Resolve Strategic: Labor 27, Coalition 29, One Nation 21 in Victoria

The Age has Resolve Strategic’s bi-monthly poll on Victorian state voting intention, compiled as usual from the Victorian responses to its last two monthly national polls. The primary votes are Labor 27%, Coalition 29%, One Nation 21%, Greens 10%, independents 7% and others 6%.

Comparing this to the previous result is not straightforward, as that result combined January polling in which One Nation was rolled into “others” and February polling when it was broken out for the first time. This is evident from a chart in The Age’s report that unusually gives us the monthly results for February, March and April, the first of which had One Nation on 22% – half the published result from the aggregated bi-monthly poll, which put it well out of kilter with other pollsters. The two components of the current result are, for March, Labor 27%, Coalition 31%, One Nation 19% and Greens 9% (conducted March 8 to 14 from a sample of 519); for April, Labor 26%, Coalition 27%, One Nation 23%, Greens 11% (conducted April 12 to 18 from a sample of 528). Jess Wilson holds a 39-20 lead over Jacinta Allan on preferred premier, unchanged from February.

The recent and spectacular emergence of One Nation as a factor in Victorian state politics has required reworking of the BludgerTrack Victoria 2026 poll aggregate, since pollsters were uniform in disregarding the party until the start of this year. This has been dealt with by treating pre-January polling as a separate series, as is clearly observable on the “primary vote” chart. Also clearly observable is that the trend isn’t doing much in the way of smoothing at present, there being only seven data points for the new series to work from. That should hopefully resolve as more polls are published.

The remainder of this post will summarise recently accumulated Victorian electoral news, of which there is a very great deal to get through due to the imminence of a state election now seven months away, and the fact that I had my eye off the ball during a particularly stimulating South Australian election. There is also the fact of Saturday week’s Nepean by-election, for which I have published a guide to go with the ones for the Farrer federal by-election a week after and the Stafford by-election in Queensland another week hence. I will have a dedicated post up on the by-election early next week.

This post has developed into an epic mostly due to the extraordinary drama provided by the Liberal Party’s Legislative Council preselections. Most remarkable was the imbroglio over Western Metropolitan region, where incumbent Moira Deeming, central figure in the controversies that have embroiled the party since the last election, was defeated in the initial ballot for top position on the ticket on March 29. The winner was Dinesh Gourisetty, restaurant owner and Indian community figure, who received 39 votes to Deeming’s 26, with another three going to the party’s other incumbent in the region, Trung Luu. Deeming did not nominate for the ballot for second position, which was won by Trung Luu ahead of Metro Trains operations manager Tim Beddoe.

The defeat of a high-profile incumbent was just the beginning, as the process returned to square one with Gourisetty’s withdrawal the very next day, after it emerged (“with Machiavellian timing”, in the estimation of Chip Le Grand of The Age) that he had provided a character reference for a friend who had pleaded guilty to grooming and sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. Gourisetty said he was not aware of the details of the allegations and believed the friend to be contesting the charge, but the reference said he believed him to be “sorry to the complainant for what he has done”. The Herald Sun reported “multiple Liberal sources” claiming the state executive, and in particular state president Phil Davis, had been aware of the issue but turned a blind eye through their determination to unseat Deeming, though this was “vehemently rejected by Davis and his supporters”.

Under party rules dealing with such a contingency, Deeming was deemed to have automatically nominated for the preselection re-run, and emerged as the only candidate after a 36-hour nomination process that required nominees to provide a police check, credit report, ten signatures from eligible party members and a statutory declaration encompassing nearly 100 questions. A nomination from real estate agent Bobby Lakra was rejected because it lacked the required two referees, but The Age quoted a source saying he had resolved the matter before the deadline, and that his exclusion was “a stitch-up which Lakra was seeking to challenge”. Two allies of Deeming, Tim Beddoe and Stephen Murphy (the former’s nomination carrying over automatically from the first round), withdrew amid lobbying on Deeming’s behalf by Jess Wilson.

The saga brought into focus the eye-watering application fees the Victorian Liberals introduced for preselection nominations late last year, amounting to $5000 for nominations in seats held by the party and $3000 elsewhere. This includes $3000 for an external consultancy to vet candidates, which would appear not to have delivered value for money in Gourisetty’s case. The Australian’s Victoria Ink column relates a dossier compiled by disgruntled party members (presumably factional conservatives) argued the measure served the interest of a “specific factional profile”.

