.  For Labor - you threw the kitchen sink at this in spending terms, was it your candidate selection or the feds what did it?  For One Nation - if you can't get close here and in a by-election (and after making very confident noises about it in the leadup) then precisely where, are you for real or is it just a bubble?  And so on.  

(One Nation are very confident and a Labor MP stating "We've lost this" on election eve seems to go a little beyond the usual ALP line in pessimistic expectation management.  For those following betting, which is amusing but not predictive, One Nation have been plunging and as of election day 8:30 am are at 2.25 vs 1.55, implied 41% chance)

Electoral Act Sooking

One of my pet themes is that for a party that claims to not care about expressing views that often cause offence, One Nation are often a bunch of sooks.  No more the case than with this complaint about a Labor attack flier where One Nation are alleging the flier is improperly authorised.  There is no requirement in the WA Electoral Act that both sides of a flier be authorised.  There is a requirement that both sides of a how-to-vote card be authorised, but only if both sides contain how-to-vote recommendations.

Election night

The day booth lineup is the same as in 2025 except that the Madora Bay booth has moved about 1.5 km to the north.  Also the Secret Harbour EPP polling place is open on election day, which I don't think it was in 2025.  Absent votes don't exist in by-elections but an odd thing with this one is that Labor did really badly on those on a 2PP basis in 2025 anyway.  Voting before the election is reported as being up by thousands on the combined postal and prepoll vote from 2025 so the count for the main prepoll could be a long one.  The huge number of pointless candidates will slow down counting too and it will be interesting to see if the WAEC can rebound after a 2025 election performance that ended with the then Commissioner resigning.

Tune in for an interesting count - comments from close of polls on, scrolling to the top.

EMRS: Thirty Or Turkey By Christmas?

EMRS Lib 26 (+1) ALP 23 (-1) ON 21 (+2) Grn 16 (+2) IND 14 (-2) others 1 (-1)

Seat estimate (new boundaries) Lib 10 ALP 9 ON 8 Green 5 IND 3

The latest EMRS poll is out as released on the Poll Position pod and the changes on state voting intentions are all within the in-theory margin of error from the previous edition.  There would be mild relief for the government that the dramatic slide in its numbers in the past few polls has stopped.  But political tragics could only have eyes for the ALP figure after leader Josh Willie was reported to have set a target of polling a 30% primary by Christmas.  (Something I somehow, in a feat tantamount to winning the Last Man contest for not knowing the Superbowl winner, managed to not find out about for a month!)  

This figure has led to predictable jibes from opponents that not only will Labor not attain this heroic goal (oh for the days when they were forever stuck around 30) but that Willie will instead be gone as leader by Christmas. Although Labor's primary has actually held up better to the One Nation surge than might have been expected, there seems to be an unusual level of Labor leadership chatter about.  It's hard to tell if it is serious or if a lot of people are just and quite rightly bored.  Some of it is connected to the issue that continues to dog (pun intended) the Opposition, with a Thick Of It style nadir when Willie was photographed defending Labor's unfashionable support for greyhound racing in front of a Dogs Prohibited sign. 

Four Year Terms? Fixed Terms? Fixed Four Year Terms? Part One - Polling

This week there was an article regarding a report released by a lobby group called 4 Year Terms Australia, which supports "fixed" four year terms for federal parliament.  The SMH report contained this very brief comment regarding polling:

"Polling commissioned from JWS Research found just one in five Australians supported the current system of three-year terms and the prime minister choosing the election date."

Well, from that it may sound like Australians would strongly support "fixed" four year terms, right?  In fact the polling cited tells a rather different story.

I've decided to write one article on this subject dealing mainly with the polling, to be probably (subject to time) followed by another in the near future dealing with the (de)merits of the issue.  That said there will be few surprises on the latter front to anyone who's seen my article re fixed terms in Tasmania or my 2025 JSCEM submission.   To summarise my views, I'm totally against "fixed" federal terms, whether by legislation or referendum.  I think that fixed term laws either fail to genuinely secure fixed dates or else prevent Prime Ministers from calling elections in circumstances where they should be able to.  I'm also against four year federal terms if it means eight year Senators.  

Group Ticket Voting In Victoria Is Finally Gone!

Today is Victoria's first day since the mid-2000s without Group Ticket Voting in state elections.  Legislation to abolish the system received Royal Assent yesterday.  It could still in theory be challenged in court but I doubt that would go too well for the challenger after the failed Bob Day federal challenge.

There's a saying that success has many fathers while failure is an orphan.  Meaning that when something good happens a lot of people suddenly want to claim the credit.  

