Author: William Bowe

End of evening. Liberal candidate Anthony Marsh has a 13.5% margin over independent Tracee Hutchison, assuming the latter does indeed make the final count over One Nation’s Darren Hercus, which my system projects her as doing by 30.8% to 28.3% based on preference estimates. Marsh’s final margin over Hercus would likely be very similar. How pleased the Liberals should be about this depends on your starting assumptions: the party would have been appalled if told about such a result a year ago, but in the more immediate time frame would be greatly relieved. It suggests One Nation’s competitiveness in November should be limited to deep rural seats, and shortens the odds on the Coalition translating what seems at present to be a slender polling lead into a parliamentary majority.

10.35pm. The 14,000 vote block of early votes that came in on the primary vote about two hours ago are now in on TCP, which I suspect wraps things up for the evening.

9.45pm. Postals, which were heavily favourable to Liberal, have reported on the TCP, which has blown out the Liberal margin over Hutchison from 9.0% to 13.4%.

9.15pm. The last and largest election day booth, Rosebud, has reported on the primary vote, and I’m less certain now that Tracee Hutchison will get ahead of One Nation on preferences, that latter’s first preference lead now being at 24.7% to 21.3%. The outcome at the final count, to be clear, will be a Liberal win either way.

8.55pm. The latest ten-minute update had TCP results from Dromana Beach and the earlier batch of early votes.

8.47pm. A huge chunk of early votes — nearly 14,000 — just reported on the primary vote. This presumably included the voting centre in Rosebud, which presumably did a lot of business, because it’s substantially lifted the One Nation vote compared with the 2645 votes from the first early voting batch. The Liberal vote has dipped below 40%, and One Nation has a primary vote lead over Tracee Hutchison that looks big enough to be maintained, but not enough to stop them being overtaken when Greens preferences are distributed.

8.26pm. We’ve now got 5531 postal votes plus a primary vote result from Red Hill. The Liberals have topped 50% of the primary vote on the postals, and done well enough in Red Hill. One Nation’s Darren Hercus has now edged ahead of Tracee Hutchison on first preferences, though Greens preferences should push the latter ahead of the former, while Liberal candidate Anthony Marsh is sitting pretty on over 40%.

8.16pm. Five booths have just landed on the primary vote, including strong results for One Nation at Dromana Beach, Rosebud West and Tootgarook and weak ones at Sorrento and Shoreham. The gap between Tracee Hutchison and One Nation has as expected narrowed, now at 23.8% to 21.2%, but Hutchison seems assured to remain ahead on Greens preferences (in which case, hats off to the VEC for picking the right candidates for its two-candidate count). Either way, the 36.6% Liberal primary vote looks insurmountable.

8.06pm. My results system, which is more aggressive than it used to be, is now projecting a win for the Liberals after a very strong result for them on early votes: 45.5% out of 2645 added, compared with just 16.4% for One Nation, who have fallen below 20%. I should add a note of caution though: these early votes are likely either or both of the two voting centres from the Sorrento end, and the polling booths too under-represent what are likely to be the strongest areas for One Nation. Even so, we’re at a point in the count where One Nation would have to be doing a lot better than the current raw primary vote numbers (Liberal 37.8%, independent 25.0%, One Nation 19.8%) if they were going to be competitive, and it’s clear from the two-candidate count that Hutchison will not be competitive in the final count.

7.56pm. The regular ten-minute update brings only two further TCP results, which only serve to confirm that Liberal candidate Anthony Marsh will prevail comfortably in a two-candidate count against Hutchison. The alternative possibility is that Hutchison will land third and Marsh will go up against One Nation, in which case it’s no easier to see how Marsh loses.

7.47pm. The small Boneo booth, with 388 votes, has reported at the modest end for One Nation with 19.1%. Two booths are in on the two-candidate the VEC is conducting between Liberal and Tracee Hutchison, which may prove to have been the right candidate pairing after all. They are breaking nearly 60-40 in favour of Liberal, suggesting they are heading for a comfortable win unless One Nation has a surge in store from somewhere or other.

7.37pm. The Dromana and Flinders booths are now in on the primary vote, and the former is as anticipated better for One Nation, who have edged out the Liberals there by 29.5% to 29.1%. Flinders on the other hand has stayed loyal to Liberal, with One Nation not even making double figures. My system is writing off One Nation’s chances of making the final count, but I’m less confident about that than I normally would be because One Nation didn’t run here in 2022, meaning there is no historic data for them. Some strong results for One Nation in the Rosebud booths could change things, but they would have to be particularly good for them. The other unknown is how early votes are behaving.

7:25pm. A third booth, Waterfall Gully, is in on the primary vote. This is a better area for One Nation, who have polled 27.2% there compared with 20.6% in the first two booths. Even here though the gap is narrow, with Hutchison on 23.7% and set to benefit from the 12.9% vote for the Greens. Unless One Nation do quite a bit better around Rosebud and Dromana, they will finish third and their preferences decide the result, presumably in favour of the Liberals.

