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Click here for full display of Secret Harbour by-election results
Election night commentary
8:03pm. Six booths in now on the primary vote, and the more recent ones have been even worse for Labor than the earlier ones. Nothing further on TCP though.
7:56pm. I suspect that 60% flow of preferences to Labor will fade as more results come in: a big component of it is Port Kennedy Primary School, which was a particularly strong result for the Greens relative to the Liberals.
7:56pm. My system is still calling a One Nation win, but the margin has been slashed, and prima facie the call looks too aggressive for my tastes.
7:52pm. The preference flow is a surprise: 60-40 in favour of Labor. With the next update my system should start using that flow instead of an estimate that was going nearly 55-45 the other way, and there’s a good chance my call of a One Nation win will be retracted.
7:48pm. The WAEC has released the hounds on the TCP count, which it is correctly conducting on a Labor-versus-One Nation basis.
7:47pm. A second batch of postals has been added, the total thereof being up from 1277 to 2597, and it does nothing to change the picture.
7:40pm. There is a consistent picture of a 20% drop in the Labor vote. The One Nation swings are more uneven — the mobile result is the big outlier, probably because it’s attending different places from last time.
7:37pm. It’s all happening now: my 90% ceiling is off and the call for a One Nation win is back on. That’s with a projected margin of 7.7%, which is a lot gentler for Labor than the ABC’s 10.5%. Both of us are applying speculative preference flow estimates, and there are lots of things we might be doing differently in terms of getting swings out of the postals.
7:36pm. I just slapped an arbitrary 90% ceiling on the One Nation probability, just in time for the first polling booth to report from Port Kennedy Primary School, which turns out to be consistent with the impression of One Nation leading on the primary vote and therefore very likely to win.
7:34pm. No, these are “mobile polling” results — I think the WAEC temporarily added them to the wrong row. My point still stands: I will want to see some polling booth results before I have confidence in my projections.
7:31pm. The Western Australian Electoral Commission booth is on. My system is calling it, but I wish it wasn’t — neither of the two results that are in are easy to match to the last election. Uniquely, this booth wasn’t in operation at all then, so I just allocated it 5% of the absent votes cast in 2025 for booth-matching purposes.
7:24pm. My preference flow estimates are more bullish for One Nation than the ABC’s — they’ve got the margin at 6.9%, I’ve got 8.7%.
7:16pm. We finally have results: a batch of 1277 postals, which are hard to booth-match with, so I’d add a note of caution to my projections. Early batches tend to be more conservative but my swing calculation doesn’t accommodate that — Labor had better hope that that’s what’s causing my projection of One Nation winning by an 8.7% margin.
6pm. Polls have closed for Western Australia’s Secret Harbour by-election. As always, the best place to follow the results as they come in is through this site’s second-to-none results facility (see link above), featuring swings, projections and probability estimates, a table recording results and swings at booth level, and – when you press the “activate” button at the bottom of the page – a map display that does likewise. I presume the Western Australian Electoral Commission will be conducting a notional two-candidate count between Labor and One Nation, despite what the relevant table on my results page shows. However, I believe that will be in the realms of mystery until they start publishing results from it, which the WAEC uniquely does not do until it’s convinced it has picked the right two candidates. With 16 candidates, first results could be a while coming.
2PP track of posters:
Bird of Paradox ALP 50-55
Boerwar ALP 55
MABWM ALP 55
Charles ALP 54
GrannyAnny ALP 53
Darcy ALP 52.3
LOTY 52
mj ALP 51.5
Paul James Baker ALP 51
Adda ALP 50.5
Hard Being Green ON 50.01
Hensman ON 50.8
Arange ON 51.5
nadia ON 53
evads ON 53.5
Those who’ve posted primaries, we’ll have a look at it later.
Hi William – love your work and thanks for all you do in providing this invaluable resource.
I definitely saw results being reported earlier but now is blank – just wondering what was going on there?
Electoral Commission Updates
But first…
Census Area Field Map 2026
For those of you interested in redistributions, I was poking around in the depth of ABS maps recently and found the “Census Area Field Map 2026”. I don’t know if it’s online permanently.
https://statmaps.abs.gov.au/portal/apps/experiencebuilder/experience/?id=dee85c91686a4a7c8bddeb139dd427ed
In particular, the “Area Management Boundaries” have a nice combined SA3 / SA4 feel to them. Almost seems like how you’d do a clean take on local / regional councils or how you might give some consistency to 1 or more of them in combinations for state/territory/federal boundaries. I wasn’t really able to find any further information on them and how they’re designed, so may only be an internal use thing. Anywho, if you’re into boundaries it’s worth a look and maybe take a record of or make some notes.
