7.58pm. Notional preference count now up to half, producing no change worth mentioning.

7.54pm. Notional distribution of preferences, based on a bit less than a quarter of the vote, gives a Liberal-versus-Greens two-party preferred of 69.5-30.5.

7.51pm. I speak too soon: Murdoch University now in. Only 478 votes, so not sure what took them so long. This turns out to be a good booth for the Greens, which stands to reason, pushing their vote back up to 26.3 per cent.

7.46pm. The only outstanding booths from 2005 are North Lake Senior Campus, which is located in neighbouring Willagee, and the tiny Murdoch University car park booth, which they probably haven’t bothered with this time. So that might be it for the evening. Congratulations then to Christian Porter, former Poll Bludger classmate and (by all accounts) soon-to-be Shadow Attorney-General.

7.41pm. The addition of another booth has reduced the Greens vote from 26.4 per cent to 26.0 per cent.

7.35pm. Welcome to my half-arsed live coverage of the Murdoch by-election, held today to fill the vacancy in the Perth southern suburbs state seat following the death of Liberal member Trevor Sprigg. With a field consisting of Liberal candidate Christian Porter plus candidates from the Greens, Christian Democratic Party and One Nation, the result is a foregone conclusion, so feel free to consider this an open thread on Western Australian politics. We’ve now got nine of 12 booths in, and the Greens might be pleased with their 26.4 per cent share of the vote. However, Porter is obviously home and hosed with 63.0 per cent.

This post will be progressively updated as events unfold in the lead-up to Western Australia’s Murdoch by-election, to be held to replace recently deceased Liberal member Trevor Sprigg. The date for the by-election was set last week for February 23, which has left the Liberals complaining they have just days to finalise a candidate ahead of Thursday’s close of nominations. Beyond that the by-election is looming as something of a fizzer, with Labor state secretary Bill Johnston telling the media the party is unlikely to field a candidate. Given the government’s political difficulties following the Brian Burke-related resignation of Health Department director-general Neale Fong, this would probably be a sensible decision. Nonetheless, the first opinion poll conducted after Troy Buswell’s messy Liberal leadership takeover last fortnight is all good news for Labor, even if it does come from the erratic Westpoll. Published in yesterday’s West Australian, the monthly survey of 410 voters shows an improbably large 10-point reversal on two-party preferred in favour of Labor, who now lead 58-42 after trailing 52-48 a month ago. No word yet on potential Liberal preselection candidates, at least to my knowledge.

January 30. ABC television reports the Liberals have preselected UWA law lecturer Christian Porter, who had frequently been mentioned as a possible successor to Colin Barnett in Cottesloe (now expected to go to Deirdre Willmott, policy director with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry). Porter is the grandson of Charles Robert Porter, who locked horns with Joh Bjelke-Petersen as a Queensland Liberal MP in the 1970s, and the son of Charles “Chilla” Porter, a former state party director and fundraiser closely associated with Noel Crichton-Browne. He was also a classmate of your correspondent in the UWA political science honours program in 1993.

January 31. The West Australian reports that Porter won preselection “emphatically” over Graham Kierath, the Court government workplace relations minister who lost his seat of Riverton in 2001 and ran unsuccessfully for Alfred Cove in 2005.

February 1. Nominations closed today, confirming that Labor will not field a candidate. The four candidates in ballot paper order:

Christian Porter (Liberal).

Ka-ren Chew (Christian Democratic Party). Chew is a local solicitor who ran as the CDP candidate for Tangney at the November 24 federal election.

Neil Gilmour (One Nation). The party’s state president, Gilmour was candidate for Curtin at the 2001 federal election and the South Metropolitan upper house region at the 2005 election.

Hsien Harper (Greens). Australian Services Union organiser and candidate for Willagee at the 2005 state election.

The hapless Western Australian Liberals have a new leader after incumbent Paul Omodei stepped aside at today’s party room meeting. His successor is Vasse MP Troy Buswell (right), who just five days ago told the media he needed “more experience in the House and more time to develop before I could be considered for that position”. This was prompted by a now celebrated display of tired and emotional behaviour in parliament last October, which culminated in him pulling on the bra strap of a Labor staffer in the Speaker’s office. News of this episode came to light courtesy of a letter to the Albany Advertiser by Paul Omodei’s electorate officer Ron Scott, whom Omodei has refused to dismiss. Carine MP Katie Hodson-Thomas (who today made a surprise announcement she would retire at the coming election) subsequently complained of being subjected to “inappropriate” remarks from Buswell in the presence of male colleagues, with other unnamed Liberals suggesting he had a “reputation” for such behaviour.

