It’s a long time between drinks for the Victorian Liberal Party, but this week it genuinely has some cause for celebration. In a by-election last Saturday it comfortably retained the state seat of Nepean, left vacant by the resignation of former deputy leader Sam Groth. Voter anger at a quite unnecessary by-election does not seem to have been taken out on the party.
Liberal candidate Anthony Marsh currently has 38.5% of the vote, down 9.6% from Groth’s tally in 2022. (That will probably come up a bit with postals.) That’s a fairly sharp drop, particularly in a vote with no Labor opponent, but it could have been much worse. Flavor of the month One Nation, which didn’t contest the seat in 2022, scored 24.7%, just ahead of Tealish independent Tracee Hutchison on 21.3%; they were followed by the Greens with 9.3% and four minor parties with 6.3% between them. (See official results here.)
It’s more likely than not that Green preferences will see Hutchison overtake One Nation’s Darren Hercus to make the top two. On that basis, according to the indicative count conducted on the night, Marsh wins with 63.5% two-candidate-preferred. If Hercus is his opponent instead it will be just as comfortable, since Hutchison’s preferences will mostly favor the Liberal (although it would be very interesting to see just how strongly).
If this by-election had been held before the South Australian election it might have stalled One Nation’s momentum a little, but it seems unlikely to do much now. Instead the attention will all be on Farrer this Saturday, where One Nation and the independent are expected to fight it out.
Nepean is not such good One Nation territory, but a quarter of the vote there is still impressive. And it’s quite polarised geographically; in the more suburbanised coastal strip, from Tootgarook east through Rosebud to Dromana and Safety Beach, the One Nation vote was above average throughout, peaking at 30.0% in Rosebud. The rest, being the more affluent western end of the peninsula, from Rye west to Portsea, plus all of the southern and inland parts, showed significantly less One Nation support, going as low as 8.1% in Flinders.
The Liberal vote peaks in the west, with 55.0% primary in Sorrento, and is also strong in the south. The Teal vote peaks in the south, with 41.6% in Shoreham and 37.0% in Flinders, and is weakest in the strong One Nation areas, with just 16.8% in Dromana Beach.
The usual caveats apply: this is just a by-election, and one that Labor chose not to contest. People may vote quite differently when there is more at stake, and while Labor is not likely to get close to the 32.6% it managed in 2022, it is probably still good for more than 20%, some of which will come off the One Nation vote.
All the same, two things seem clear. Firstly, the Liberals are still competitive in Victoria. A loss in Nepean, or even a narrow win, would have been a disaster for the party; instead it can say with some credibility that new leader Jess Wilson is making a success of the job. Unless something changes dramatically in the next six months, it is not facing the sort of catastrophe that overtook its South Australian counterpart.
But secondly and more importantly, the One Nation threat to the Liberals is real. Come November there will be many seats that are more fertile territory for it than Nepean; if nothing bursts the balloon before then, it is going to be a significant player. Wilson will need to explain to voters and to her own party her attitude to a potential coalition with the far right – and that will be a much harder task than she faced in Nepean.
The World is Not Enough 
I found it curious that you described the Community Independent candidate as “tealish”.
It is my understanding that the media uses the term “teal” to describe those community independent candidates who accept donations from Climate 200.
Tracee Hutchison did not accept any money from Climate 200. She ran a genuinely grass-roots campaign – with local people running the campaign
Tracee’s campaign was poles apart from the Federal election campaign in Flinders. Smith’s campaign was run by people who did not live in Flinders. Climate 200 contributed over $1 million (i.e 57.3 per cent of donations).
Smith was a teal; Hutchison was a community endorsed independent.
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As much as the Greens claim to be the party of the workers — Rosebud etc. just voted strongly for one nation. Not many working-class voters are interested in bringing back policies such as those inherently coercive such as the closed shop/secondary boycotts — which the Greens want to necromance.
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