Dunkley byelection live results: Labor on track to hold seat as Liberals appear to fall short on swing

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 09:46

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.

09:46

Antony Green has now joined it and called it for Labor and Jodie Belyea.

So that is a birthday present for Anthony Albanese

09:45

Labor is (unofficially) calling it as a win for Jodie Belyea.

The Liberal’s Keith Wolahan who is one of only (two or three depending on where you draw the boundaries) of inner Melbourne Liberal MPs and someone who is being touted as a future leader of the party has (unofficially) conceded.

He told the ABC

I am getting deja vu and PTSD [flashing back to] sitting with you and the team [last election]

If Antony is close to call it, it is looking that way. I will wait for him to make it official.

Labor appears to have held Dunkley

09:38

The count of postal votes has begun and Ben Raue is reporting there is less than a 6% swing towards the Liberal’s Nathan Conroy.

With that news it appears that Labor’s Jodie Belyea has won the Dunkley byelection.

09:32

Let’s do a check of the psephologist’s predictions:

The Poll Bludger William Bowe is predicting a Labor retain.

The Tally Room’s Ben Raue has called that Labor will win.

09:32

We are now at 22 booths reporting exhausted votes and the swing has dropped again to 2.8%.

There are still 14 booths to return a 2PP result, but there would need to be a pretty big anomaly for the swing to suddenly turn the Liberal party’s way.

Which would suggest that Peter Dutton’s strategy of targeting those outer suburban seats to win back government is not going overly well. It also suggests that if those outer suburban seats are in Victoria, Dutton has a giant job ahead of him. Queensland is an exhausted electorate for the LNP, and NSW is more of a swapsie state than a gain. There is some room in Western Australia, but without Victoria, and winning back some of those inner-city teal seats, it is hard to see how the Coalition wins an election in its own right at the next election.

09:30

Jane Hume is asked about the lack of One Nation and UAP candidates, and whether that played a role in the Liberal party primary vote rebound from the last election.

I wouldn’t say that just yet. I think it’s probably a little too early to tell. The libertarian party was in the field, they may have mopped up some of those votes. I thought the Greens candidate was nowhere to be seen and I think that’s beginning to play out in those figures.

Let me reiterate again. Peta Murphy was a really popular local member. There was an awful lot of goodwill that was directed towards her. I think that … like the figure I heard was that the last time that after the passing away of a local member there was a byelection and it switched sides was 1966. I think it was the same time as St Kilda won their last grand final. And I know how long that’s been.

09:30

With 31 of the 36 polling booths reporting, Jodie Belyea remains ahead on first preferences.

With 26 of the 36 booths reporting all votes counted, the swing has crept up to 3.9% against Labor, but Belyea is still holding on the 2PP measure.

It is truly hard to see Labor losing this from here.

I am no Antony Green, but I would be preparing for him to call it any moment now.

09:27

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.

09:27

Labor is ahead on first preferences at the moment, but it’s spokespeople are being asked about what the swing on the two-party preferred measure means.

The MP for Jagajaga, Kate Thwaites, is next on the MP conga line and she says:

I don’t think it is unusual to get a swing in a byelection, and I think we have to wait to see what sort of swing that is.

You know, there is in a byelection the potential for people to decide to vote and know they’re not going to change the government. That could be one piece of it, as I said.

We had a very hard-working, popular local member in Peta Murphy. Now Jodie has run a fantastic campaign.

Her and her volunteers have knocked on, I think, 15,000 doors locally, but she didn’t obviously have the recognition that Peta had as an MP. I hope she will get that and she will be a wonderful colleague in Canberra.

And, of course, you know, the more broader environment, we do know that cost of living is a real thing for Australians right across the board at the moment, and our government, you know, is working to address the cost of living through our tax cuts, through the investments we’re putting into health.

But that is also something that is very real for Australians at the moment.

09:23

Jane Hume is back to talk about the Liberal campaign and she isn’t looking as happy as she was just an hour or so ago. The party behind her has also calmed down a little bit – Liberal campaign staff are now holding signs behind Hume, rather than cheering at the television (there was only a few booths counted the last time they spoke, but they had broken towards the Liberal party and Hume was beaming).

With the swing sitting at around 3% at the moment, Hume is counting this as a win for the Liberals. It’s the Bazball of election campaigns.

It’s a good feeling here. I know you guys are looking at polls, numbers coming in, that’s not the sense we get in this room. There’s big numbers we want to see – postal and prepoll votes. And the volunteers here are really proud of the work they put in, proud of the campaign team and most of all they’re really proud of Nathan Conroy.

09:21

With 15 booths counted, the swing against Labor is still sitting at about 4% (or the swing towards the Liberal party is about 4% if that is your preference).

