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.

Sunday 3:45 Is This A Record: The massive swings to the Liberals and against One Nation have had me asked, is this a record?  I get the primary vote swing against the Liberals as the highest in a by-election since the 32.1% swing against Labor in ACT 1970 (Labor nonetheless won the seat and the next election).  The swing to One Nation is the highest in a by-election to a recontesting party ever, except for the dubious case of Gwydir 1937 (44.2% to the official ALP in the absence of Labor (NSW)).  There have been some higher by-election swings involving parties and independents starting from scratch.

Sunday 9:00: Milthorpe did do well on the last prepoll and the margin sits at 57.3-42.7, this may go up a little on remaining postals but won't change much.  I've had a question about what would have happened had the Coalition recommended preferences to Milthorpe: if normal Coalition HTV card rate follow rates had applied, Milthorpe would be leading something like 51.5-48.5.  However with the low Coalition vote and the likelihood that voters would have seen such a recommendation as puzzling, I'm not sure that would have played out.  It's also possible that the Liberal attacks on Farley caused some voters to not follow the card anyway.  At least, it would have been much closer.  

11:20 All in on primaries now, EAV Farrer will be very few if any votes, a couple not yet in on 2CP.  Good job by AEC to get all booths counted this quickly.

10:54 Only two prepolls left, one of which may be very small.  Looking at the Greens' 2.22%, unless they can get it above the 2.56% they got in Grey 2016 it will be their worst result in a seat (general election or by-election!) since 2.21% in Flynn 2013 or perhaps even 1.97% in Flynn 2007.  This in the absence of a Labor candidate ... not good!

10:35 A few prepolls coming in, now six to go, but no major change to the picture.  

9:30 So what have we seen?  Some big picture comments while waiting to see what other booths come in.  Labor were very wise to sit this one out but it was hardly a difficult decision.  There could well be specific factors in the nature of the Liberals' utter drubbing here: anger at Sussan Ley's dumping as leader, the unusual nature of the One Nation candidate, local water issues - but looking at the extent to which the Liberals have been smashed here the Coalition has reason to be very nervous across a host of rural seats; for the time being at least what is going on in the polls is fully real.  Normally the messages sent by voters at by-elections are against the government (and we saw the Liberals do just fine in the Nepean state by-election last weekend) but in this case voters have turned on the Opposition, kicking an Opposition out of the top two in a seat it held for the first time ever at federal level.  (I am not sure how many cases of this there are at state level if any).  

I don't know if Michelle Milthorpe was ever going to be that competitive here.  Voting in a Climate 200 backed independent would have seemed too much like politics as normal in a decidedly right-leaning seat, and would have rewarded the government.  Milthorpe tried to get away from the "teal" label but without a lot of success.  While she has a swing on primaries, it's in the absence of Labor and with a very low Greens result.  I would think that some voters who would have backed her as a way to send a rocket to the majors have just found a bigger rocket.  

9:20 Every booth apart from some of the hospital and remote booths is now in.  Still waiting for eight prepolls.  Being mostly the larger sort they are likely to drag down the 2CP somewhat though I'm liking 58 more as an endpoint than my earlier 57.  It doesn't matter, Farley has won a thumping victory.  

9:12 Sorry for the technical problems with that!  No idea what happened with my internet there.  

8:48 Online at Tallyroom now.

8:12 Yeah it's not looking good for the Greens' deposit here.  They might still get over Legalise Cannabis because the latter are dropping back.

7:55 Looking at the others, at the moment nobody outside the big four is recovering their deposit, though the Greens will presumably come up as more of Albury enters the frey.  They would hope to as they're currently on 2.4% behind Legalise Cannabis (again!) I'm calling last for Roger Woodward, no idea what he was doing running here.  

7:50 I do think this is likely to finish up under 60-40 now, perhaps 57 or so.  Milthorpe is doing better in some of the later Albury booths in and also the preference flow is continuing to even up.  

7:46 Some of Milthorpe's best booths from the federal election are in and even in these she is down on the 2CP pseudo-swing.  CALLED.  

It is interesting that the preference flow to Farley so far isn't stronger.  It may be he's ripped out so much of the Coalition vote that only very moderate voters are left in any numbers.  

7:37 With more data, the corellation between One Nation's vote last time and the swing this time came back, and the other corellations continued, so they're doing better in small booths and booths where they did well.  All three projections say One Nation is winning easily, somewhere around 60-40.    The first prepoll is now in, Buronga and that isn't doing anything unusual compared to what we have seen before.  

7:30 Another projection method now is 2025 2CP vs 2026 2CP and this suggests One Nation are winning very easily.  Even in Springdale Heights which was a good booth for Milthorpe in 2025 she is only barely winning the 2CP.  William Bowe and Ben Raue both just called the seat.

7:20 The bigger booths are now dropping to low 20s.  At the last election the median booth voter voted in a booth with 734 voters which would put One Nation on about 40% in the booths, maybe a bit higher this time because the booth size will be slightly smaller.  So that's another way of trying to project this.

7:12 There is a relationship between booth size and swing to ON though, at present in the largest booths it's tracking around 33 and in the higher booths towards 50.  And now as more booths come in Farley is dropping down to the low 40s, such as that is.   

7:00 Now as more booths come in my model is finding NO corellation between previous ON vote and swing to One Nation which means it thinks for now Farley is just going to keep doing what he's doing now all night and win hugely!  I suspect there'll be an urban component that will drag that down but this is a great start for Farley.  

6:53 Springdale Heights says hello as the first booth with One Nation sub 40 and Milthorpe on 32.  In an early projection off five booths based on an assumed nonlinear swing I am putting ON on high 30s, 38.6% to be precise ... let's see how bad that is later on!

6:50 Two more in and One Nation continually smashing it in the littlies, though these are booths they did well on last time.  Milthorpe now has a primary vote swing to her after four booths, albeit just a small one.  

6:38 Booth two, an obvious candidate for silliest booth name in Burrumbuttock with a 60.7% One Nation vote (a 49% swing in a strong booth for them to begin with.)  Milthorpe down a lot in this one. I would expect there will also be some relationship between booth size and swing, or otherwise this is going to be called very quickly! 

6:30 We've got votes!  46.4% for Farley off 88 votes at Rankins Springs (a mere 42% swing).  For what it's worth that's fairly close to where he lives.  Milthorpe down 2.3% (she's coming off 20% seatwide but I suspect that swing will change.)  Also for what it's worth, a 19-15 break to Milthorpe on preferences which are mostly from the Coalition.

6:00 And we're on!  The AEC 2CP is ONE NATION vs MILTHORPE (IND).  If these are not the correct top two it will be realigned.  Note that primary vote swings to ON in early rural booths are likely to be exaggerated compared to those they get later.  For this reason projections off the 2025 totals are likely to be unreliable. (I'll be running projections on the assumption of a non-linear swing to One Nation later tonight if the data back that up.)  There are certainly cases of incumbent parties missing the final two at elections but I wonder if one has ever been left out of the initial notional 2CP before!  

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.  UPDATE: The AEC has obtained an injunction against the signs which have now appeared at other booths.

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, Buronga 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.

47591 prepoll votes have been cast; 46624 were counted in 2025.  15801 postals have been issued with about 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.  These numbers will be offset by the absence of 5439 absent and out of electorate prepoll votes from 2025 so the number of total votes in non-booth categories will be down by about 2000.

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 final 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? Who will finish last?  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.