Since group ticket voting was abolished in Victoria we've seen, for instance, GetUp! claiming partial credit for their petition which highlighted the recent attempt by Avi Yemini and others to register fake parties.  Yemini's defenders (including Topher Field in a ridiculous video where he abusively misunderstands comments to the Guardian by yours truly) have been out saying GetUp! and others who reacted were just "useful idiots" and their tactic with the fake parties was to generate exactly such outrage against group ticket voting to increase the chance of it being scrapped.  Well, to be useful idiots you firstly have to be useful so this suggests that GetUp! actually did do something after all.  I will say here that at least GetUp! only claimed partial credit while Yemini and co have had no compunction about claiming the lot.  But I'm not sure GetUp!'s petition with 22000+ "signatures" was ever even presented to anybody! I am nonetheless glad that they raised awareness of the issue.

Group Ticket Voting: Going, Going ... ? (Rolling Thread)

GTV repeal has passed Assembly unanimously and Legislative Council with a handful of votes against.

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There is more encouraging news on the Group Ticket Voting front today with the Allan Carroll Government finally amid the chaos introducing a Bill to scrap group ticket voting in the Victorian Legislative Council, called the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026.  This rolling thread will follow what happens with this Bill during the week and what is in it.  (A note that I am tracking the registration of deceptively named parties for the Victorian election in this prior post.)

What is known so far is that the Bill will "remove group voting tickets from Legislative Council elections and prescribe a new method for voting above the line, requiring electors to number at least five groups in order of preference. The bill will also make other consequential and miscellaneous amendments to clarify and improve the operation of the Electoral Act and the electoral system in Victoria."

This establishes that the Bill will support a semi-optional Senate-style preferential system (possibly the simple "five above or five below" option), presumably with savings provisions for voters who number fewer above the line boxes.  This is the sensible choice as it encourages preference flows compared to a fully optional preferencing version as in states with lower quotas.

Not-A-Poll Reset 2 of 2026: Allan Resigns

It's another success for voters in the Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll as the outright majority favourite was indeed the next leader to depart, improving the record of Not-A-Poll to 8/15 including six of the last seven.

When I opened voting on 13 February there was a spirited initial battle between Jacinta Allan and Angus Taylor with the lead swapping a few times over several hours.  In following days Allan built a large lead with for some reason a lot of votes for her on 18 and 20 February.  Over time this grew into a majority.  Allan was a promising bet because her dire leadership ratings and her party's wobbly voting intention polling suggested there were two different ways she could go, and nobody else seemed especially likely to go before the Victorian election.

Allan formally resigned but was facing an active challenge that appeared very likely to succeed.  Had Allan resisted (assuming she had sufficient signatures) there would have been a member ballot in which she would have needed an overwhelming margin to defeat Ben Carroll.  

Tasmania Redistribution: The Franklin Renaming Fiasco

In 1984 there was a proposal to rename the electorate that is now called Lyons (and was then called Wilmot) "Truganini".  For a little while this was being reported and discussed in papers, there was widespread opposition and the change was withdrawn.  Wilmot became Lyons instead.  I was twelve years old at the time and I remember this in broad outline.  But I wonder if the Augmented Electoral Commission's corporate memory goes back this far.  

Unfortunately we yet again have had a redistribution proposal for a Tasmanian electorate to have an Aboriginal name where that proposal has been supported out of pretty much nowhere and sparked significant opposition.  Last week's boundary announcement has seen 272 written submissions, most of them opposing the proposed replacement of the name Franklin with Tongerlongeter.

I want to contrast this with the process that led to the replacement of the name Denison with Clark.  By the time this change was made in the 2017 redistribution, there was a very well organised movement to change Denison to Clark.  This proposal had been active in the previous cycle and by the 2017 cycle its adherents included several prominent Tasmanians, judges, current and former politicians and there was even a petition supporting it.  It is true that the new name was not endorsed until the Augmented Electoral Commission stage but by that stage the proposal was so well known that anyone with anything to say had said it, and the change of name attracted only three further objections, I don't think any of them from Tasmanians.  People might have agreed or disagreed with the change but people knew why the change was being proposed, why Clark if there was a new name, and why there were objections to Denison.

Victoria 2026: The Election Where All Sorts Of Things Can Happen!

Victoria Aggregate Labor 26.0 Coalition 27.3 Green 12.8 One Nation 23.7 others 10.3
(polls are probably underestimating "others" vote)
2PP estimate 52.0 to Coalition vs ALP, shadow-2PP ALP 50.1 vs One Nation

Currently Coalition would be likely to govern in minority with One Nation support, with One Nation seat tally around the mid-teens

One Nation and Labor seat numbers are highly dependent on Coalition preferencing decisions

Both major parties are still capable of majority government with a modest swing from current primaries

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It's been forever - largely because of the amount of work I had on in the first half of the year - since the last time I looked at Victorian state polling in the leadup to this year's election in any depth but finally a good time to do so has arrived.  What I see, at the moment, is a picture with a lot of possibilities.  Arguments can be made on current polling that the Allan Labor Government, while currently behind, is not far from surviving.  Arguments can also be made that it is not far from losing the election so badly that it may not even be the second party.  For now this is a really difficult election to model - much harder than South Australia - but perhaps by polling day things will get a lot clearer.  This one is a rather mathsy modelling article that has been rated 3/5 on the Wonk Factor scale.  

