The Liberal Party claimed victory in the seat of Nepean last night, despite a cut to their primary vote and serious challenges from a rising One Nation and a popular local independent.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson told a jubilant crowd of party faithful she was excited to welcome Liberal candidate Anthony Marsh as the next member for Nepean.
She took the stage at the Verve Bar at Rye Hotel just after 9pm, when with 79.23 per cent of the vote counted, Marsh had 38.49 per cent of the primary vote – enough to push him to victory on preferences.
“I have stood by Anthony for weeks, I worked alongside him for months on this byelection campaign, and he had worked tirelessly every single day to listen to the residents down here on the peninsula,” Wilson said.
Liberal deputy David Southwick added that it had it been a tough campaign, but “the people of Nepean have said yes for Jess”.
Election analysts called the election for Marsh by 8pm. But his primary vote was well down on departing MP Sam Groth’s 48.1 per cent mark vote when he won the seat at the 2022 election.
Wilson told Nepean voters on Saturday night: “I will fight for you every day, but I will also take the lessons out of the result.”
“Tonight, we will take the learnings, and what we take away is that we have more work to do every single day to earn the trust of Victorians,” she said.
The byelection on the Mornington Peninsula was not contested by Labor, whose absence opened the door for independent Tracee Hutchison to pick up 21.31 per cent of the primary vote as of 9pm. The Greens were trending marginally above their 2022 result of 8.8 per cent, at 9.3 per cent.
In the first test of One Nation’s rising popularity in Victoria, its candidate, Darren Hercus, was sitting in second place on 24.69 per cent of the primary vote.
Former ABC chief election analyst Antony Green called the byelection at 8.20pm and said no other candidate would be able to overtake Marsh on preferences. If Hutchison ran second, preferences from One Nation would help elect the Liberals, he said.
“Even if One Nation does finish second, Green and independent preferences would elect Marsh instead,” Green said.
William Bowe, the editor of elections website Poll Bludger, also called the byelection for Marsh. And Monash University political scientist Zareh Ghazarian agreed the Liberals were likely to retain their hold on Nepean.
He said the primary vote swing against them showed voters had “taken this opportunity to give the Liberal Party a bit of a kick up the backside, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be enough for the Liberal Party to lose the seat”.
“This shouldn’t have been a seat that the Liberal Party would lose anyway,” Ghazarian said. “So it is a warning sign for the Liberal Party.”
In his victory speech on Saturday night, Marsh said he was ready to begin “fighting for the people of Nepean as we lead into one of the most important state elections that we’ve seen”.
“It’s been a hard-fought campaign … it’s a result we were hoping for, and I’m so glad I could bring it home for you tonight,” he told supporters.
Since the retirement of Groth, the party’s former deputy leader, the Nepean byelection had loomed as a serious test for the Victorian Liberals in what had been a traditionally safe seat ahead of the state election in November.
Liberal Party sources, speaking anonymously to detail internal discussions, had been bracing for a significant cut to their primary vote from 2022, with some surprised by the support for One Nation during early voting.
Hercus thanked his backers for their continued support on Saturday night, as he announced his intention to run again at November’s election to a room of cheering fans.
“I’ve had such amazing support from volunteers … even if we don’t win, we stuck to the moral high ground,” he said.
Adding to the complexity of the count, 23,605 people had cast an early vote by Friday. A further 6043 had returned a postal vote application. With just over 50,000 enrolled residents in the electorate, that means more than half of those eligible had voted before the polls opened on Saturday.
A poor result in Nepean would have been a major hit to the momentum the Coalition has built since the elevation of Wilson to the Liberal leadership. The Coalition needs to win 16 lower house seats to form government in November.
Speaking earlier on Saturday, Wilson maintained she was not taking the seat for granted.
In 2022, former tennis player Groth comfortably claimed Nepean for the Liberals with a margin of 6.4 per cent. But Groth’s shock decision to quit politics in February coincided with a surge in support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation that put the populist right-wing party’s support neck and neck with the Coalition.
Fears of an upset were heightened in March when One Nation won four lower house seats in the South Australian election, including three held by the Liberals. This tension played out across the campaign in Nepean, with both sides accusing each other of misinformation and internal feuds spilling over publicly.
The Age revealed One Nation leadership allegedly advised candidate Darren Hercus to use his personal bank details to accept donations, which would be in breach of Victoria’s electoral laws. One Nation disputed the reporting. When approached by The Age outside a polling booth on Saturday, Hercus declined to comment, citing this masthead’s coverage.
Marsh, who is currently on leave from his role as mayor of Mornington Peninsula Shire, was preselected in February. Long-time local Liberal members were overlooked in favour of Marsh, who only joined the party a short time before. He lives in a neighbouring suburb and could not vote for himself because he did not live in the electorate.
The Liberals used their status as the opposition to attack One Nation in campaign material. Outside a Nepean polling booth on Saturday, a sign authorised by the Liberals read: “A vote for One Nation is a win for Jacinta Allan in November.”
Hutchison said Nepean would never again be considered a safe Liberal seat, and that she was “incredibly humbled” by the results.
“There’s a lot of things that have got to fall our way this evening,” she said, prior to Marsh claiming victory.
“I am in lots of ways the moderate candidate that an electorate like Nepean is going to be best represented by because I will be someone that will reach across the aisles [in parliament] … and try for the bipartisan outcome.”
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Angus Delaney is a reporter at The Age. Email him at angus.delaney@theage.com.au or contact him securely on Signal at angusdelaney.31Connect via email.
