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Expectations weren’t high for the Coalition going into Saturday’s Farrer byelection to replace the longtime Liberal member Sussan Ley.

With Labor not running at all, the Australian Electoral Commission predicted the count would come down to One Nation’s David Farley against independent Michelle Milthorpe – the first time a major party wasn’t included since the system was introduced in the 1980s.

This proved correct, with Farley claiming almost 40% of the primary vote on the current count, and 57% of the final two-candidate vote. Milthorpe also saw a swing towards her, but ended up with just over 28% of primary votes, up more than 8 points from last year’s federal election.

The One Nation swing played out across the electorate – even in regional centres like Albury where the Liberal party has not done as well – although the gains were even larger in the rural areas. You can see this pattern in the map below. The arrows reflect the size of the swing.

The Nationals – who didn’t run in 2025 – also saw a near-10 point swing towards them. But it wasn’t enough to offset what Dr Luke Mansillo, a political scientist at the University of Sydney, describes as the “total destruction” of the Liberal party in Farrer. The two Coalition parties combined barely scraped together 20% of the primary vote – less than half of Ley’s mark a year ago.

One Nation’s almost 33-point primary swing also came at the expense of other right-of-centre parties. Family First, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, and Gerard Rennick’s People First parties all lost support, compared to last year’s election, in what Mansillo calls the “consolidation of the rightwing vote under a single party”.

The Greens also saw a 2.7 point drop, while Legalise Cannabis saw a 2.3 point gain.

Mansillo says this isn’t just about a collapse in Ley’s personal vote – she was the sitting member for more than 25 years – but shows that the “dam has broken” for the Coalition.

“It’s not like if they had put up someone else they would have done better,” Mansillo says. “After decades of the rural economy becoming more precarious thanks to economic rationalism, there is pent-up resentment at green energy and racial minorities.” Mansillo points to Hanson’s declaration that her supporters want to “take the country back”.

Milthorpe’s growth centred on major centres

Farrer is a very large seat that that stretches along much of the Victoria-New South Wales border, taking in major centres like Albury, Griffith and Deniliquin.

One Nation won in 74 polling booths across the electorate – taking upwards of 60% of primary votes at some smaller centres. Milthorpe increased the number of booths she won to 15, but these were almost entirely in Albury and one in Griffith.

You can explore this in the map below. The circles are coloured by who won the most votes at the booth and sized by the amount of votes that party won.

The Nationals picked up one pre-poll booth in Saturday’s byelection, while the Liberals retained a couple of mobile booths that visit aged care centres and hospitals.

This is in stark contrast to the election last year, where One Nation didn’t come first in a single booth. The swing towards One Nation was so large it not only won them the seat, but almost every polling booth the Liberal party had held in the 2025 election. You can explore the results from last year in the map below: