Prahran – Victoria 2026

The overlapping federal result would also have been an ALP v GRN 2CP. And the ALP v LIB 2PP would have been 67-33 (which is where Westaway having to outperform the overlapping federal result by +17 comes from).

100% right Tommo9, and that small section of Prahran that’s in Kooyong is actually perfect to illustrate just how important tactical voting is.

Voters there know Labor or Greens have zero chance of winning Kooyong, it’s a LIB v Ryan contest, so they vote Ryan as the best way to ensure the Liberals don’t win.

The Greens vote did hold up pretty well across the remainder of Prahran (within both Melbourne & Macnamara) too, certainly better than it held up in Richmond. The big swings to Labor were the story.

I should note too, in my analysis of the overlapping federal result, I actually excluded Prahran East entirely because it was too difficult due to it being a LIB v IND contest. So, given Prahran East is one of the more Liberal-friendly areas in the seat, that 67-33 overlapping result may be slightly inflated, but I did also deliberately calculate the non-ordinary vote in a way that was overly generous to the Liberals which probably helps even that out.

Saying a Teal could do okay in parts of Prahran is not the same as saying they would win the seat, and what would doing well look like. In the South Yarra Library booth, a booth bordering Williams Rd, bordering Toorak, demographically the South Yarra Library booth should be a Liberal Party booth, only it hasn’t been good for them for a while, it could be possible for a Teal to poll over 10%, and maybe finish third in that booth.

The truth is we won’t know how we’ll a teal can do in prahran unless one actually runs

@ Pencil
Best area for Teal would also occur where Libs do best
1. North of Toorak Road in South Yarra
2. Prahran East- The Williams Road/Hotham Road corridor divides inner city from suburbia
3. West of Punt Road- The St Kilda Road, Melbourne 3004 area
4. The Hawkesburn part of South Yarra as you move further away from Chapel Street
5. South of Dandenong Road is the weakest area for Teals/Libs

Assuming Labor makes a serious 2PP play for this seat a teal candidate would probably come in fourth but their preferences could determine the order between Labor Greens and Liberal. Preferencing between Labor and Greens that is the ? Of the hour. This could be like Calwell in May. It could take some time to sort that out.

Don’t think this cycle will be all that teal friendly in terms of issues but there will be plenty of double or even triple haters. Under current electoral funding laws it’s very hard to get proper momentum behind teal campaigns at the state level and with all three major parties likely to throw resources at this race the commenters suggesting it’s going to be a tough nut for a teal to crack are probably spot on.

Agree Maxim. To me, there are really just no factors or circumstances whatsoever that would indicate that a teal could do well in Prahran even to the point of being much of a disrupter to the 3CP race between the majors. Victoria’s electoral funding laws are one of the reasons the teals struggle a lot more at state level too.

If teals couldn’t even crack double-digits in Brighton, Sandringham and Caulfield in 2022, why would a teal make any significant impact whatsoever in an inner-city seat that has been held by Labor or Greens for 19 of the last 23 years, and where all 3 parties are likely to put resources into it?

Prahran has really become a Greens vs Labor seat (decided at the 3CP stage), with the byelection result really being an anomaly where a perfect storm of extremely low turnout that was almost certainly lowest in the most left-wing part (Port Phillip), no Labor candidate, an ex-Labor MP directing preferences to the Liberals, a possibly significant donkey vote that favoured the Liberals, and the byelection being held at the peak of the Liberals’ polling ended up collectively being just enough for the Liberal to surprisingly scrape over the line by about 800 votes.

I’m confident that for all the talk of Prahran being a “3 way race” again and the possibility of a teal disruptor entering the mix, it is simply going to revert to being a relatively safe non-Liberal seat (<45% Liberal 2CP).

As I said, in the overlapping federal result the Liberals would not have even made the 2CP. They certainly will in November 2026, but they'd need to outperform the federal result by about +17 and will even need to outperform their byelection primary vote by about +7 to be competitive in the 2CP.

As for the turnout in the byelection:

Every Stonnington booth from 2022 was used in the byelection, but only 2 of the 6 Port Phillip booths used in 2022 were used in the byelection, and the two that were used had very low visibility.

