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Election night commentary
8:49pm. Bit of a lull in the results. We are yet to hear from Coastal Lakes College, from which we can probably expect about 1000 formal votes, or from Secret Harbour Early Voting Centre. The latter, be warned, will report in two stages, starting with about 1000 votes actually cast there on election day. The early votes will come later — probably quite a lot later, and perhaps not tonight. The WAEC reports 12,869 early votes were cast, which “includes mobile polling and Interstate voting”. The former includes 217 votes that have reported their results, which may be the lot, and it also includes the 60 votes cast at the WAEC centre in Perth. Interstate votes I don’t know about, but I’m guessing it’s not many. So presumably there will be upwards of 10,000 Secret Harbour Early Voting Centre early votes in due course. If they break 53-47 to Labor, we’re looking at a different result.
8:39pm. If you’re enjoying the coverage, please consider rewarding all the hard work that goes into my results system (and everything else) with a donation through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the page and the bottom of the post.
8:29pm. Presumably because the ABC has switched off booth-matching and is now reporting the raw TCP as its projection. My own system tries to do something more elaborate with non-booth vote types.
8:22pm. The ABC’s estimate now aligns with my own in giving One Nation a margin of about 3%.
8:19pm. As ever, one remaining wild card: many thousands of early votes still to come. Though a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest Labor won’t do particularly well out of them.
8:10pm. I note that my system’s projection is very close to the raw TCP result, whereas the ABC earlier projection of the One Nation margin has come down only modestly — 2.7% raw, 2.8% from me, 6.5% at the ABC. Despite what my projection says, Labor wouldn’t be conceding quite yet, but it’s undoubtedly not looking good for them.
8:09pm. There are now five booths in on TCP, and contrary to what I said two updates ago, that 60-40 split in favour of Labor is sticking.
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.
TCP (not accounting for all first prefs so far)
PHON 53.22%
ALP 46.78%
There’s only one polling place left for first preference votes. The collapse of election day attendance voting continues. This should have implications for EC’s.
Quick look at the 5 posters who picked a O.N. win & their 2PP:
Hard Being Green ON 50.01
Hensman ON 50.8
Arange ON 51.5
nadia ON 53
evads ON 53.5
I think poster “evads” gets the honours.
Yeah, you have to make sure you have strong local candidates, especially facing insurgent parties or independents, particularly at by elections. Might get away with it against Libs in a general election, much harder in a byelection against 3rd party.
@Darcy: Speaking as someone who very much does care that Labor selected a Woodside lobbyist as a candidate, I definitely get the sense that most people outside the Green or Green-adjacent political space don’t care about that – but the perception of her being a blow-in party puppet from north of the river will have a lot more currency.
@nadia: I would wait until the rather substantial prepoll comes in before calling anyone a winner on predicting the 2CP.
Not all over yet, wait for the pre-polls……
Fair enough ticktock. 26% counted – & a long way to go.
Evads is in the lead atm.
No way prepolls will overcome this.
“I would wait until the rather substantial prepoll”
Welcome to the forum James McGrath!
There wouldn’t be too many WA seats that would see working at Woodside as a negative.
Just a bit of push back.
Regardless of the result, the Cook Labor government has been very good. Not perfect, but very good. Strongest economy in the country, quality, high paying jobs, well run public services and public transport. Great place to live.
@Gorks: Prepolls absolutely won’t overcome the lead One Nation has, that is not what I was suggesting (if anything, they’d probably increase it). I was suggesting that the exact margin of One Nation’s victory may be altered from the current ~53.5 2CP by the prepoll, given how much of the enrollment that prepoll covers.
Ghost of Whitlam has sent in a silly comment. We shall neither print it, nor reply.
Ms Tree may not have been the best candidate but describing her as a “lobbyist for Woodside” as the newest member of the WA G0vernment suggests she might have had some influence on policy,
Roger Cook and his cabinet wouldn’t have needed any lessons from her in how to do Woodside’s bidding.
Great result. Thanks for the coverage.
