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Prahran
| Projected 3CP | Projected 2CP | Win Probability |
Werribee
| Projected 3CP | Projected 2CP | Win Probability |
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Click here for full display of Prahran by-election results
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Live commentary
Saturday
I believe the counts are now complete, with various loose ends being tied up in both seats. These cut six votes from the Liberal lead in Prahran, which ends at 16,352 to 15,363, a margin of 989.
Thursday
7pm. New postals now added for Prahran, breaking 773-732 in favour of Liberal, increasing their lead from 954 to 995.
4pm. Finally an update from Werribee (though not Prahran), and my system is calling it for Labor. This is due to the addition of 2310 postal votes, of which the formal ones have broken 1191-1039 to Labor, in keeping with the tendency for Labor to do better on late-arriving postal votes. Rechecked totals have been added on the primary vote count, but the VEC does not do rechecking on the TCP count. These will make a few dozen votes’ difference in favour of the Liberals, but not nearly enough to disturb a published Labor lead of 593 votes, out from 441 on election night, with at most 1500 still to come.
Tuesday night
It seems we won’t be seeing further updates to the count until later in the week.
Monday night
It is apparently the case that a check count of the primary vote at least commenced today, but no updates have appeared for the published results. The uncovering of errors might tilt the balance one way or another in Werribee, but otherwise the matter will be decided by perhaps 3000 postal votes that will trickle in over the coming week.
Saturday night
2.00am. Having updated the system with estimates of the number of outstanding votes (which make a generous guess of postals in the absence of any hard data I can find), my system is calling Prahran for the Liberals and giving Labor an 84.5% chance in Werribee. In Werribee, the Liberals will need to improve on the 53-47 break in the favour on postals counted so far to close a gap of 441 votes, which is certainly possible if there are indeed enough votes outstanding; in Prahran, postals can only extend a current Liberal lead of 954 votes.
1.00am. The remaining pre-poll centre in Werribee finally came through with its TCP result, producing what one assumes is the final result for the night: Labor 20,132, Liberal 19,691.
12.13am. Correction: one of the two Werribee pre-poll centres hasn’t reported its TCP result.
11.34pm. A good night for the Liberals got better with the addition of the second batch of Werribee pre-polls, which sliced Labor’s lead on the raw vote from 3.0% to 0.6% — and my projection is the same. So the question now is whether the Liberals can wear a 446 vote deficit on postals, making it very much too close to call.
11.25pm. I’m unclear if we’re actually going to see the outstanding pre-poll TCP count added for Werribee this evening. My system’s earlier call of the seat for Labor, which I was very uncomfortable about, turns out to be based on an underestimate in the number of outstanding votes, and has been retracted now that I’ve added new (and very rough) estimates.
10.50pm. A second batch of pre-polls have been added for Werribee on the primary vote and my system is calling it for Labor again, but I’m not at all confident about that. What we have is a huge mismatch between the pre-poll primary vote count (21854 formal votes) and the TCP count (50 formal votes), which means more than half the projection is based on an estimate of preference flows that may prove awry.
10.19pm. A second batch of pre-poll TCPs slightly improved the Greens’ position in Prahran, though they’re still behind. That may be it for the evening — the Greens are nearly 1000 vote behind, which isn’t the kind of lead that normally gets chased down in late counting, particularly by the Greens in a situation where there won’t be absent votes. Nothing substantial in the latest Werribee update, apart from the last remaining booth TCP result. Now that it’s clear pre-polls are indeed being reported in batches, I more strongly suspect that we haven’t seen the last of the count for the evening in Werribee.
10.04pm. A batch of pre-polls — fewer than I expected, so there may be more to come — have been added on the primary vote for Werribee. They are not great for Labor — around 3% worse on two-party terms than the election day votes. That’s relative to the total result of pre-polls last time though, and it may be that we’re getting one batch from one part of the electorate and a later batch will be different, which my system isn’t built to factor it. The Liberals have pulled further ahead in Prahran, again because of a TCP result — this time for pre-polls — where they did better on preferences than on election day votes. It looks like the ABC has turned off booth-matching, but whether off projected or raw results, it looks much the same, namely bleak for the Greens.
10.02pm. It turns out to have been the postal TCP count: the Greens did well enough relatively speaking on the primary vote and then did very badly on the preference flow, resulting in a 17.9% LIB swing. They may at least hope that later arriving postals will behave differently.
9.51pm. I remain unsure as to what cause the Liberal landslip in Prahran — the latest update has moderated it slightly, but the Liberals are still ahead.
9.40pm. Things have suddenly slipped dramatically in the Liberals’ favour in Prahran: both my system and the ABC’s went from having the Greens ahead to Liberal ahead. I’ve arbitrarily widened my error margins in both seats. To repeat yet again, Labor’s narrow lead in Werribee could very easily be wiped out by pre-polls.
9.26pm. If you’re enjoying the coverage, please consider a donation through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the page and the bottom of the post.
9.20pm. Labor has strengthened a little in Werribee on my projection with the latest update, but not so much as to change my basic outlook that everything depends on a looming dump of pre-polls, which renders the 90% or so Labor win probability excessive. I will look at tweaking my model so it’s more cautious until substantial numbers of pre-polls are added. That’s not an issue in Prahran, where the pre-polls have been reported: lots of new TCP numbers in the latest update do not change by projection of an 8% to 9% swing from Greens to Liberal, which is about 4% below what the Liberals need.
