Werribee

Werribee is a safe Labor seat, so John Lister won despite a swing against him. That said, he was assisted by preference-votes flowing to him from candidates on the left. The ALP should not take those preferences for granted, and in next year's Federal election those preferences could easily go to the Greens or a Teal candidate.

The LNP and its mainstream media arm are touting it as a large swing to them, but in private their analysts will be disappointed with the small boost to their primary vote (+3.7%).

The Greens had a good opportunity to steal votes from Labor but failed to perform (+0.7%), and should be grateful they didn't receive a thrashing from the voters.

The real winners in Werribee are:
- Independent, Paul Hopper (+8.8%)
- Victoria Socialist, Sue Munro (+3.7%)
- Legalise Cannabis Xavier Menta (+5.5%)

Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party of Victoria, Sam Groth (who?!) showed everyone what an absolute knob he is. At a staged press event in Prahran yesterday, he took the spotlight away from the by-election, blathered about the 2026 election, and as a disrespectful afterthought, he added: "How good’s Rachel Westaway, by the way?"

To make matters worse, the Liberal Party of Victoria gave oxygen to Upper House MP Moira Deeming in Werribee. The Liberal Party of Victoria previously expelled her for being a Nazi and TERF. She's repeatedly made transphobic statements and hung-out with White Supremacists. She riled-up the electorate's fears by lying about a crimewave afflicting the region, and other paranoid nonsense.

(3/3)

Prahran

Prahran was called to this by-election because its sitting Greens member, Sam Hibbins, had an affair with a staffer and quit. He was co-deputy leader and has at times been considered leadership material of the Greens. Angelica Di Camillo stepped-up for the Greens in Prahran in December. Previously, she'd run for the state seat of Rowville in 2022, and the 2023 by-election for the federal seat of Aston. Angelica Di Camillo was always going to face an uphill battle for recognition in a short campaign, and did extremely well to maintain the Greens primary vote (-0.6%).

Labor didn't endorse a candidate for Prahran! If you don't run, you guarantee a loss! What a bunch of bumbling numpties!

Former Labor member for Prahran, Tony Lupton, ran as an Independent, and has links with the lobby group, Advance, which has a conservative, racist, nationalist platform. Tony Lupton was a willing fool who signed-up to Advance to funnel his preference votes to the Liberal Party. Tony Lupton is also openly a Zionist, so voters who care about Israel's genocide in Palestine fled from him (-14.0%).

In my opinion, the Greens lost Prahran to the Libs due to:
- The sudden departure of Sam Hibbins.
- Angelica Di Camillo having approx two months to establish herself and run a campaign.
- Toxic astroturfing campaigning for Local Council in recent months by the Liberal Party. The AEC/VEC should investigate their fake grass-roots pages on Facebook.
- The 'meh' image of Federal Greens.

Liberal Party fans may claim to have a "mandate", but Rachel Westaway's primary vote was only 36.2% with a modest swing (+4.8%). Without the preference support of Tony Lupton (12.8%), Prahran would have gone to Angelica Di Camillo, who achieved a respectable 48.4% of the two-candidate preferred votes.

(2/3)