Independent Teal MP Zoe Daniel's loss of the inner-Melbourne electorate, Goldstein to Liberal Tim Wilson in last May's election, has underlined the importance of postal votes in marginal seats.

Back on election night, not only did it look like Daniel would retain her seat of Goldstein after an initial swing against her, but the Liberals suffered a historic loss countrywide.

Daniel, who came into the night with a margin of 3.3 per cent votes, suffered some early setbacks with the initial votes representing a swing against her. 

The Liberals and Tim Wilson ran a strong campaign to try to reclaim Goldstein in 2025, after losing the blue-ribbon seat in 2022 to Zoe Daniel.

Before that, the Liberals had held the seat since it was first contested in 1984. 

MOJO News was inside Zoe Daniel’s party room, where the mood was incredibly tense with many supporters and volunteers eagerly refreshing the results to see if their long campaign had paid off.

Despite the swing against her, at the end of the night, tension turned to joy as it seemed that Daniel would retain the seat.

Cue euphoria amongst the more than 500 volunteers in the room. Frantically hugging and celebrating with each other. Sia’s ‘Titanium’ played as Daniel entered the room, symbolising the resolve of the campaign against the Liberals.

In her victory speech, Daniel acknowledged the ‘Hard campaign’ but proclaimed that hope had won in Goldstein, commending her volunteers and supporters.

In an interview just after her speech with MOJO News, Daniel spoke of her relief after watching the close race with great tension.

“Just glad it’s over”, Daniel said.

She also noted the ineffective campaign run by the Liberals which resulted in their downfall across Australia.

“The Liberal Party just ran a really terrible campaign”, Daniel said.

However, this all happened before the postal votes were counted, changing the fortunes of the Goldstein contest.

The Liberals' federal campaign more broadly may have failed as Daniel said, but it was about to yield notable results in the inner Melbourne electorate encompassing suburbs such as Brighton, Caulfield, Bentleigh and Elsternwick.

The day after the May 3 election, after the first lots of postal votes were counted, Daniel’s lead was reduced. 

On Monday, Daniel put out a statement on social media acknowledging that the contest was close and that it would take some more time before a final result could be confirmed.

Then on Tuesday, Wilson surged ahead, taking the lead, prompting the ABC to project a Liberal victory in Goldstein for former MP Wilson, a rare victory for the party in this election. While the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) did conduct a partial recount of the votes due to the close margin, they declared Wilson the winner in Goldstein by a margin of 175 votes.

According to Luke Dean, a Monash PHD candidate in the school of Politics and International Relations, this difference between postal voters and in-person votes represents how different demographics vote in elections and engage with democracy.

“Younger voters generally favour in-person pre-polling and older voters generally [are] going to vote postally because of their trust in the system”, Dean said.

This significantly alters how close contests such as Goldstein are analysed with Liberal voters being “significantly older than most of the other kind of parties”, meaning that they dominate the postal votes.

Dean said that such a result reinforces the complexity of calling such a tight race before postal votes are counted.

“I think it adds a significant amount of uncertainty to these kinds of close races," Dean said.

“Going forward, we’re going to have to probably be pretty wary of calling tight races…because there is this significant shift."

Regarding why Daniel was unable to retain her seat as the incumbent MP, Dean said there was a “confluence” of factors that affected the result, such as the nature of the Goldstein electorate and the image of Tim Wilson.

“Goldstein is a traditionally Liberal-held seat…I think that some of those traditional Liberal voters perhaps came home to the Liberal Party,” he said. 

“If it was a new candidate running against Zoe Daniel, I think it would have been a little bit close.”

“Tim Wilson has been a sitting MP before, he’s got quite a large brand, he’s associated in the local community…that probably helped to nullify the incumbency advantage for Zoe Daniel."

Dean also spoke of the influence that Jewish voters played in the result, with the Liberals' aim to associate Daniel with anti-semitism also a notable factor and indicative of the stern campaign that the Liberals ran against Daniel.

“It certainly added to this confluence of different competing interests…I certainly think there was a consistent campaign within the Liberal Party…to paint Zoe Daniel as being anti-Jewish or anti-Israel in her stance”, Dean said.

When he claimed victory on Wednesday May 7, he targeted Daniel's wealthy Climate 200 donations from outside the electorate, representing the polarising campaign that the Liberals ran in the south-east Melbourne electorate, which ultimately resulted in one of their very few victories this election.

Tim Wilson has been contacted for comment but not yet responded to MOJO News' requests.