7:17pm. We have primary booth results in from Blairgowrie and Rye, both at the weak end of the electorate for One Nation, who trail Tracee Hutchison for second by 24.0% to 20.6%. My system is presently projecting that order will remain after preferences, but it’s doing so with no historic sense of the spread of One Nation support. No doubt correctly, it’s projecting the Liberals as more likely to win than Hutchison after the distribution of One Nation preferences.

6:10pm. It appears from the Victorian Electoral Commission results page that the indicative two-candidate preferred count will be between Liberal candidate Anthony Marsh and independent Tracee Hutchison, and not One Nation candidate Darren Hercus as I would have assumed.

6pm. Welcome to the Poll Bludger’s live coverage of the Victorian state by-election for Nepean. I will also be following the count for the Tasmanian upper house seats of Huon and Rosevears as updates on the dedicated post. The Victorian Electoral Commission advises we should not expect results until “approximately 7:30pm”. Counting of early and postal votes will take place this evening, as well as election day votes. Results will be updated every 10 minutes. The VEC does not break out its early voting results by location (it will rectify this at the general election in November), so the substantial number of votes that appear under “Early” will be a mixed bag of result Rosebud and Dromana, where One Nation is likely to poll well, and Blairgowrie, where they should be relatively weak.

The first of three by-elections in as many weeks will be held on Saturday for the Mornington Peninsula state seat of Nepean, where former deputy leader Sam Groth has called time on his brief parliamentary career rather than wait it out until the November election. This puts the Victorian Liberals under pressure from One Nation, with Labor declining to field a candidate in a seat where they fell 6.4% short at the 2022 election. As detailed in my by-election guide, the respective candidates are Mornington Peninsula Shire mayor Anthony Marsh for the Liberals and civil engineer Darren Hercus for One Nation. There has been no published polling that I’m aware of, but a report in the Herald Sun points to concern in the Liberal camp based on “the feelings on pre-poll” and “shit on the liver … about having to vote twice in 12 months”.

Both campaigns have faced internal difficulties, with the Herald Sun reporting concerns about the number of Liberal volunteers willing to come forward after local members were shut out of the preselection process. The Age reported the One Nation campaign committee “collapsed” in late February when two of its members resigned from the party, claiming state president Warren Pickering had advised Hercus to use a personal bank account to accept campaign donations, which would have violated the legal requirement for donations to go through a specified account. Pickering denied any such conversation took place, but The Age then reported a third former party member backing the account of the other two. Hercus said he had no knowledge of how donations were being managed and was paying most of the costs of his campaign on his credit card.

Also in the field of eight candidates is Tracee Hutchison, who has been endorsed by Independents for Mornington Peninsula, whose candidate at the federal election came within 2.3% of unseating the Liberals in Flinders after polling 21.2% of the primary vote. Rounding out the ballot paper are candidates from Legalise Cannabis, Libertarian Party (once the Liberal Democrats), Affordable Housing Now – Sustainable Australia (until recently just Sustainable Australia) and End Mass Migration (whose former status as the Companions and Pets Party might well raise eyebrows). The Libertarians have a how-to-vote card advising a second preference for One Nation and a third for Liberal, but the others have open tickets.

Nepean does not exactly fit the profile of the four South Australian seats One Nation won in March, which were distinctly more rural in character, but its demographics are not without promise for the party. By far its outstanding characteristic is that 23.8% of the population was aged 70 and over at the time of the last census, its closest rival on this count being Gippsland East on 20.3%. This is a cohort that has been running four points above average for One Nation in federal polling since the start of this year.

Analysis of the South Australian result reveals an even more reliable indicator of One Nation support is share of the adult population who finished year 12 or equivalent. The simple model 0.543 – 0.555x, where x is the percentage of residents aged over 18 who finished high school, explained 83% of the variation in One Nation support in South Australia. When applied to the relevant figure for Nepean, which ranks 71st out of the state’s 88 seats for educational attainment, this too suggests One Nation should punch about four points above its usual weight in a seat like Nepean.

The map below illustrates the variability on this score within an electorate where the median house price approaches $3 million around Portsea but barely cracks $800,000 further along the bayside. Applying the data at the suburban level to the educational qualifications model suggests One Nation could expect its vote share in the latter area to be twice as high, a point reflected in the the meagre 2% vote shares One Nation recorded around Portsea and Sorrento at the 2025 federal election.

How this translates in a context where Labor isn’t fielding a candidate, never mind enjoying the ascendancy it did at the South Australian election, is harder to say. Up for grabs is its 32.6% vote from 2022, when support for Victorian Labor was ten points higher than its current polling. While betting markets have the Liberals as short-priced favourites, it is within the realms of possibility that the homeless Labor vote will consolidate behind Tracee Hutchison while the One Nation exodus reduces the Liberals to third, a fate that became all too familiar to their candidates in South Australia. The likely result in that scenario would be a One Nation win on preferences from the Liberals, whose how-to-vote card has Hercus above Hutchison.