@Rossmcg: “Lobbyist for Woodside” is a literal description of her current employment (from which she is currently on leave), so I’m not sure what you’re getting at by implying that it is somehow an unfair or irrelevant point. It is not an exaggeration.
It is however, as other commenters have observed, not a major issue for most WA voters.
I expected the Labor vote to be sub 30 but sub 25 is pretty awful. An Albo factor?
Sub 20 for the Liberals in a seat with lots of crossover for Hastie will make him very nervous
Greens at 9 with over 6% with Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice isn’t too bad
Maybe highlights the Other vote doesn’t hold much a right wing vote anymore?
Preferences 60/40 Labor probably reinforces that
There were 12,869 “in-person early votes issued *includes mobile polling and Interstate voting*”.
Even allowing for however many interstate votes and minus 233 for mobile voting, without knowing how many votes it actually look, the single early voting place could theoretically double (or be in the vicinity of? 6000? 7000?) the current votes counted of a little over 9000.
Current count progress – 25.57%
There’s currently nine candidates under 1%. NINE. Animal Justice and the Christians didn’t completely waste everyone’s time, scoring about 2% each. Legalise Cannabis (narrowly) and the main four parties are the only ones to get their deposit back.
Apparently the candidate deposit is just $250 in WA – less than I thought. (It’s $2000 federally.) Probably time that got updated.
Peoples property values down due to labors recent changes.Homeless and high rents a huge issue and labor gaslights.That main drag down south is terrible Should have fixed it years ago that freeway.
400,000 on bridging visas says it all.
Newspoll tomorrow?
I might not fit the profile of the average poster, but William does a great job delivering this site.
@Bird of paradox: Definitely something needs to be done there. Maybe even a petition for candidacy requirement – it works in some other parts of the world, get a petition with 1% or 0.5% of electors in the district together to register as a candidate if you’re not part of a party already in Parliament. I’m not overly fond of ever-higher paywalls in the way as a method of discouraging nuisance candidates.
Bird of paradox – “There’s currently nine candidates under 1%. NINE.”
I’ve been reflecting on this too but don’t quite know the right question/s to ask about it.
@G: Might also be worth requiring parties to run a candidate that is registered to vote in the district or in an adjacent district (to have some allowance for border changes) – would stop people from halfway across the state being candidates.
I hope we don’t have another 1 hour wait for the pre polls.
@nadia: It might take a while, there’s a LOT of them. I’m more confused as to why Coastal Lakes College is taking so long to report. It can’t be that much bigger than other “big” booths that have already reported.
Yeah we want Paul yeah the Australian Labour Party in Western Australia had a really good result in the 2021 election so yeah the only makes sense they will come back down that’s why I said this is probably just a government that’s past it’s used by date. Food I do think it’s funny some people think that this is one nation going to take over Federal politics I think you guys need to calm down remember in 2024 the the Liberal state government wins people thought that labour was gonna lose in the Federal but I wonder how the new one nation member will last
Postals
Postal votes sent to voters – 7,254
Postal votes received back – 5,383
https://www.elections.wa.gov.au/media-hub
Counted so far – 2,648
Probably more to come there.
I have long thought candidates should be from the district. If the elected member is moved out of the seat by a boundary change let them be eligible to run again but required to move back into the district to run a second time. Would work better with 4 year terms, but still.
@WeWantPaul: Given how much borders tend to move back and forth, I don’t think requiring members to up stakes and move house (at a cost of thousands) every time they get bounced across the border is a good idea… but neither is allowing some blow-in from half a dozen districts away to be a candidate. A carve-out for incumbents might be a compromise – they’d have to live in the district when they first run, but if they get shuffled out by a redistribution they can keep running.
There would also be the question of what to do if an incumbent’s seat gets abolished and divided between other seats. I don’t claim to have all the answers, only thoughts.
Ghost Of Whitlam says:
Saturday, August 29, 2026 at 10:15 pm
“semi-rural”
Rubbish.
Heaven forbid we allow electors to choose their preferred candidate on their beliefs rather than on where they live.