These developments appeared to put an end to months of leadership jockeying by Buswell, who by all accounts had the numbers to dislodge Omodei (left) following a series of bad opinion polls and a disastrous performance in last February’s Peel by-election. The West Australian responded with an editorial on Monday arguing that the party “must persuade Troy Buswell that while his behaviour in Parliament last October was juvenile, stupid and not befitting of a member of Parliament, it was not so reprehensible that he need rule himself out of leadership contention” – a line which evidently echoed the feeling in the party room. The West’s Robert Taylor reported on a “tense one-hour meeting” on Tuesday at which Omodei and Buswell agreed that the issue would be resolved at today’s party meeting, which nobody doubted would result in Buswell assuming the leadership if he chose to contest it.

Buswell’s rocky rise to the top comes just three years after he entered parliament at the February 2005 state election as member for Vasse, where he won preselection at the expense of sitting member Bernie Masters. Masters ran against Buswell as an independent and came within 209 votes of defeating him. Buswell went on to play a key role in the dumping of Matt Birney, who led the party for a year after the 2005 election and recently announced he would not contest the coming election. It was widely believed in the party that Buswell had pledged his vote to Birney but subsequently voted for Omodei, who prevailed by one vote in an outcome the Liberals would have little cause to celebrate in hindsight. High-profile Hillarys MP Rob Johnson, who stood against Buswell in today’s leadership vote (there has been no word on the result of the count), said at the time: “His cowardly and gutless disloyalty will be the start of his demise and I think you will find the shining star of Troy Buswell will diminish over the coming months. Let me tell you, if he is the future of the Liberal Party then God help the Liberal Party.”

Robert Taylor wrote in The West this week that Buswell’s strategy was to unite members of his own faction, which is associated with current Senators Chris Ellison and Mathias Cormann and the recently departed Ian Campbell, with the opposing Noel Crichton-Browne camp. This has been achieved through an alliance with party upper house leader Norman Moore, who is “strongly identified” with Crichton-Browne. Taylor reported that Moore was “expected to retire at the next election but is now on the verge of going around for another four years”, sending “a strong message to those MPs still furious with Mr Buswell over his support for Mr Omodei in his battle with Mr Birney”.

It would be something of an understatement to say that the plot has not come to fruition under the happiest of circumstances. The ABC reported that today’s leadership vote was delayed 25 minutes while the party awaited the arrival of Murdoch MP Trevor Sprigg (right). It was then held without him after news arrived he was being hospitalised after a suspected heart attack. Half an hour later, the ABC reported that Sprigg had died. Buswell now faces an immediate test of his electoral appeal in the reasonably safe southern suburbs seat of Murdoch, where the newcomer Sprigg boosted the party’s margin from 4.1 per cent to 5.9 per cent at the February 2005 election. Murdoch will be abolished as of the next election due to the one-vote one-value redistribution, to be replaced by the new seat of Bateman. According to Antony Green’s calculations, the Liberal margin in the new seat is 6.9 per cent. The map belows shows the old (green) and new (red) boundaries with booth results from the 2005 election.

UPDATE: The West Australian “understands” that the result of the ballot was 17 votes for Troy Buswell and 10 for Rob Johnson, “with one MP scrawling the name Paul Omodei on the ballot”. It also observes that Nedlands MP and Shadow Attorney-General Sue Walker was absent from the meeting, “fuelling speculation that she intends to run for her seat of Nedlands as an independent at the next election”.

Sunday 3pm. Some perspective on this remarkable result. The table below shows the primary vote swing to the incumbent and opposition party and the two-party swing to (or, in this case alone, against) the opposition, at each comparable by-election going back as far as I could find. This is limited to instances where the major parties dominated both the by-election and the preceding general election, and excludes by-elections involving first term governments and those held in the immediate aftermath of general elections.

