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Bush Votes

Methodology

Bush Votes follows the Legislative Assembly count in 21 rural and regional Victorian seats and compares it with 2022. It reports what the count shows. It doesn't call seats, predict results or favour any party or candidate.

Seats covered

21 Legislative Assembly districts across the Eastern, Northern and Western Victoria regions whose communities are rural and regional towns and cities. Bass, Eildon and Macedon reach towards Melbourne but are included for the regional communities within them, such as Wonthaggi, Mansfield and Daylesford.

  • Eastern Victoria: Bass, Gippsland East, Gippsland South, Morwell, Narracan
  • Northern Victoria: Benambra, Bendigo East, Bendigo West, Eildon, Euroa, Macedon, Mildura, Murray Plains, Ovens Valley, Shepparton
  • Western Victoria: Eureka, Lowan, Polwarth, Ripon, South-West Coast, Wendouree

Not covered:

  • The four Geelong seats (Bellarine, Geelong, Lara and South Barwon). Geelong is Victoria's largest regional city, but these seats are mainly urban and suburban, so they're left out to keep the focus on rural and regional communities.
  • Melbourne's fringe growth seats (Melton, Pakenham and Yan Yean), which are mostly outer suburbs.
  • Metropolitan Melbourne seats.
  • The Legislative Council: group voting tickets were abolished for 2026, so there is no like-for-like comparison with 2022.

District boundaries haven't changed since 2022, so each seat is compared with itself.

Where the figures come from

  • 2022 results: the Victorian Electoral Commission's published results for each district: first preferences by voting centre (the rechecked figures), the two-candidate-preferred count by voting centre, and the distribution of preferences. Every seat is checked against the VEC's own totals before anything is published.
  • 2026 results: the VEC's published results, collected as they are updated during the count.
  • 2026 venues: the VEC's venues spreadsheet, including its estimate of votes at each venue.
  • Locations: 2022 voting places from The Tally Room(with permission); 2026 venues in the same building take that location, and the rest are located withOpenStreetMap.

Comparing voting centres

Many venues changed between 2022 and 2026. Each 2026 election-day voting centre is compared like this:

  • Same venue: the same building as in 2022, whether or not its name changed.
  • Moved *: the same voting centre name, in a different building.
  • Merged booths *: two 2022 booths in the same building, combined.
  • Closest 2022 booth *: a new venue, compared with the nearest 2022 booth in the same seat, up to 5 km away. The distance is shown.
  • New, no comparison: no 2022 booth within 5 km, as in some growth areas.

* marks every comparison that isn't the same building. Voters who used a closed or moved booth may now vote somewhere else, so these comparisons are approximate. 2022 booths with no 2026 venue are listed on each seat page and stay in the 2022 seat totals.

Early, postal and absent votes

Early voting centres are compared at seat level, not booth by booth: in 2022, early votes were only reported for each district as a whole. Early votes are a large share of the vote and are often counted after election-day votes, so a seat's figures on election night can change considerably as they come in. Each seat page shows how much of the count each kind of vote makes up.

Two-candidate-preferred figures

The 2022 two-candidate-preferred (2CP) figure for a seat is from the full distribution of preferences where the VEC completed one, or from its 2CP count where a candidate won a majority of first preferences. In some seats the VEC stopped the distribution once a candidate passed 50%, so those seats show the indicative 2CP count, labelled as such. Booth-level 2CP figures are always from the indicative count.

Seat notes

  • Narracan: the 2022 election was postponed, so its baseline is the supplementary election of 28 January 2023, which had lower turnout.
  • Shepparton: the VEC's 2022 booth-level 2CP count used a different pair of candidates from the final result, so booth-level 2CP comparisons aren't available.

Count stages

Figures change for weeks after election day. Postal votes are accepted until 4 December and results are finalised when writs are returned on 19 December. Every figure on this site shows the stage of the count it comes from.

Credits

Results data © Victorian Electoral Commission, used underCC BY 4.0. 2022 voting place locations courtesy ofThe Tally Room. 2026 venue locations ©OpenStreetMap contributors. Bush Votes is an independent personal project and isn't affiliated with the VEC.