Overview

Date of election: November 28, 2026

Labor in Victoria faces the always challenging task of winning a fourth term in what seem particularly unpromising circumstances, having felt compelled to depose its leader four months out from the election. Labor has become accustomed to dominance in Victoria, winning six of the last seven elections and losing only narrowly in 2010. Its success in adding a seat to its already substantial tally at the 2022 election seemed particularly remarkable, given the state's especially gruelling experience of COVID-19 lockdowns amid failures in hotel quarantine. However, Daniel Andrews' command of state politics was never matched by his successor, Jacinta Allan, and polling conducted throughout 2026 has found Labor battling for third place against a surging One Nation.

Labor's resounding win in 2022 was achieved despite a 6.2% drop in the primary vote, amid a proliferation of minor parties and independents in some cases animated by anger about lockdowns. A telling distinction was observable between the lower-income seats of Melbourne's west and north, where the fall in Labor's vote share ran well into the double digits, and the more prosperous eastern suburbs, where the party more than held its ground. The first bit deep into Labor margins without eliminating them, while the second slightly expanded Labor's footprint in what had traditionally been Liberal territory. Labor also remained dominant in the “sandbelt” seats along the bayside in Melbourne's south-east, a collective bellwether that has reflected the outcome of most elections going back to the 1980s.

Labor also retained a strength in the regions that was increasingly deserting it in other states, maintaining its dominance in and around Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo. The Nationals at least were able to provide a bright spot for the Coalition by recovering Shepparton and Mildura from independents who had respectively gained the seats in 2014 and 2018. Teal independents also fell short of replicating successes in wealthy areas of Melbourne, where breakthroughs had been achieved at the federal election the previous May. The only addition to the cross bench was provided by the Greens, who added a fourth seat to their steadily expanding presence in inner-city Melbourne by gaining Richmond, and slashed Labor margins in a number of seats slightly further afield.

By-elections, One Nation and electoral arithmetic

The 2022 lower house result of Labor 56, Liberal 19, Nationals nine and Greens four has undergone three changes over the four years of the parliamentary term. Two of Labor's members have become independents, with Ringwood MP Will Fowles resigning from the party in August 2023 over a sexual assault allegation that did not lead to charges, and South Barwon MP Darren Cheeseman doing likewise in April 2024 over accusations of inappropriate behaviour towards a staffer. Five by-elections have been held over the course of the term, not including the supplementary election for Narracan that was held in January 2023 after a candidate died during the campaign period. The only one at which the seat was not retained by the incumbent party was Prahran, which the Liberals gained from the Greens in February 2025.

Following the South Australian election in March, Victoria is the second state to hold an election since the political terrain was radically transformed by One Nation, as tracked over the past year by opinion polls and confirmed by the South Australian result and a series of by-elections. The party's newly demonstrated capacity to win seats in substantial numbers complicates the conventional arithmetic of two-party politics at both ends, providing new pathways for Labor to lose the 12 seats it would take to cost it its majority, and complicating the Coalition's target of a net gain of 17 seats.

One Nation's four seats in South Australia were all gained in traditionally conservative country areas, and a similar story was told in May by its win in the federal by-election for Farrer, which had historically been fought over by the Liberals and Nationals. The Nationals have particular reason to be nervous about each of their nine lower house seats, most especially in the three where the sitting members are retiring, but the Liberals also have seven regional seats that appear under threat in varying degree. One note of encouragement for the Liberals was provided by their successful defence of the Mornington Peninsula seat of Nepean a week before Farrer, at which One Nation nonetheless polled nearly a quarter of the vote in the absence of a Labor candidate.

Labor emerged unscathed from One Nation in South Australia, but this was in the context of an overwhelming victory that few would expect to be replicated in Victoria. Even here One Nation was able to turn what had historically been safe Labor seats in northern Adelaide into a new kind of marginal. The potency of this threat was confirmed in August when One Nation gained a sweeping win in a by-election for the Western Australian state seat of Secret Harbour, which has a number of Labor-held demographic equivalents in Melbourne's outer suburbs. Victorian Labor's relatively strong regional presence would also appear to make it particularly vulnerable.