POST-MATCH OVERVIEW. Like every by-election result, this one will open a torrent of speculation about federal implications, leadership implications and all the rest. This time, believe the hype. Today’s by-election was held almost exactly in the middle of the government’s second term, against the backdrop of a sitting member retiring in disgrace and a government that had every reason to fear a backlash. For the Liberals to lose more than one in six of their voters under these circumstances is an extraordinary result, for which nobody can escape blame.

The Prime Minister might claim that the result has no federal implications, as he has routinely done on the morning after each state election disaster. Most of the time he has been right; this time, it’s very hard to construct an explanation that doesn’t involve industrial relations policies and interest rate hikes. Peel may be a safe Labor seat, but it’s also an outer metropolitan electorate dotted with new suburbs rich with wage-earners and mortgage payers, so it scores high on most indicators of federal electoral sensitivity.

Closer to home, the result is an even bigger disaster for the state Liberal Party, and in particular for leader Paul Omodei. The Poll Bludger normally gets exasperated when parties (usually state Liberal parties) go through leaders like tissues, but this time the verdict is clear: Omodei is an electoral dud and must go before the next election. Expect to hear a lot of talk in the coming weeks about alternative leadership scenarios, such as the plan for Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive John Langoulant to parachute in by replacing Colin Barnett as member for Cottesloe.

As for the other parties, Labor should be feeling very pleased with its candidate selection procedures. The Greens have had a good result, though this is partly an indictment of the Liberals’ clear failure to win the confidence of disaffected Labor voters. Similarly, the doubling of the One Nation vote is unlikely to be the harbinger of a new wave of Hansonism. The Liberals can at least claim that 5.0 per cent of their vote went to pro-Liberal independent Gerard Kettle. But they were also spared opposition this time from Family First, whose 3.3 per cent vote in 2005 was not significantly harvested by the Christian Democratic Party.

9.20pm. It’s actually worse for the Liberals than I thought. Turns out there WERE two-party results coming through, but they could only viewed in aggregate, not booth-by-booth. This count is more-or-less complete for this evening, and it shows a 1.0 per cent swing to Labor. Table now amended.

8.23pm. I guess the Liberals can say they had pro-Liberal independent Gerard Kettle to contend with this time, draining 5.0 per cent of the vote. The only independent in 2005 polled 0.4 per cent. However, there was Family First last time, who scored a pretty solid 3.3 per cent, which has not been absorbed by the CDP.

8.19pm. Did I say absent votes still to come? Silly me. You don’t get those at by-elections. That mitigates the high turnout a little, but only slightly - it’s nearly level with 2005, compared with a sharp plunge at the Victoria Park by-election.

8.18pm. I expect the two-party count will also come in as a flood, probably in about half an hour.

8.17pm. The trend on turnout was also maintained. Comparing like with like, we’ve got 22,082 today compared with 21,576 in 2005. That would have helped Labor a lot.

8.12pm. No mention of the by-election on the ABC radio news just now. I reckon they’ve missed a pretty big story.

8.09pm. Still to come: absent votes (about 2000 to 2500) and the actual two-party count. The above figures are based entirely on my own assumption as to where the minor party vote will go. BTW, the CDP and Gerard Kettle had Liberal ahead of Labor; Greens the other way around; others no recommendation, except the CEC for whom I couldn’t find an HTV card.

8.07pm. Matter of fact, all the remaining booth results came in at once. Way to kill the suspense, WAEC! It very much appears that the trend in the first batch of booths was borne out in the remainder - both parties down 6 to 7 per cent on the primary vote, translating into a very small swing after preferences.

8.06pm. Big flood of results in. Stay tuned.

8.04pm. Still nothing. Turnout so far is 5331 compared with 4952 from equivalent booths in 2005, a remarkable turn-around on last year’s Victoria Park by-election.

7.55pm. It’s also possible that my preference calculations flatter Labor a little, but nonetheless it’s a very encouraging two-party result for Labor. Unless these booths are aberrant, the remarkable feature of the count is that the Liberals seem to be shedding votes to minor parties and independents.

7.54pm. Still no more results, but my table now compares primary vote figures booth by booth. So Labor only appeared to be holding equal on primary votes because they were Labor booths coming in.

7.44pm. Apologies for those whose comments were in moderation. I’ll turn it off.

7.42pm. The count proceeds at a leisurely pace. We’ll probably get hit with seven booths at once in a few minutes.

