Monash electorate 2025: Russell Broadbent, Mary Aldred Deb Leonard

After a big dump of votes Mary Aldred now has 23,641 first preference votes (32.17 per cent) with 66.8 per cent of the vote counted.

10.31PM

After a big dump of votes Mary Aldred now has 23,641 first preference votes (32.17 per cent) with 66.8 per cent of the vote counted.

It is a lead of 9185 votes over Tully Fletcher (19.67 per cent), while Deb Leonard has 18.37 per cent of the vote.

In regards to preferential voting, any primary votes for independent Russell Broadbent will be likely to go to Aldred for the two-party-preferred.

Broadbent has 9.93 per cent of the vote.

71 of 73 polling places have returned, with Pakenham Uniting Church Hall and St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church Hall the final two remaining.

77,800 votes have been counted.

9.47PM

The ABC has called Monash for Mary Aldred, with a 54.7 per cent 2-party-preferred projection.

With 34.79 per cent of the vote counted, Sky News still has Monash as a seat in doubt.

Mary Aldred’s primary vote has fallen below 30 per cent to 29.65 per cent, with Tully Fletcher (18.83 per cent) and Deb Leonard (17.66 per cent) the candidates behind.

There are 67 of 73 polling places returned, with 40,537 votes been counted.

Russell Broadbent has 10.85 per cent of the vote.

9.01PM

Independent candidate Deb Leonard has just made a thank you speech at her election night event at San Remo, thanking 110 volunteers, her campaign managers and her family, and said “it’s a really high chance we don’t get a result for Monash tonight”.

So far 37,187 votes have been counted, with Liberal Mary Aldred on a lead of about 4200 on the primary vote over Fletcher, and 30.26 per cent of the first preference vote.

Labor’s Tully Fletcher and Leonard have 18.51 and 17.91 per cent of the primary vote respectively, while Russell Broadbent has 10.76 per cent of the vote.

Ms Leonard said she was happy with the campaign her team had run.

“ABC has me in second place, and hopefully I will get enough preference flows to get me over the 50 per cent mark,” she said.

“We’ve done everything we could, I’m 100 per cent happy that we did absolutely everything we could.”

One Nation’s Kuljeet Kaur Robinson has the most votes of the rest, with 8.46 per cent of the vote.

There 62 of 73 polling places returned.

7.53PM

Mary Aldred’s early lead has come back just a bit, now with just over 31 per cent of the primary vote.

Both the Liberal Party and Labor Party have an early -6 per cent swing against them since the 2022 election, while Deb Leonard, who received about 10 per cent of the vote in 2022, is sitting at 18.08 per cent with an 8 per cent swing.

Russell Broadbent is still at about 11 per cent., while Tully Fletcher has moved up to 17.44 per cent.

17,067 votes have been counted so far, including 978 informal votes.

The Coalition’s protected two candidate preferred is slightly down to 57.3 per cent.

7.16PM

Early in the count Mary Aldred is ahead, with a projected 57.94 per cent of the two- candidate preferred vote.

With 21 of 73 polling places returned so far, Aldred has just over 36 per cent of the first preference vote, followed by Deb Leonard (17 per cent) and ALP candidate Tully Fletcher (15 per cent).

Incumbent and now independent Russell Broadbent, who has held Monash since 2004, has just over 11 per cent of the first preference vote.

Greens candidate Terence Steele has 4 per cent.

The electorate has 116,527 people enrolled, with 6,476 votes counted so far.

EARLIER

A former bellwether seat until a redistribution before the 2004 election, Monash (formerly McMillan until 2019) has voted consistently for Russell Broadbent and the Liberal Party ever since.

However, an interesting twist has come to the fore in 2025, with Broadbent contesting the 2025 election as an independent, after being unseated by Mary Aldred, daughter of former Liberal MP Ken Aldred, as the Liberal representative in preselection.

The result is likely to come from the two aforementioned candidates, with independent Deb Leonard also running a high-profile campaign, receiving over one million dollars in donations.

The Liberal Party won the 2022 election with a 2.9 per cent margin.

Other candidates attempting to sway voters are Tully Fletcher of the Australian Labor Party, Kuljeet Kaur Robinson of One Nation, Terence Steele of the Greens and Alex Wehbe of the Trumpet of Patriots.