9.05pm. Not sure exactly why, but the latest update from Werribee not good for Labor: their win probability now wound back to 76.7%. Still no pre-polls. Whereas there is a big whack of pre-polls in Prahran, accounting for nearly half the vote counted, and they have hardly behaved differently from election day votes, suggesting the Greens are indeed looking good.
8.58pm. There were 15,895 pre-polls added late on the night of the Mulgrave by-election count, which is presumably a rough pointer of what to expect here — more so though in Werribee’s case than Prahran’s.
8.45pm. I’ve forced through real world preference flows to my Werribee projection, and a little to my surprise, it’s calling the seat for Labor — which would be because it goes off lower error margins when it stops using preference flows. But I would want to see some serious pre-poll numbers first.
8.39pm. No new results in the latest update for Prahran, but we’ve got a second TCP from Werribee plus most of the primary vote booth results. That’s still not enough TCP for my system to switch out of using my preference estimates. Based on how Paul Hopper’s preferences flowed in 2022, I’ve tweaked his flow slightly in favour of the Liberals, and should probably tweak them a bit more. If my system was going off the preference flows indicated by the TCP count, Labor would be projected with a 1.4% lead. As it stands, my system says 2.6%. I suspect the former will be nearer the mark.
8.20pm. A huge infusion of primary votes in Prahran, six out of nine booths in all, and my system is all but calling it for the Greens. But: there’s still practically no TCP count, and if I’m wrong about preferences, I may be overestimating them. Count progress similar in Werribee: lot of primary votes now, very few TCPs, speculative preference estimates looming large in a projection that has tightened up.
8.14pm. A lot in Prahran depends on preferences for Tony Lupton, who I’m projecting at a bit over 10%. His how-to-vote card has the Liberals ahead of the Greens, but I’m punting on a lot of people not following it and splitting his vote 50-50. We’ll have a better idea how right I am about that when we see some substantial TCP numbers at the count, at which point my system will drop pre-determined preference estimates and calculate their actual flow.
8.05pm. First booth in from Prahran, plus a tiny parcel of pre-poll votes. I think the latter are distorting my projections: they show it as close, but the booth is quite large and suggests a Liberal swing of only about 3%. Four booths in now from Werribee, and my system is now leaning to Labor, suggesting an insufficient Liberal swing of 7.1%. However, I’m projecting neither major party to clear 30% on the primary vote, so I can’t be ruled out that a minor candidate can sneak through the middle. Independent Paul Hopper best placed, but my feeling is that the number of Greens and Victorian Socialists votes going straight to Labor will make it hard for him.
7.50pm. Relief for Labor as the second booth in from Werribee, Riverbend, swings a lot more gently than the first. Labor’s primary vote has plunged, but a remarkable share of it has gone to Victorian Socialists. I’m projecting a very slight Labor lead, but that leans heavily on preference estimates. Still nothing from Werribee.
7.35pm. The latest update brings the TCP result from Little River, which the Liberals won 177-117 after losing 156-122 last time.
7.18pm. Nothing new in the regular 15 minute update. When I referred earlier to “the absence of small rural booths”, I guess I should have said “except Little River”.
7.03pm. The first booth in from Werribee is Little River, with what I record to be a 13.5% two-party swing, which would be enough for the Liberals to win. Notes of caution though: only 294 votes, and a booth uncharacteristic of the electorate.
6.16pm. No surprise that the latest results update brings no figures, but the time stamps on my results pages have successfully updated, which is reassuring.
6pm. Polls have closed. History suggests the Victorian Electoral Commission will update the results feed at precise 15 minute intervals. Given the huge fields of candidates in both seats, and the absence of small rural booths, there could be quite a wait — in similar circumstances at the Mulgrave by-election, the first update with actual results was at 7:30pm.
Preview
Today is the day of Victoria’s eagerly awaited Werribee and Prahran by-elections, which between them offer an opportunity to gauge whether Labor is doing quite as badly in the outer suburban mortgage belt as recent polls have suggested, and how the Greens are holding up in their inner Melbourne heartland after a disappointing result at the Queensland election in October. As is hopefully apparent immediately above, this site will be running live results and projections using its innovative three-candidate prediction model, though as will be explained below, these will very likely be two-candidate contests.
As is so often the case in Victoria these days, both have attracted bloated fields of candidates, but Werribee appears a straightforward two-horse race that will be defined by the precise scale of the inevitable swing from Labor to Liberal. The former is defending a margin of 10.5%, which is less than the swing indicated by the remarkable recent poll result from Resolve Strategic. Ronald Mizen of the Financial Review reported last week that “internal Labor polling suggests it could be as close as 48-52 in favour of the government”, which would come as a substantial relief to it if borne out. For their part, the Liberals are managing expectations, with Chip Le Grand of The Age relating a view that the party missed an opportunity to engage the seat’s substantial Indian population by preselecting 63-year-old real estate agent Steve Murphy. Liberal sources cited in the Financial Review hopefully offered if if Murphy can manage a 5% swing, “the seat could be within reach next year” — a notion rightly debunked by Kevin Bonham.
I’m not aware of any hard intelligence of what’s likely to transpire in Prahran, where the Greens are defending a formidable 12.3% margin against the Liberals in a contest forfeited by Labor. A fair bit has been made of the fact that the seat’s last Labor member, Tony Lupton, who held it from 2002 to 2010, is running as a candidate and directing preferences to the Liberals ahead of the “toxic” Greens. While Lupton’s name recognition is unlikely to amount to much fourteen years after he ceased to represent a rapidly changing electorate, he can hardly fail to gain at least some traction in his appeal to homeless Labor voters. The extent to which they follow his how-to-vote card is another matter.