7.38pm. None of these booths are from the Liberal-friendly southern end of the electorate, which might explain their poor performance on the primary vote. Remember, the swing figure above for the primary vote is compared with the overall total, whereas two-party only compares like booths.

7.31pm. Turnout actually appears to be up, which is a plus for Labor.

7.29pm. These results are so good for Labor I’m checking my spreadsheet for errors, but it all appears to check out.

7.25pm. Five booths now in, including tiny Special Institutions. Apologies for two-party glitch - working on it.

7.18pm. Reckon I’ve finally got my act together now. So yeah, pre-polls and postals actually accounted for 8 per cent in 2005. Perhaps Labor are doing better than expected here because they organised better this time, the seat not being a foregone conclusion.

7.04pm. I should stress that this is 3 or 4 per cent of the vote. Working on something to show the amount counted.

7.02pm. Pre-polls now in; table updated.

6.53pm. In case you’re wondering, only the two-party result is measured against comparable booths. The One Nation vote on postals is actually only up 2.9 per cent, if that comforts you.

6.50pm. That’s better. By the way, booth figures tend to come in three or four big spurts over the next 45 minutes or so.

6.48pm. There’s a problem with my non-Labor primary swing figures, obviously. Working on it.

6.38pm. Unusually, postal votes are in first. They’ve gone 45.5 per cent Labor, 28.5 per cent Liberal. By my reckoning that’s a 6.3 per cent two-party swing to the Liberals on 2005, although postals might behave differently at by-elections

6.26pm Welcome to the Poll Bludger’s live coverage of the Peel by-election. No results yet, which is good because I still have work to do on my tables and such.

Alan Carpenter’s year-old WA government faces its first electoral test tomorrow with the by-election for Peel, the seat vacated after Corruption and Crime Commission hearings blew the lid off Small Business Minister Norm Marlborough’s remarkable dealings with former Premier Brian Burke. As usual, this site will provide live commentary as the booth results come in from about 6.30pm Perth time, complete with up-to-the-minute figures adjusted to take individual booth swings into account. Media reports a fortnight ago suggested Labor polling showed it facing a 12 per cent swing in a seat it holds by 13.5 per cent; in today’s Australian, Amanda O’Brien reports that the Liberals consider themselves a "strong chance". Labor state secretary Bill Johnston has told The West Australian that "anything less than 8 per cent would be an excellent result, anything above 8 per cent would be above average". Some noteworthy campaign developments from the past few weeks:

• Chief among the government’s announcements seeking to limit the damage has been a $600,000 promise to free up police from desk jobs to provide security on the forthcoming Mandurah to Perth line, which Robert Taylor of The West Australian says is expected to be swamped by "young hoods from Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah".

• Comments on the Poll Bludger’s earlier by-election thread indicate a degree of hostility about the Waikiki electricity substation development, which is said to be on land originally set aside for a school. More than one noted that the zoning amendment was made after a number of people had bought properties in the area. Among those campaigning against the development was Greens candidate Dawn Jecks.

• Labor has also had to deal with criticism from one of its own preselection aspirants, Kwinana mayor and Police Union lawyer Carol Adams, over neglect of the local area in respect to police numbers and intervention services for domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse.

Below is a map showing the location of the electorate’s 15 polling booths, and a table showing the individual results from the 2005 election. No changes have been made to the booth arrangements from the state election. Note the clear trend of progressively weaker support for Labor from north to south.

The Western Australian Electoral Commission has unveiled the candidates for the February 3 Peel by-election, who are listed below in ballot paper order. More information will be added here as it becomes available.

Brian McCarthy (Citizens Electoral Council). Amanda Haines of the Mandurah Mail reports that McCarthy is "a powerhouse operator with Alcoa for 30 years until his recent retirement, he also served as a convenor for the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union for almost 10 years". He is the chairman of the party’s state executive committee and was its candidate against Kim Beazley in Brand at the 2001 federal election, and in the new seat of Murray at the 2005 state election.

Robert Woodward (Independent). The Mandurah Mail reports that Woodward "owns and operates a customised taxi service catering to community members with disabilities and has also been employed in public transport and banking".

Brent Tremain (Christian Democratic Party). A Port Kennedy resident and owner-manager of a brick paving business, Tremain was also the CDP’s candidate for Peel at the 2005 state election. He has a campaign website called VoteSmartPeel.com.

