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Early access: provisional candidates; policy matches not independently reviewed.

Preferences, explained with pizza

TL;DR

You rank the candidates. If your first choice can't win, your vote moves to your next choice.

Like I'm five

Your class is picking one pizza, and everyone ranks the options. If no pizza gets more than half the first choices, the least popular is out, and those votes move to each person's next choice. Repeat until one pizza has more than half. That's how a lower house seat is won.

The grown-up version

You rank candidates. If your first choice can't win, your vote moves to your next choice. To win a lower house seat, a candidate needs more than half the formal votes. The VEC says around half of lower house seats are won on preferences.

Source: VEC: Preferential voting; VEC: Counting votes

Counting starts after 6 pm on election day, but postal votes can arrive until Friday 4 December, so results can move for more than a week. The VEC's early two-candidate count is an indicator, not the official result.

Source: VEC: How votes are counted

Sources

Sources last read Tuesday 3 November 2026 · Not yet independently checked

Authorised by DJ Johnson, 8 Kavanagh St, Southbank

Spinder is independent. It isn't the Victorian Electoral Commission and isn't affiliated with any party or candidate.

Sources: candidates, boundaries and voting information from the Victorian Electoral Commission; postcode estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics; every position we score links to its own source. Data as at 3 November at 11:00 am.

Data release vic-2026-20261103T000000Z-1227203ea473 (cards show 3ea473) · Method 1 (spinder-match-1)

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Musing by Moonth.