Farrer By-Election 2026

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

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

Farrer

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

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

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

Who's in the mix?

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

* Liberals.  

* Nationals.  (Not confirmed running) As the seat is vacant the Nationals are free to contest it.  It would be surprising if they did not do so as they really do not like it when the Liberals occupy rural seats. 

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

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

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

Also-rans 

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

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

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

* Gerard Rennick People First was reported by 6 News as running, the prospect being of vivid interest to nobody; they came last with 2.02% in 2025.  

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

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

Prospects

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

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

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

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

Dalton as a One Nation candidate would have a hybrid appeal that could make the Coalition parties' task very difficult.  Questions would be asked: do One Nation actually care less about water issues?  She has quit the Shooters and retained her state seat massively, is there any reason to believe she would stay with One Nation if elected? (Then again given One Nation's historically woeful MP retention rates, that question should be asked very loudly re any candidate the party runs.)

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

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

Polls etc

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

A projection tweeted by the 6 News @auspoll6 Twitter account 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.

More will be added through the campaign.