9:35 – I’m going to finish up this liveblog here. One Nation has gained this seat with an enormous swing, but there will be some interesting data to examine as far as the relatively weak rate of preferences flowing to One Nation.
9:10 – One of those two remaining booths has now reported, but the number of postal votes has also doubled. One Nation’s primary vote lead is now over 10%.
8:38 – We now have all but two ordinary booths reporting primary votes, and all but four booths reporting preference counts. In the places where both figures have come in, Labor has 55.3% of preferences from the remaining 14 candidates. Still, despite this, One Nation is on 53.2% after preferences.
8:24 – Unfortunately I was miscalculating the preference flow to Labor, it’s more like 60%, not 75%.
Speaking of errors, the WAEC results seem to keep popping up with errors – vote totals change slightly for particular booths, and right now two booths have exactly the same primary vote figures.
8:10 – We now have preference counts from four election day booths and they all show Labor getting 72-79% of preferences over One Nation. But One Nation still wins three out of those four booths.
8:01 – We have preference counts from two booths, and they show the votes of other candidates favouring Labor over One Nation by 74-79%. One Nation is still leading on the raw 2CP count, but it’s relatively close.
7:43 – There is no good news for Labor in the first two regular election-day booths. Labor has polled 26% and 28% in these two booths, well behind One Nation. In the low to mid 30s.
I am calling this by-election as won by One Nation.
7:39 – Poll Bludger’s results website (based on the media feed) is ahead of the WAEC website. It also has results now for Comet Bay and Port Kennedy. It also appears the Western Australian Electoral Commission batch was a mistake and it’s now listed as Mobile Polling.
Overall One Nation has a primary vote lead over Labor of 34.7% to 26.1%.
7:35 – Another roughly 1300 postal votes have been added, and Labor is on 25.6% to One Nation’s 35.5%.
There’s also another booth called ‘Western Australian Electoral Commission’ – presumably prepoll votes at the electoral office – which has One Nation on 22.6% and Labor on 26.3%. I don’t have a 2025 comparison for this booth.
7:23 – The first batch of results has reported and it’s 1300 postal votes. One Nation leads on 36%, with Labor on 25% and the Liberal Party on 19%. If you compare this to the total postal vote in 2025 (which was about twice as big), that’s a swing of 23% against Labor and 28% to One Nation. But it would be unsurprising that One Nation does relatively well on the postal votes.
6:00pm WA time – Polls have just closed in the by-election for the WA state seat of Secret Harbour. I will be covering results tonight, although I don’t plan on doing much in the next hour. WA is two hours behind the east coast, so I am posting this at 8pm Sydney time. While we wait for results, you can check out my by-election guide.