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NSW
Trial of low-sensory voting centres at the 2027 NSW State election and future consultation on the 2027 NSW State election service plan
https://elections.nsw.gov.au/integrity-and-regulation/consultation
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NT
Mulka By-election, 12th September
https://ntec.nt.gov.au/elections/current-elections/2026-mulka-by-election
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SA
2026 State and Voice Election Review
https://www.agd.sa.gov.au/law-and-justice/2026-state-and-voice-election-review
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TAS
Local government elections, October 2026
https://www.tec.tas.gov.au/local-government/elections-2026/index.html
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VIC
Victoria 2026 State election service plan
https://vec.vic.gov.au/about-us/publications/state-election-reports-and-plans
2CP – “2CP predictions have become more challenging as voter support patterns shifts in Victoria. Our 2CP predictions are made using the best available data informed by electoral knowledge, political science and statistical modelling techniques…. Each Legislative Assembly district results summary page will have an indicative 2CP count total when the selected 2CP candidates are considered to be accurate. If the 2CP candidates chosen ahead of time do not appear to be accurate, we will not publish a 2CP count total.”
2PP – “We intend to continue producing 2-party-preferred (2PP) statistics.”
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Federal
ACT, SA, TAS federal redistributions – Changes to federal electorates as a result of these redistributions will apply from the day on which a notice of determination is published in the Commonwealth Notices Government Gazette. These notices will be published on Thursday 8 October 2026.
https://www.aec.gov.au/redistributions/
QLD federal redistribution – The first round of public submissions is expected to commence in September.
https://www.aec.gov.au/redistributions/2025/qld/
Inquiry into the 2025 federal election
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Electoral_Matters/2025federalelection
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Elections Australia
My concept for a single, rigorous, transparent and innovative Australian election management body. Updated regularly.
https://electionsaustralia.org/
NT – Mulka By-election, 12th September
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They got that booked in quick.
Back in two weeks to deal with that.
Solomon next?
Yep this is the best site.
Very interesting couple of hours coming.
Comet bay college a polling station …
Press release today what a coincidence about Comet bay
https://www.wa.gov.au/government/media-statements/Cook%20Labor%20Government/Million-dollar-investment-unlocks-year-round-bowls-at-Comet-Bay-20260829
nadia:
Saturday, August 29, 2026 at 8:10 pm
I wasn’t aware that Gosling had resigned.
Hi Mavis – I think Albo may have cut him loose.
But yes – the matter hasn’t played out in court, and that could be a long way away.
Getting a bit ahead of things I am.
nadia, his political career might be over no matter what result ensues. I don’t know much about the details, but I have read that there’s been bad blood between Gosling & Connolly. And because Connolly holds a vice-regal office, I think the incident has been blown out of proportion.
Surely they could have stuck a small booth in a corner to give us some early data.
Number of Electors – 36,407
https://www.elections.wa.gov.au/elections/state/byelection#/2026-Secret-Harbour-By-Election
As at the end of yesterday.
Postal votes received back – 5,383
In-person early votes issued *includes mobile polling and Interstate voting* – 12,869
https://www.elections.wa.gov.au/media-hub
Have we made a mistake and got the wrong date?
Crickets.
Perhaps the WAEC forgot to engage anyone who could count.
WewantPaul – The NT election about 2 years ago was excruciating.
I think the first results came through 53 mins after the booths closed.
I think tonight will beat that.
G
I love your numbers. They are interesting to me.
It says that pre-poll, postal, absentee votes are around 35%.
Will the postal votes received till today be counted with election day votes?
Nadia I’ll go with Labor winning but um if one nation gets in I’m gonna bet that the dude leaves and go to the Liberal Party
@nadia:
Put me down for ALP 54.
Was on a booth today, lots of people taking Labor and One Nation HTVs, not so much for the Libs, but I think Labor will get over the line.
Has Antony called it yet on the slowest non count after 1 hour.
With 16 candidates, it’s probably taking longer to check for formality than to sort by primary vote. If there’s 4 candidates you can just eyeball it in a few seconds; with that many numbers in a random order, having to make sure it is actually the sequence 1-16 with no mistakes would be an annoyingly fiddly job. Say it’s an extra minute per vote, with 600 votes in a booth – that becomes ten hours extra work. Even with a room full of people it’s gonna take a while.
Antony Green is overseas atm.
KB is running a thread.
