{"id":3621,"date":"2026-05-02T23:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T23:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/3621\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T23:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T23:47:08","slug":"liberals-focus-on-lessons-for-victorian-election-after-decisive-nepean-by-election-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/3621\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberals focus on ‘lessons’ for Victorian election after decisive Nepean by-election win"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Victorian Liberals celebrated a decisive victory in the Nepean by-election, the implications for the wider state election to be held in November were front and centre.<\/p>\n

It took less than three hours from the start of vote counting for election analysts to call the result in the Liberals’ favour<\/a>, with a win for former local mayor Anthony Marsh.<\/p>\n

The party was able to hold on to the traditionally safe seat on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne, in the wake of the resignation of former deputy Liberal leader and tennis player Sam Groth.<\/p>\n

Labor did not field a candidate in the seat, but One Nation and an independent candidate posed a considerable challenge to the Liberals.<\/p>\n

The Liberal Party has held the seat on the Mornington Peninsula for all but one term over the past 40 years.<\/p>\n

As Opposition Leader Jess Wilson addressed those celebrating the victory, she said retaining the seat had not diminished the challenge the party faced in its attempt to win government later this year.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jess Wilson says lessons from the by-election will be heeded in the lead-up to November’s contest. (ABC News: Patrick Rocca)<\/p>\n

She touched on local concerns including a promised rebuild of the Rosebud Hospital, potholes in local roads and the issues with crime.<\/p>\n

“I will fight for you every day, but I will also take the lessons out of the result tonight,” she said.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“Tonight, the equation has not changed. We still need to win 16 seats to change the government in November this year.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The potential strength of the One Nation vote was a key focus in the by-election lead-up. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

In the lead-up to the by-election, analysts highlighted the potential for challengers to ebb away at the Liberal stronghold on the seat<\/a>, and the damage that could do to the party’s state election prospects.<\/p>\n

Monash University political scientist Zareh Ghazarian said winning would provide Mr Marsh with a “golden opportunity” to increase his profile ahead of the November election.<\/p>\n

“Being elected now will give them a very good opportunity to increase their public profile, to demonstrate the work that they are doing and how they’re doing their work, and ultimately consolidate their position as a frontrunner at the general election,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

The Victorian Electoral Commission is yet to declare an official result in Nepean. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Dr Ghazarian said a strong result in Nepean for the Liberals would be essential given the significant challenge the party faced at the November election in its attempt to unseat Labor.<\/p>\n

“The Coalition has seemingly been on an upward trajectory following the election of Jess Wilson as leader late last year, but it has so much ground to make up that any swing against it is a fairly dangerous pattern that may establish itself as we go to the general election in November,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Victorian Liberals celebrated a decisive victory in the Nepean by-election, the implications for the wider state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,1489,4805,4807,156,4806,3699,1955],"class_list":{"0":"post-3621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-austrlia","10":"tag-by-election","11":"tag-byelection","12":"tag-independent","13":"tag-labor","14":"tag-liberals","15":"tag-nepean","16":"tag-one-nation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}