Is Group Ticket Voting Really On The Way Out In Victoria?

The last week has brought the encouraging news via both The Age and The Herald-Sun that Victorian Labor is preparing legislation to scrap Group Ticket Voting at the last possible chance before this year's election. According to the reports, the legislation will be brought in in the sitting week starting July 28, and would presumably pass both houses quickly in order to meet the VEC's August deadline.  

Let's hope this is finally it for all this nonsense!  I understand the smaller parties may be reluctant to vote for a new system under which their chances of winning any seats are greatly reduced for now thanks to the Bracks Government's entrenchment blunders, so I'll cut them slack so long as they refrain from making false claims in defence of their position.  But if any major party stands in the way or does nothing this time then there is no excuse for them not caring about democracy.  

Tasmania Redistribution: Announcement Day Live Thread

Today could be a momentous day in the history of Tasmanian electoral boundaries!  Or it could be a nothing-ever-happens.  Around mid-morning today there will be a boundary announcement.  If the announcement is either the same as the draft boundaries or only slightly different then that's it and the new boundaries will be official for federal elections after 8 October.  It usually takes several months for them to then be adopted at state level via legislation, so an early state election before, say, mid-2027 would not necessarily be on the new boundaries.  

Alternatively the Augmented Electoral Commission could recommend substantively different boundaries, which would result in further rounds of consultation.  I have seen no variations from process that would suggest there is any intent to do this so far, but I am not sure if that should be taken as a sign that it's not happening.  

My previous articles are here:

Clark Must Expand But Where?

Draft Scraps The Franklin Divide

The Reaction

Once the announcement is up I will be posting details of what has been decided.  I'm not Ben Raue or William Bowe so please do not expect new margin calculations from this source.  However I will have summaries and comments about the decision, whatever it is.  

DemosAU: Could Hare-Clark Help One Nation Shift Tasmania To The Right?

DemosAU Liberal 28 Labor 21 One Nation 21 Greens 14 IND 12 SF+F 2 Others 2

Seat estimate if these vote shares were recorded in election "held now" Lib 10 ALP 9 ON 8 Grn 4 IND 4

After a previous state poll which did not explicitly include One Nation, DemosAU have now included them in their Tasmanian state polling for the first time.  The party, which has been advertised for state registration, debuts on 21%, similar to the 19% it recorded in the May EMRS.  But if we add the Liberal and One Nation votes in the EMRS poll, we get 44%.  In the DemosAU poll, it is 49.

This raises a thought experiment.  Yes, we know One Nation is trashing the Liberal vote everywhere and that they would win seats from the Liberals in Tasmania right now.  But what if, by taking votes from Labor and increasing the overall right vote, they ended up taking a fourth seat for the right in Bass (where the right nearly won four last time anyway), a third seat for the right in Franklin (ditto) and - though this I think would be the hardest part - a third seat for the right in Clark?  (That's on the current boundaries; if the proposed new boundaries are accepted I expect similar scenarios to emerge).  

It's a very long way to the next election, or is it?  After the historic censuring of Premier Rockliff, as prospective Senator Stansfield notes in the latest Poll Position pod, at some point there will be another scandal.  And at that point Labor will have painted themselves into an even tighter corner than before. If they don't want to force another election that nobody wants and that now also floods the House with One Nation, they can either form a government nobody understands, or look comically impotent as they pass meaningless censure motions or do nothing.  

Tas Liberal Senate Turnover As Duniam And Askew To Go

I had a piece in drafts almost ready to release for weeks about this, but perhaps just as well I didn't since further developments have rendered the draft somewhat out of date.   The last few weeks have seen major news in the leadup to the expected 2028 half-Senate election with the Tasmanian Liberal ticket to lose both its incumbents.  Incumbent since 2019 Wendy Askew was to retire at the end of the term but will now resign in coming weeks while incumbent since 2016 Jonno Duniam will quit by the end of this year.  Askew's successor will get something like 20 months and Duniam's successor about 17 in the Senate in the lead-up to the next election, assuming it is on schedule and not early. 

The preselection currently underway is for the next election but I would expect that the top two candidates will inherit the seats of Askew and Duniam unless there are twists regarding availability.  

While it may seem disastrous for the Liberals to be go in with no incumbents, in some ways it is an advantage to them compared to if just one incumbent departed now.  The party now has more flexibility in planning a 2028 ticket from scratch without, for instance, feeling pressured to choose a female candidate as the sole winner of the vacancy race as might have been the case had only Askew departed. 

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).  

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"

"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.