Good thoughts in my opinion. I still remember being shocked by a labor factional leader telling me they consider local candidates something to be avoided. I think perhaps because a strong connection to the electorate might make a member that works for the electorate and not just the party.
Candidates are never good enough for anti-Labor figures. There’s always an angle to slander the choice. The haters want a unicorn.
Pick someone from the management side of business: “Labor has abandoned the working class.”
Pick a unionist: “Labor picked someone who hates business and hasn’t had a real job, typical.”
Pick a blue collar worker: “Labor picked someone who can’t doesn’t understand high level corporate work, they will be out of their depth.”
Pick someone poor: “Labor class war, typical Labor politics of envy.”
Pick someone rich: “Labor picked someone out of touch, I thought Labor were on the side of the poor.”
“Heaven forbid we allow electors to choose their preferred candidate on their beliefs rather than on where they live.”
Doesn’t mean what they believe is legitimate, or that picking based on that belief will improve things when it ends up supporting the incompetent racist Pauline and Gina who wants to buy democracy and subvert it to enrich herself even further.
On parachuting, does it really need to be shovelled into the law somehow, with all the myriad exemptions and clauses that it will need to be workable. Voters have punished parties in these situations, if they really dislike the idea of someone from out of area.
@MR: I don’t think anyone’s democratic rights are served by allowing serial nuisance candidates to district-shop their way across the state and clog up ballot papers without having any real prospect of even making their deposit back.
God with some of how people are acting on Reddit you think that Labour’s ready to stab Anthony in the in that Pauline being prime minister for life holy hell like seriously do people I’m getting too angry
Lol because we hear such clear and honest outlines of candidates beliefs. It is the one reliable thing in a sea of political confusion.
Nadia.
This particular count might be one of the single, longest, most complex counts in any election of recent times. 16 candidates. How many ballot papers? 5000? 6000? 7000? 8000? More? The highest vote total today was 1258.
They’ve been at it for 3 hours now. Shout out to the team doing this work.
Special mention to the team who counted the Craigieburn CALWELL PPVC at the last Fed. 18790 votes with 13 candidates.
https://results.aec.gov.au/31496/Website/HousePollingPlaceFirstPrefs-31496-66161.htm
@Ticktock everybodies rights are served by having someone besides their mate on the ballot paper.
That’s me done, I’ll see how much One Nation has won by in the morning
Plenty of fallout from this one I think, those outer metro seats are in trouble
Thanks All
A lot of left of centre Labor supporters across Australia are not too happy with Albo and his mob. Why? Currently the ASIO bill, the Palantir deal, the AUKUS submarine deal, the Israeli IDF runners, the failure to expel the Israeli Ambassador because of the World Kitchen aid workers killings, the failure to deal more strongly on the Israeli allegations of abuse of Australian pro Palestine boat protesters. The gas tax issue is a major factor to punish the ALP, especially that the ALP candidate was a Woodside lobbyist, not a local as well. Inaction by the federal ALP government on the gas tax would definitely be the major issue for a protest vote. Of course my observations are distant, but I have noticed that these issues are causing a lot of angst amongst younger and even older left voters across Australia. The protest vote is in a variety of ways, Greens, Independent, One Nation, Legalise Cannabis, Animal Justice or even informal.
Night HBG.
Pre polls are starting to flow in. WB has it at 53.5% now.
Remember, Carlton – not Melbourne.
Another whack of postals in.
Still waiting on one election day and the early voting places.
Count Progress: 29.34%
Formal Votes: 10,269
Informal Votes: 411
Total Votes: 10,680
First Prefs
PHON 35.76%
LAB 24.66%
LIB 17.63%
TCP (not to the above totals)
PHON 53.63%
ALP 46.37%
Last election day booth in, Coastal Lakes College – biggest one by a substantial margin with 1652 ballots.
ONP 36.4 ALP 25.1 LIB 14.7 GRN 11.1 LC 4.6
Just the big prepoll now. Election day voting truly has collapsed in a heap.