I hope we don’t have this “time delay” for the Victoria election in 3 months time.
It’s not hard to open a ballot box, start counting, and post numbers on the Electoral Commission website.
nadia @ #19 Saturday, August 29th, 2026 – 9:06 pm
Albo needs to call a royal Commission immediately into why our retired Antony was allowed to go overseas. ;-)))
They are on the piss on a Sat night listening to Budgie!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54H3EUAzpVg
First results
ON 36%
Labor 25%
Libs 19%
G @ #21 Saturday, August 29th, 2026 – 9:14 pm
Yep ,I think there was a blip a short time ago.
1300 Postals in.
Sorry everyone, I’ve been trying to post.
I’ll summarise the summary. 16 candidates takes a really really long time to count. EC needs a bit of expectation management – “No results likely until after 7pm.”
Thanks G.
So they’re counting postals and todays vote at the same time.
Usually the Saturday vote gets counted first, and then around 8PM they do the pre polls and postals.
If ON is getting 36 on postals, which should be strong for them, I don’t think they’re going to get enough primary elsewhere to have their overall primary high enough to win.
Especially not with the Libs that low.
nadia
There is no sanctity in finishing 7th and 8th anymore.
Look, who finished at 9th and 10th position. Collingwood and Carlton, the most disliked teams in AFL.
Nadia – There will be like… 7-8 count teams going right now. One at each polling place and one or two working on the prepoll and at least (as we’ve seen), the first batch of postals which were obviously already processed and accepted for counting. The EC will have a plan. Things will appear when they’re counted.
Speaking of tech issues, Tally Room seems to be down? Anyone else having that issue?
Hate it.
Why should One Nation be favoured on postals?
You wouldn’t think they’d be as organised as the “majors”
@HBG: A lot of the One Nation voters in question are former Liberal voters. Liberals traditionally do better on postals because, among other things, their voters are on average older and more affluent and hence more likely to do a postal vote rather than coming to a polling place in person. As the voters change over to One Nation, it stands to reason that that statistical pattern would follow them.
Ven says:
Saturday, August 29, 2026 at 9:25 pm
nadia
There is no sanctity in finishing 7th and 8th anymore.
Look, who finished at 9th and 10th position. Collingwood and Carlton, the most disliked teams in AFL.
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Yes, I think the AFL should revert back to the Final 8.
Final 10 is silly.
Anyway, we’ll talk about this on the open thread another time.
Also I like to remind people I’ll lecture has anything to do with Federal Labor Western Australia has been empowered for nearly 10 years so so one nation gaining the seat might actually help the liberals
Those results from the WAEC “booth” are… really weird.
Liberal 99, Labor 57, One Nation 49, everyone else 0, 1, 2, or 3.
Not sure what to make of that.
Edit: Oh, it was the mobile polling, Bludger had it in the wrong row. That makes more sense.
Highly doubt Greens getting 0 votes from WAEC booth.
Another batch of postals and a mobile polling count.
Formal Votes: 2,814
Informal Votes: 67
Total Votes: 2,881
PHON 34.51%
ALP 25.62%
LIB 20.61%
Feels like… there’s probably a Postals count team and the main prepoll count team??
So I guess we’re doing a repeat of the 1930’s.
“Yippee!” as said by Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace.
KB mentioned that : 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.
Gorks: Those were from mobile polling, and the Greens getting essentially 0 from those is… not without precedent in this neck of the woods.
Libs up to nearly 21% and ON steady at 34.5%.
Labor tanking at 25.6%
Looking like a ON pickup
Edit: Just shy of 8% counted (10% is the magic number I believe)
Ahh if it is aged care homes etc, Greens getting 0 votes would make sense.
First booths coming in.
Gosh – the ABC has got it at 60% 2PP to Herdegen.
WB – are you calling it?
Two polling places in.
Formal Votes: 4,363
Informal Votes: 144
Total Votes: 4,507
First Prefs.
PHON 34.68%
ALP 26.13%
LIB 17.56%
Comet bay bribe failed.Time to get a little excited One nation.
TickTock Kevin doesn’t agree re the postals he says postals should favour the Liberals
Edit. He is practically calling it for One Nation
Labor might not have picked the best candidate, but then again that isn’t really what they try to do, but even so that swing will have a lot of members concerned if it holds up.
My system is, so I guess so.
HBG: I guess we’ll find out. I don’t agree with Kevin’s evident analysis that if the majority of Lib voters move over to One Nation, the statistical observation of Lib voters being more likely to vote postal than other kinds of voters wouldn’t move with them.