Labor thought prepoll was going to break its way as well. So, early, early, early trend, but it looks like Labor may hold on to this seat, with a much-reduced margin.

If that happens, Peter Dutton will still count that as a win. The Liberal party set an expectation of a swing of 3% against the government as a “huge” message, while the government claimed historically the swing at a byelection was around 7%.

The ABC’s Antony Green was asked about this earlier and said 4% was the average swing against governments in byelections since federation.

So, so far, this is on track.

Labor ‘increasingly feeling confident’ as swing narrows

09:20Paul Karp

A Labor source has said they are not calling the Dunkley result yet – but they are increasingly feeling confident of a win.

With 20% of the two-party preferred vote counted, the Liberal candidate, Nathan Conroy, has currently received 47% of the two-party preferred vote, a swing of 3.3% to the opposition, well short of the 6.3% swing required to win the seat off the Albanese government.

Labor is not ready to call the seat, because the AEC is yet to reveal the two-party preferred count for postal and prepoll votes. But on the votes cast on the day, the Liberals are falling short.

09:20

Sussan Ley continues to double down on her racially inflammatory tweet about alleged assaults by “foreign criminals” against “Victorian women”, despite Victorian police having cleared a former immigration detention detainee of charges.

Ley is the next Liberal MP up and she has been on Sky (doubling down on the tweet) and the ABC (doubling down on the tweet) because she says she “won’t take a backwards step” on protecting women.

Ley’s basis for her argument is the high court decision which ruled indefinite detention unconstitutional. No matter who was in government at the time, the result would have been the same – the release of people who were in indefinite detention because they could not be deported to their countries of origin for a variety of reasons, but could not be released into Australia because of crime/unfit character rulings etc.

The “criminals” the Liberal party has been talking about have served their custodial sentences. They went into indefinite detention because they did not meet the visa requirements following their crimes.

But Australia releases criminals who have completed their custodial sentences every single day. Ley is not focused on them. Just the “foreign-born” people in this cohort.

09:19

The Liberal party primary vote has increased from the last election, there is no doubt about it.

But there was a One Nation candidate in the last election and a UAP candidate, and this time those parties are not running anyone.

So those votes have mostly gone back to the Liberal party.

But what we can say, given that Labor’s primary vote is holding – and a smidgeon higher, given the poor showing from the Greens (although they didn’t put a lot of resources into this byelection campaign – I don’t think Adam Bandt even visited the electorate during the campaign) – is the Advance message of “put Labor last” has not worked.

09:16

With 20 out of 36 polling booths now having distributed 2PP votes, the swing has dropped back down to 2.99%.

09:08

So with 17 booths having returned two-party preferred allocations now (which means the votes for 17 booths have been exhausted) the swing has inched up to 3.3% against Labor, but Jodie Belyea is still ahead.

09:06

With 27 of 36 booths returning first preferences, Labor’s Jodie Belyea is ahead with 15,285 votes to Nathan Conroy’s 14,760.

On the two-party preferred measure (which is 14 booths of the 36, because it takes longer to get down the ticket and allocate a vote) Labor is ahead 54 to 46, with the swing against Labor sitting at 2.8%.

Still early, but Labor would be breathing a little easier at this point.

09:03

Richard Marles is now being asked whether the stage-three tax cuts have saved Labor tonight.

Well, again, people want to draw that conclusion. I mean, I think we will get a better sense of how the tax cuts have played out. You can see from the way in which we campaigned we believe they were a huge positive and the results that we’re seeing so far would seem to affirm that. Most people are going to be better off by virtue of what we’re doing in relation to the tax cuts. Most importantly, it absolutely signifies that in us you have a government that is fighting for the household budget. That’s what we are seeking to do.

08:36

There are some political commentators following along with this count saying that Labor will be going through a big change of policy direction following tonight.

Labor’s policy direction since the beginning of the year has been cost-of-living relief. And it is showing no signs of shifting on that. Especially as we enter budget season.

Here was Richard Marles a short while ago:

I want to point out that our focus – and I think our ongoing focus – will be on the question of the cost of living. The tax relief that we put in place is very central for us going forward.

It speaks to what we have been doing since we came to government, which has been putting in place efforts to try to reduce the burden of the cost of living, and focusing on, if you like, the bread-and-butter issues of the economy, focusing on household budgets, trying to improve the lot of Australians, is going to be what we are about, right through to the next election.

08:25

With six booths now counted, Labor will be breathing a little lighter – there has been a slight early swing towards the party and Jodie Belyea has taken the two-party preferred lead for the first time in the count.

08:24

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.

08:23

We are now in double digits with the booth count and the swing against Labor has dropped to 4.12%.

Labor is leading on the two-party preferred.

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.

08:01

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.

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.