The Coalition's challenging path to a parliamentary majority undoubtedly requires extensive Liberal gains in Melbourne, particularly in the eastern suburbs, where its traditional strength has eroded dramatically at both state and federal elections over the past two decades. Here too the Liberals had the encouragement of a by-election win, albeit at the expense of the Greens rather than Labor, when the inner-city seat of Prahran was gained in February 2025, their first win in over a decade in a once-conservative seat. Another by-election was held on the same day in Werribee in Melbourne's outer west, at which Labor held out by 0.8% in the face of a 10.1% Liberal swing, a result that notably predated One Nation's ascent in the polls later in the year.

Labor's third term

Polls suggested Labor was maintaining its ascendancy in the year after the November 2022 election, despite the embarrassment surrounding the cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth Games in July 2023, for which the government had successfully bid in April 2022. Then in September came the resignation of Daniel Andrews, the unheralded nature of which helped secure the path for his Socialist Left colleague and favoured successor, Jacinta Allan. Andrews intervened on Allan's behalf when Ben Carroll of the Right nominated against her, which would have required a six-week process involving a ballot of the party membership if it had progressed. He contented himself with the deputy leadership, which some interpreted as his and the Right's true objective.

Allan came to the position encumbered by her prior ministerial responsibility for the Commonwealth Games, but it was her background as Transport Infrastructure Minister that caused her the greater grief, given its centrality to allegations of corruption on the government's “Big Build” infrastructure projects. The government's stocks were further damaged by concerns about crime, driven particularly by youth gang activity, and high government debt relative to other states. The cost of the ambitious three-stage Suburban Rail Loop project, projected for the first stage at $32.3 billion, became a particular focus of criticism, while its concentration of investment in Melbourne's east and south-east became a liability in areas where infrastructure development was not keeping pace with population growth.

Reports of disquiet about Jacinta Allan's leadership within the parliamentary party mounted in the early part of 2026, sharpened by suggestions that she faced defeat in her seat of Bendigo East. The pressure intensified amid renewed reportage on corruption in the construction industry and growing demands for a royal commission, to which Allan refused to yield. Ben Carroll continued to be the most frequently named successor, although there were suggestions that Left support might coalesce around Gabrielle Williams. However, he appeared resolute in his determination not to challenge, despite reported urgings from both the Left and the Right.

The tipping point came in late July, when Carroll confirmed his challenge shortly after Allan stared down a cross-factional delegation telling her she had lost the party room. Allan at first informed the party's state secretary, Steve Staikos, that she planned to take the matter to a full ballot of the party membership, but yielded the following morning. Echoing the Daniel Andrews succession, Left faction member Sonya Kilkenny nominated against Carroll in the ensuing leadership ballot, but the matter was finessed through a deal that secured a cabinet position for Allan supporter Tim Richardson. Carroll promptly signalled his distance from his predecessors in his first conference, announcing the establishment of a royal commission and promising a government in which “integrity will not be optional”.

Coalition in opposition

Labor has at least been able to console itself through much of the past term with the turmoil that has engulfed the Liberal Party. It was perhaps an indication of the difficult road ahead when the leadership vote after the November 2022 election was decided by the narrowest possible margin, with 17 votes for John Pesutto, newly returned to parliament after recovering the seat of Hawthorn that he had lost in 2018, and 16 for Brad Battin. The vote illustrated a divide between urban moderates who supported Pesutto and outer suburban and regional conservatives who favoured Battin.

The flashpoint arrived in March 2023 when British anti-transgender activist Kellie-Jay Keen organised the Let Women Speak rally outside Parliament House. Attendees included Moira Deeming, a newly elected Liberal member of the Legislative Council, and 30 black-clad members of the National Socialist Network. Pesutto reacted to Deeming's involvement with a severity that proved problematic on two fronts: he appeared unable to carry the party room in a vote for her expulsion, instead settling for a compromise nine-month suspension; and he was sued by Deeming for defaming her by suggesting she had knowingly associated with neo-Nazis. The Federal Court found in Deeming's favour in December 2024, ordering Pesutto to pay $315,000 in damages plus costs.

