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)

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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.

12:10 Signage of concern: The AEC has issued a statement concerning an inappropriate election sign.  In my view this sign further underlines the need for laws in all jurisdictions that specifically target electoral material that gives a false impression of endorsement by an election authority.  Breaching such a law should be a very serious offence.  

Intro 11:30 am

Well here we are at election day for the rather odd Farrer by-election.  Absent of a Labor candidate in a seat where they would not be competitive anyway, this one is mainly seen a litmus test for what we have seen in national polling with One Nation having surged to a level just above the Coalition.  That picture has stabilised since about February; it's even possible that One Nation might be going down very slightly.  More on federal polling here after the Budget.  However the by-election has become peculiar as such things go because of revelations that the One Nation candidate David Farley has supported both Labor and independent Michelle Milthorpe (now his main rival) in the very recent past.  Will this hurt Farley or are voters seeing him as a semi-independent in a positive way as they did with Helen Dalton when she was elected as a notional Shooters Fishers and Farmers candidate at state level?  All sorts of history beckons - an opposition has never missed the 2CP in its own seat in a federal by-election, and One Nation have never before won a by-election at state or federal level, nor have they ever won a federal seat with an endorsed candidate.  Also complicating the picture is the fact that while receiving Climate 200 funding and support, Milthorpe's energy comments make her not exactly a teal from central casting.  

My guide to this by-election has been here.  It is widely expected - but curiously not by voters in my sidebar Not-A-Poll - that Farley will win, perhaps easily, and that he could well lead on primaries.  

As concerns tonight firstly the prepoll lineup is essentially the same as at the general election, except that three prepolls that were just outside the electorate have been replaced with prepolls just inside.  We can treat Barooga as a like for like with Cobram, Burong for Mildura and Mulwala for Yarrawonga.  None of these are all that large anyway and all of them are conservative and on the whole likely to be One Nation leaning compared to the average.

As of the end of counting Thursday 38956 prepolls had been received; a total of about 46624 were counted in 2025 and there would have been more added on Friday; the AEC has posted that about 47.5K will be the final prepoll count.  15801 postals have been issued with 10.5K received so far, there may be another 3000 or so to actually return but a small portion of all postals that return will be rejected.  In 2025 10983 postals made it into the count.  

A big suspense item for tonight's count is who the AEC will count the notional two-candidate count between; if they pick the wrong pair then the 2CP figures on the night will be useless and those will be realigned in coming days, or potentially there may need to be a 3CP to determine the correct final two.  (The AEC will be briefing election media about the progress of the count mid-week in the event that things are messy).  It is generally expected (and backed by such polling as exists) that the 2CP in the seat will be Farley vs Milthorpe with the Liberals missing the 2CP in their own seat but whether the AEC goes with ON vs IND, Lib vs ON or Lib vs IND remains to be seen.   In the event that the Coalition combined primary exceeds either Farley's or Milthorpe's we will not know the Coalition/ON/IND split from the minor Coalition candidate on the night.  

Meanwhile there will always be other curious aspects of this count - how bad will the informal rate be?  How many of this lot will recover their deposits? And so on.  

By-elections are magnets for clueless turnout sookery so people should bear in mind that wherever turnout gets to by the end of tonight will not be final.  By-election turnout is frequently down several points on the main election, especially when a major party doesn't contest.  

At 8:30 tonight I will be joining Ben Raue for some live streaming of the count.