The Stonnington booths actually had a higher combined turnout than in 2022 (partly because of the much lower postal & early vote); but the Port Phillip booths had a significantly lower combined turnout than in 2022.

On top of that, and especially so close to council elections having just happened 3 months earlier, people in Port Phillip typically don’t associate themselves with ‘Prahran’.

So being a byelection where if you’re not in Prahran you don’t have to vote – unlike a general election where everyone knows they have to vote – I think it’s pretty safe to assume .that St Kilda, St Kilda East and Southbank would have no doubt had the lowest turnout. I wouldn’t be surprised if the turnout in Stonnington was actually pretty close to 2022, and the 14% of 2022 voters who didn’t show up in 2025 were mostly concentrated in Port Phillip.

And obviously Port Phillip is by far the most left-wing part of the seat, where the Liberals finish a distant third in every booth (primary votes mostly ranging between 12-15%) with a 2CP hovering around 20%. So it’s very possible, if not likely, that low turnout in Port Phillip alone was a decisive factor in the Greens falling around 800 votes short in the 2CP count.

That’s before getting to all the other unique byelection factors, like the fact that even if Lupton’s preferences broke 55-45 to the Liberals (instead of 70-30), the Greens would have won. Enter an actual Labor candidate whose preferences will break around 80-20 to the Greens and you have a very different contest to the byelection.

That and you’ve got the by election protest voters who want to send a message to the govt knowing the govt won’t change.

The founder of Resolve Strategic said that teals are less effective at campaigning on state issues which normally focus on service delivery. Because of the nature of the Victorian Liberals and stances on social issues, there might be some interest in teal campaigns, just not in Prahran. Because of electoral funding laws, it’s very hard for a teal independent to get momentum going in the way that federal teal campaigns did.

The opening of the Metro Tunnel and Anzac Station will be in December 2025. This could be a game changer and I can see it featured heavily in Labor’s campaign. Because of the competition between the three main parties, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Liberals pull resources out of here to focus on more winnable, outer-suburban seats.

@Votante – I am not surprised Teals always seemed to be something of a notional concept rather than a hard and fast point on the political spectrum. Like other “minor” parties, it is driven mainly by dissatisfaction with one of the major parties. In this case, predominantly though not exclusively, the Liberals. That primarily works on the Federal level, where ideology is more influential than deliverables at the state and local level. However, that said, if there is a perceived void in the offering, there may be an opening, especially if the state Liberals in Vic can resolve their internal divisions.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/to-understand-the-liberal-party-just-follow-the-hatreds-20251001-p5mz54.html

When you have stuff like that, it’s just like having one hand tied behind your back. To play in the states, the teals would have to start locally and fund council races.

Agree with you again Votante. In addition to Anzac Station (within the seat of Prahran) opening, it’s highly likely that the Sandringham Line ends up with significantly increased weekend services too, as it will be taking over from the Frankston Line as the south-eastern part of the “Cross City Line” (running all the way through to Werribee/Williamstown).

On weekends, the Werribee and Williamstown Lines run at 20 minute frequencies (each), with one of the two running exactly 10 minutes apart, and as a result, the Frankston Line runs every 10 minutes with every alternating one going to either Werribee or Williamstown.

With the Sandringham Line taking that over from Frankston, it means Sandringham Line frequencies are likely to double on weekends, not to mention that people living in Prahran / Windsor etc will be able to hop on a train directly to Williamstown without needing to change, which is always a nice weekend activity.

I had an email from Rachel Westaway (no idea how I ended up on her mailing list) that she’s hosting a forum in October to oppose Labor’s “activity centres” and “overdevelopment” in Prahran.

I feel like it’s a pretty misguided strategy by the Liberals here, in a seat that is overwhelmingly renters who would probably love to afford to be able to buy in the area but can’t, to be opposing an increase in supply. “Heritage” is not really at risk either because terrace houses in Prahran & Windsor are so expensive and sought after – and the lots are too small to develop on by themselves – that while a government may ALLOW development up to certain heights, it isn’t like these leafy streets with $2m+ Edwardian houses are going to be snapped up by developers and demolished. The development in Prahran has mostly been on old industrial or commercial sites – often from the ugly mid-20th century era – that nobody cares about, and most of the young population renting here would love an increase of housing supply.