The death knell for Pesutto's leadership was sounded a week later when a party room vote to readmit Deeming, which effectively amounted to a confidence vote for Pesutto, produced a 14-14 tie. This was followed a week later by an extraordinary party room meeting at which a spill motion was carried 18-10. Brad Battin was elected to succeed him after Jess Wilson was excluded in the first round, having alienated moderates through perceived disloyalty to Pesutto. However, Battin proved unable to find his footing as leader, with polling conducted after the May 2025 federal election finding Labor back into the lead. A shadow ministry reshuffle in October reportedly cost Battin six of his supporters from the previous December, and a spill motion the following month was carried 19-13, followed by the unopposed election of Jess Wilson.

Meanwhile, the saga surrounding Moira Deeming did not go away after her readmission to the party room following John Pesutto's demise. In June 2025, Pesutto was threatened with bankruptcy when the Federal Court ordered him to pay $2.3 million in her legal costs. When the Liberal administrative committee voted to loan Pesutto most of the money needed to pay Deeming's lawyers, her supporters sought to block it through a Supreme Court action. However, it was the unrelated matter of her assault allegation against former Liberal leader Matthew Guy in June 2026 that finally led to her breach with the Liberal Party. When Deeming's claim to have been “violently” assaulted did not appear to have been borne out by video evidence, the Liberal state executive voted to disendorse her. The episode also cost her the esteem of One Nation, to which she had reportedly been considering defecting, and she will instead seek re-election with Family First.

Minor parties and independents

The 2022 election resulted in a reduced cross-bench in the lower house, while equalling the record set in 2018 for cross-bench representation in the upper house. The Greens were able to increase their representation in the lower house from three seats to four, but independents disappeared from the chamber with the retirement of Russell Northe in Morwell, the failures of Susanna Sheed and Ali Cupper to win re-election in Shepparton and Mildura, and a series of narrow defeats for candidates seeking to emulate teal independent successes at the federal election the previous May. Two independent candidates who claimed their collective cause had been harmed by new campaign finance laws challenged them in the High Court, which ruled in their favour in April.

In the upper house, Victoria remained the last hold-out of the group voting ticket system that had progressively been jettisoned for the Senate and in the other mainland states, resulting in micro-parties with mutually reinforcing preference tickets winning seats from as little as 0.6% of the vote. However, this is set to change after the government finally legislated to abolish the system at the latest possible moment in late July. Whereas a similar move in Western Australia in 2021 kept the door open for small parties by abolishing the region-based system, resulting in a low quota for a chamber elected at large, Victoria's retention of eight five-member regions leaves small parties with a formidable 16.7% bar to clear without the help of monolithic preference flows.

The situation in the upper house, and perhaps also the lower, looked set to be transformed in any case by One Nation, whose rise since late 2025 has transformed the electoral landscape. In the case of Victoria, this is set to be built on an existing parliamentary base of just one seat, Rikkie-Lee Tyrell having won One Nation's first ever Victorian state seat in the upper house region of Northern Victoria in 2022. The party's designated parliamentary leader is its state president, Warren Pickering, who will run for the lower house seat of Pakenham. Pickering's history of drug use and drink driving received extensive media publicity following an exposé in The Australian in September, but he may have turned the situation to his advantage when he addressed the allegations of his estranged ex-partner at a press conference with his supportive adult children in tow.

The Greens recovered their footing at the 2022 election after emerging as the main casualty of the micro-party breakthrough in 2018, which reduced them from five upper house seats to one. Three seats were gained in the upper house along with the lower house seat of Richmond, expanding an inner-city bastion that already encompassed Melbourne, Brunswick and Prahran. However, the party hit a speed bump when Prahran MP Sam Hibbins resigned from the party room in November 2023 over an affair with a staffer. This was followed four weeks later by his resignation from parliament, resulting in a by-election at which the Liberals gained the seat with a 13.4% swing.