Dunkley byelection live results: counting under way as Labor expects tight contest

Anthony Albanese, Jodie Haydon and Labor candidate for Dunkley Jodie Belyea walk into Derinya primary school on polling day for the Dunkley byelection.

LIVE – Updated at 08:14

Labor is trying to hold on to Dunkley hoping its 6.3% margin and expanded tax cuts will get it over the line, but the Liberals are betting on anger over cost of living and immigration will win the day. Follow all the latest developments.

08:14

These four parties are not running a candidate in this election:

Liberal Democratic party

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation

Australian Federation party

United Australia party

These votes seem to be coming back to the Liberal party (in first preferences). This isn’t that big a story – the votes for these parties would more likely than not have flowed back to the Liberal party in preferences at the last election.

But when we consider changes in the primary vote, it has to be part of the conversation.

08:13

The booth count is up to four (out of 36) and the vote is following a similar line. There is a swing towards the Liberal party in these very early counts, but the key word here is early (that last booth just had a swing towards the Labor party).

The Liberal primary vote seems to be rising with the absence of both One Nation and UAP candidates in this poll.

Just on that – in case you missed it, UAP’s Craig Kelly has been announced as the federal director of One Nation.

08:08

With three booths having been officially counted, the Liberal party has a 9.84% swing towards it, while Labor has a 1.64% swing against it.

On first-preference votes, the candidates are separated by eight votes.

Again, this is wayyyy too early to make any calls, but it is a live blog so we’ll be doing the rolling count updates.

08:04

Jane Hume is also sticking to the message – the Liberal party has also been claiming underdog status, and Hume isn’t shifting from that tonight:

I would love it if we could win this seat tonight, but as I said, 6.3% is a big ask. Let’s not forget, it’s not a normal byelection. Peta Murphy was a much loved local member. She was much admired by her colleagues, much loved by her community. There hasn’t been that retirement or scandal that led to this byelection. People are annoyed they’re back at the polls. No doubt. You can feel that. This is their third time in two years that they are at the polls. That I didn’t appreciate it. At the same time, there was a lot of good will to Peta Murphy. That will play out too.

08:01

The defence minister, Richard Marles, is speaking to the ABC about Labor’s chances.

He is playing down Labor’s chances (as has been habit lately).

I’m filled with trepidation and anxiety, which is the state I’m always in before we hear any results, and I feel that, I felt that on nights where we won and lost.

That says more about me than the circumstances. I probably am a natural pessimist.

I’m certainly on tenterhooks. I’m sure that Jodie is. We’re waiting.

So does he think Labor can hold the seat?

I mean, it’s close. So the answer is, I think we’re in the hunt.

… When you look at the 6.3% margin, Peta Murphy was a very popular local member. She out-polled significantly the Labor swing vote at the last election.

If anything, that number of 6.3 is probably better than the natural result, if can I put that it way. So I think this will be close. We are nervous. I’m very nervous at this point.

08:00

The Liberal senator Jane Hume is speaking for the Liberals (the parties usually choose the most senior parliamentarians for each state to stand up for the media on the night of a byelection).

Hume is much more positive than Richard Marles was.

I don’t think we’re ready to call it on one booth but I can tell you there’s a lot of excited people behind me. It is noisy. (Hume, like Marles, is at the official campaign party.)

We had a lot of volunteers out on the booths. They have fed back to me they had consistent messages that the people of Dunkley … are doing it tough.

They had 12 mortgage interest rate rises under the government, and groceries are going up. There were angry people. We met with tradies that were very disappointed to hear that the cost of their cars potentially will go up under this government.

We know that also, this is an electorate that voted a resounding no in the referendum last year. I think they felt their issues were ignored, the cost of living is clearly their number one, number two and three issue.

… Will they punish the government to the extent we can win the byelection? That is a big ask – 6.3% would be a thumping victory. In a general election, if you move the dial by 3% that is a landslide.

07:54

Richard Marles is answering questions about whether or not Labor should be panicked by this result (which has not happened yet).

I think we will go through the postmortem when we get the results. I won’t go through a postmortem before we’ve got one single vote in … I think probably the answer to that question in one way is, we’ve seen byelection results in the past, which have been good for governments and not so good for governments, and what then transpires in the general election that follows can be different. I suspect win or lose, a lot, a lot will be read into tonight that come the next election won’t seem significant.

I think it is win or lose, the issue is not to overreact, whatever the result is tonight.

07:52

For those who don’t know how the count works, Australian Electoral Commission workers begin counting all the votes cast on the day. They are watched by scrutineers who watch the count on behalf of the candidates (to make sure all is on the up and up). They can challenge a vote (if the ballot hasn’t been filled out correctly, or believe it has been counted wrong) and they also feed back information to the party so they have some idea of how the count is going.