Also in the Liberals’ upper house preselections that have developed over recent weeks:

• Conservative incumbent Bev McArthur defeated a challenge from former Geelong mayor Trent Sullivan to retain top position on the ticket for Western Victoria, by a margin the Herald Sun reported as 75 to 26. Second position went to Graham Watt, who held the lower house seat of Burwood from 2010 to 2018 and ran unsuccessfully in Melton in 2022. The party’s second incumbent for the region, Joe McCracken, announced in January that he would not seek re-election. Evidently not in serious contention was mortgage broker Manish Patel, whose candidate statement was withdrawn and revised after complaints about defamatory references to McArthur, as reported by The Australian’s Victoria Ink column. Susanna Marro, a beef farmer and factional ally of McArthur, withdrew days before the vote after the applicant review committee raised concerns over her online engagement with content linked to neo-Nazi extremists.

• The top position in Northern Victoria region, which will be vacated with the retirement of Wendy Lovell, will be filled by Steve Brooks, a fruit grower and high school teacher who ran for the federal seat of Nicholls in 2022. Second position is reserved for the Nationals, who have a defending sitting member in Gaelle Broad. Amanda Millar, who briefly served the region from 2013 to 2014, will be in third position after running unsuccessfully for first. Carly Douglas of the Herald Sun reported Strathbogie councillor Claire Ewart-Kennedy, who had been “backed by party heavyweights”, was considering running as an independent after her nomination was rejected for being submitted a day past the deadline.

• The Australian reports Anne-Marie Hermans was relegated to second position in South-Eastern Metropolitan after losing the top position to Phillip Pease, who was once a staffer to former MLC and factional moderate Matthew Bach. Noted conservative Renee Heath retained top position in Eastern Victoria against a challenge from author and journalist Sue Smethurst.

Other preselection news:

• Three Labor retirement announcements were made concurrent with the last week’s reshuffle, with vacancies looming in Danny Pearson’s seat of Essendon, Mary-Anne Thomas’s seat of Macedon, and Gayle Tierney’s upper house seat in Western Victoria region. The Australian’s Victoria Ink column earlier reported that Treasurer Jaclyn Symes, who represents Northern Victoria region in the Legislative Council, had moved to Essendon amid suggestions she would seek to succeed Pearson.

• Labor has announced candidates in two Greens-held seats: Yarra councillor Sarah McKenzie in Richmond, which Gabrielle de Vietri gained from Labor in 2022, and former teacher and publican Davydd Griffiths in Melbourne, which party leader Ellen Sandell has held since 2014.

• The Greens have preselected Merri-bek councillor Adam Pulford as their candidate to defend the seat of Brunswick, after incumbent Tim Read announced his retirement on health grounds. Mark Phillips of Brunswick Voice reports Pulford was chosen ahead of two council colleagues, Ella Svensson and Jay Iwasaki. Campbell Gome will again run for the Greens in Northcote after falling just short in 2022.

• The Herald Sun’s Backroom Baz column relates that Bernie Finn, a former conservative Liberal MP who failed to win re-election in 2022 when he ran for the Democratic Labor Party, has joined One Nation. Finn was previously lined up to be a candidate for Family First but was disendorsed over a “rant on social media”.

• Liberal leader Jess Wilson will again face competition in her seat of Kew from Sophie Torney, who polled 21.1% when she ran as an independent in 2022 with the endorsement of the Kew Independents community group and financial support from Climate 200. A uComms poll of 914 respondents provided to the media by Torney’s campaign has Wilson on 38% (44.3% at the 2022 election), Torney on 17% (21.1%), Labor on 13.5% (22.7%) and One Nation on 13%.

• Local outlet Somerville Times & Peninsula Local News relates that Frank Schiefler, a political adviser who formerly served in the army, has been preselected as the Liberal candidate for Hastings. A rival contender, Shane Osborne, withdrew his nomination, quit the party and is now seeking preselection with One Nation. The Herald Sun’s Backroom Baz column says that, as in neighbouring Nepean, local party members had been angered that the candidate had been imposed by the state executive.

• Publican Andrew Lethlean, who came within 1.4% of an upset win in Bendigo at the May 2025 federal election, has been confirmed as the Nationals candidate to run against Jacinta Allan in Bendigo East.

• With former Nationals leader Peter Walsh set to retire, the Herald Sun’s Backroom Baz column reports that the leading preselection contender for his seat of Murray Plains is Victorian Farmers Federation president Brett Hosking, although he faces competition from Loddon mayor Dan Straub and “former senior Liberal Party official” Alex Lew.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics. View all posts by William Bowe