Gerard Kettle (Independent). A Rockingham city councillor and manager of the Warnbro Fair Shopping Centre, Kettle came to notice during the 2004 election when he ran as an independent against Kim Beazley in Brand, after originally nominating for Liberal preselection. Styling himself an "independent Labour" candidate, the ALP argued that Kettle was in fact running at the behest of the Liberals. Roger Martin of The Australian reported that Kettle was sub-leasing half of his campaign office at Rockingham City Shopping Centre to the Liberal candidate, Phil Edman.

Paul Papalia (Labor). Papalia is a counter-terrorism expert and decorated former navy diver who served in Iraq during the 2003 war and with the United Nations Special Commission in 1992 and 1993. His preselection has attracted numerous comparisons with that of Peter Tinley, the former SAS major endorsed as Labor’s candidate for the federal seat of Stirling. Graham Mason of The West Australian reports that Papalia won an administrative committe vote eight votes to six ahead of Pamela Kay, a Left-backed candidate of apparently low profile. The committee is normally dominated by an alliance of the Left factions and the two members of the "New Right", but Alan Carpenter succeeded in securing backing for Papalia from the New Right members and Senator Ruth Webber. Webber had become alienated from her AMWU Left faction after losing a winnable spot on the Senate ticket, when the faction shifted its support to East Metropolitan MLC Louise Pratt. Kwinana mayor and Police Union solicitor Carol Adams had earlier been mentioned as the front-runner.

Craig Bradshaw (One Nation). Bradshaw is the proprietor of an engineering business and one of the party’s three state vice-presidents.

Dawn Jecks (Greens). The Mandurah Mail reports that Jecks has "a background as a geotechnician and laboratory business manager in WA’s resource development industry", has "worked on the Preserve Point Peron for the People campaign", was "a founder of the Rockingham Anti-Nuclear Group (RANG)", and "helped to oppose the proposed Waikiki electricity sub-station". Jecks has been busy recently writing letters opposing uranium mining to publications including the Sunday Times and The Bulletin.

Graeme Coleman (Liberal). A local businessman and former head of the South Coast Business Development Organisation, Coleman was preselected after what was described as a "four-way battle". Others mentioned as potential Liberal candidates were Rob Brown, the candidate from 2005, and the aforementioned Phil Edman, the federal candidate for Brand in 2004.

Owing to other distractions, I have yet to remark on the fact that February 3 has been set as the date for the by-election in Peel, the Western Australian state seat left vacant after the embarrassment surrounding Small Business Minister Norm Marlborough. It so happens that Peel is entirely located within the federal electorate of Brand, held for Labor by one Kim Beazley. If Beazley has his eye on a quick exit from the political stage – which few would begrudge him under the circumstances – the irritation of a by-election would be greatly reduced were it to coincide with the state poll. This would also offer dividends for a state Labor Party that would not be looking forward to the Peel by-election, given the difficulties that have recently bedevilled the Carpenter government. Simultaneous by-elections would muddy the state-federal waters and allow state Labor to benefit from the honeymoon period that awaits the new federal leadership team, potentially limiting the extent of the swing. There may be difficulties with this scenario that I am missing – for one thing, the timing of a by-election in Brand would be dictated by the Howard government rather than Labor (though a politically inspired decision to hold it on a separate date would not win them any friends). Nonetheless, the coincidence of the Peel by-election presumably shortens the odds on Beazley calling it a day sooner rather than later.

A week of high drama in Western Australian politics has culminated with confirmation that Norm Marlborough, who resigned as Small Business Minister yesterday following sensational revelations of his dealings with former Premier Brian Burke, will also quit his seat in parliament. This will precipitate a by-election in his safe southern suburbs seat of Peel, which the ABC reports could be held as early as December 16. Labor’s margin at last year’s election was 13.5 per cent; given the government’s many difficulties in recent months, that might be close enough to make it worth the Liberals’ while to field a candidate, despite the shellacking former leader Matt Birney copped for doing the same at the Victoria Park by-election in March. Otherwise, the Labor preselection threatens to be of greater interest than the poll itself. It may also have federal implications, given that the electorate is entirely within Kim Beazley’s seat of Brand.