So Liberal strategists are saying they are noticing the early count (which is very limited so far, there have not been many booths counted) is showing the Liberal primary vote is higher than the last election.

It’s a byelection – which is always a different beast to a general election and also Scott Morrison is no longer the leader of the Liberal party, which has lightened the load a little bit.

07:52

The AEC has returned one booth – there has been a 6% swing against Labor there and a 13% swing towards the Liberal candidate in first preferences.

That is one of the 36 booths though.

07:51Paul Karp

It’s too soon for any results but we’ll do a quick vibe check with both sides, starting with Labor.

Labor is suggesting it is likely to be a tight result, meaning it could be a late one. This is because the absence of One Nation and the United Australia party should see 8% primary returning to the Liberals, and because the effect of Scott Morrison‘s unpopularity will now have washed out.

In terms of geography: there is the wealthier Mt Eliza southern end of the electorate, where Labor are spinning that the former MP Peta Murphy had outperformed expectations, and could see a correction back to the Liberals.

The more working class Carrum Downs northern end of the electorate is more mortgage belt, and could be a barometer for how Labor might perform in outer-urban seats more generally at a federal election.

Cost of living is the major issue. The Liberal bunting highlighted high inflation, increased interest rates and the “broken promise” on stage-three income tax cuts, urging voters to send Anthony Albanese a message. Despite this, Labor insists there was not a lot of anger towards the government.

07:50Paul Karp

Checking in on the Liberal side, it’s a remarkably similar story.

The opposition feels it got a more positive reception than the 2022 election, but it wasn’t a case of baseball bats out for Labor. Translating that into a prediction, it would be a swing to the Liberals but maybe not enough to take the seat.

All of these things have to be taken with a grain of salt though – it can just be a case of expectations management so any swing that does eventuate later in the evening looks more impressive.

The guesswork will be over soon when we get some results.

07:34

Here is our chief political correspondent Paul Karp’s take on the “scare” campaign the Liberal party had been running on Dunkley, going through the events of Thursday afternoon when the message came unstuck:

07:25

We are well into Pisces season (if you follow along with that kind of thing) and 2 March is being noted for a few other reasons – it is Anthony Albanese’s 61st birthday, Jim Chalmers’ 46th birthday and the ABC election analyst Antony Green’s birthday as well.

07:24

A big side story to the Dunkley campaign has been the impact of the rightwing political group Advance on this byelection. Advance wasn’t campaigning for the Liberal party, but against the government. Some commentators have said that Advance is the rightwing GetUp, but that’s not entirely true. GetUp campaigns focus on wider issues. Advance campaigned using populist and often incendiary messages, designed to target emotions.

There were the billboard trucks and newspaper ads, but much harder to get a hold on were the digital ads. Not just on social media, but things like YouTube as well. Some Labor strategists believe the impact will be “crowding” the space, not necessarily influencing it. But these things are hard to judge, or get a handle on, given how individually targeted they are, so there are some nerves in the Labor camp.

07:08

Byelections are always seen as a test of the government (even when they aren’t) but this one is being looked at closely –by both sides.

Labor is watching as a gauge of public anger over the cost of living crisis. The Liberal party are watching to see if Peter Dutton’s strategy of targeting the outer suburbs is going to work.

Victoria has not exactly embraced Dutton over the last few years though, which is another reason it’s being watched so closely. If the Liberals pull off a win here, or come close, then that will send a few chills down Labor strategist spines.

Byelections caused by the death of a sitting member historically have less of a swing than byelections caused by a retiring member. So all in all, it is a bit of a mess to predict.

07:07

And we are off.

The polls are officially closed and the count will be getting under way within moments.

Good evening

07:02

Welcome to a special edition of Australian politics live where we will be following the Dunkley byelection vote count.

Polls close at 6pm and the count will begin immediately after. Byelections usually whizz by pretty quickly – unless it is close. But we should get an idea soon after the polls close which way the votes are breaking.

Labor holds the seat by a 6.3% margin, which is not considered safe in these days of wild swings. Governments usually have a swing against them in a byelection and Dunkley isn’t a natural Labor seat – the Coalition held it from 1996 to 2019, when Peta Murphy won it from Chris Crewther.

Murphy’s tragic passing from cancer is the reason for the byelection. She had personally recruited Jodie Belyea to the Labor party and it was Anthony Albanese who asked her to run in this byelection.

The Frankston mayor, Nathan Conroy, is the Liberal party’s hope.

It has been a pretty brutal campaign – rightwing political group Advance has taken the techniques it honed during the voice referendum and applied them to the electorate in what has come as a bit of a shock to some political watchers.

Things are close, at least if you talk to those within the parties. The polls show it being close too, and so do the actions of the major parties in the parliament for the last week.

But there is nothing more they can do now, so follow along as we watch this count.

Ready? Let’s get into it.