Three Mayors Run for an Open Seat in Macedon

Macedon, the state seat that takes in Daylesford, Kyneton, Woodend, Gisborne and Romsey, goes to the polls on 28 November without its sitting member for the first time since 2014. Labor’s Mary-Anne Thomas is retiring, leaving a seat Labor holds by 9.5% open in the most unpredictable Victorian election in decades.

Eight candidates have nominated for Macedon so far. Three of them are recent mayors of Macedon Ranges Shire: Labor’s Annette Death, the Liberals’ Kate Kendall and independent Dom Bonanno, who ran as the Liberal candidate here in 2022.

The state of play across Victoria

Labor goes into the election trailing the Coalition, and the most likely outcome on current polling is a hung parliament. Victoria now has four parties polling in double figures, and no party appears near the 45 seats needed to govern alone.

The Labor government changed leaders on 28 July, when Ben Carroll toppled Jacinta Allan in a party-room spill. A Newspoll taken on the eve of the spill gave Allan the worst net satisfaction rating of any state premier in that poll’s history. Allan is not recontesting her seat of Bendigo East.

The change has done little to lift Labor. Its primary vote has stayed around 24–25% in every poll since, well below the 37% it won in 2022. The Coalition under Jess Wilson sits around 28–30% down from 34% at the last election.

The big story is One Nation. From a negligible base in 2022 it now polls 20–25% statewide, under prospective leader Warren Pickering, who is running for Pakenham. Its vote is strongest in Melbourne’s outer north and west and in regional seats such as Ballarat and Bendigo. The Greens, led by Ellen Sandell, have also lifted to 14–16% in the latest polls.

That four-way split makes preference flows decisive. Labor trails the Coalition on two-party preferred but beats One Nation head to head, so which two parties make the final count in each seat matters as much as the statewide swing. Labor’s campaign director has said publicly that polling points to the Liberals forming government only with One Nation’s support.

The latest polls and predictions

The six most recent statewide polls all put the Coalition ahead of Labor on primary votes, by between three and six points.

The October RedBridge poll also has Labor beating One Nation 55–45 head to head. On preferred premier, Wilson leads Carroll 28–19 in RedBridge, 29–22 in Resolve and 37–30 in Freshwater, with Pickering between 8% and 14%.

Seat projections disagree sharply on what these numbers mean in the 88-seat Legislative Assembly:

The Poll Bludger’s own BludgerTrack seat model, launched in late September, initially gave the Coalition a bare majority of 45 seats, with One Nation winning about 15, nearly all from Labor. A revision has since cut the Coalition to 38, short of a majority. Roy Morgan’s figures would let Labor cling on with Greens support; YouGov’s point to a Coalition-led parliament dependent on One Nation.

Macedon: Labor’s since 2002

Labor has won Macedon at every election since the seat was created in 2002, and the ABC rates it safe Labor on a margin of 9.5%.

The electorate is named for the Macedon Ranges and covers most of them, including Hanging Rock and the Wombat State Forest. It runs along the Calder Freeway from Gisborne through Woodend and Kyneton, with Daylesford at its western end and Romsey at its eastern end. Like most regional seats, its population is older and less culturally diverse than the state average.

Macedon largely replaced the old seat of Gisborne, which Labor won in 1999 as regional Victoria turned on the Kennett government. Joanne Duncan, Gisborne’s last MP, became Macedon’s first and held it until 2014. Mary-Anne Thomas succeeded her and served in several ministries before announcing her retirement in April this year.

Labor’s wins have mostly been comfortable, though the seat was tighter in 2010 and 2014. ABC analysis notes that Macedon is wealthier and more highly educated than most regional seats, which may favour the Liberals over One Nation as Labor’s main challenger. Gisborne has also grown in the past two years, mostly through people moving from elsewhere in Australia.

The 2026 candidates

Eight candidates had announced for Macedon by mid-October, listed here alphabetically. Nominations have not yet closed, so the field may grow.

• Dom Bonanno (Independent). A Macedon Ranges Shire councillor since 2020 and mayor in 2024–25, with nearly 30 years in the technology industry. He was the Liberal candidate here in 2022, winning 30% of the primary vote, and now runs without a party.
• Annette Death (Labor). A former Macedon Ranges councillor and mayor in 2023–24, who previously worked in public policy at St Vincent’s Health. She inherits Thomas’s 9.5% margin but not her incumbency.
• Kate Kendall (Liberal). Mayor of Macedon Ranges Shire until she launched her campaign. A business founder and former president of Business Kyneton, with a background in marketing in Melbourne.
• Natalie Korinfsky (Animal Justice). A social and youth worker who has worked with the shire council and schools across the Loddon Campaspe region, with qualifications in nature tourism, psychology and social work.
• Marley McRae McLeod (Greens). A mental health peer worker in a youth service. The Greens’ 2022 candidate here, they lifted the party’s vote to 12.5%, and have since run for the federal seat of McEwen and for deputy lord mayor of Melbourne.
• Damien Parolin (One Nation). A mechanic who has lived in the Macedon Ranges since 1994, now working in construction and running a small transport business.
• Michael Seton (Independent). A retired superannuation executive with 35 years in the industry, who led the Australian Government Employees Superannuation Trust and Military Super and consulted until 2024.
• Catherine Wilson (Victorian Socialists). A teacher who has lived in the Macedon Ranges for 20 years and organises with the Australian Education Union.

Three recent mayors in one contest is unusual. Death, Bonanno and Kendall held the shire’s top job in consecutive years, so at least some of the voters will be judging them partly on their council records.

What to watch

If the statewide polls hold, a 9.5% margin is not safe. Labor’s statewide primary vote is down about 12 points on 2022, and a uniform swing of that size would put Macedon in play.

• Labor’s primary vote. Thomas polled 41.4% in 2022. Death will need to hold most of that without the personal vote of a long-serving minister.
• Liberal versus Bonanno. Kendall and Bonanno will compete for many of the same centre-right and local-business voters. A split here could hurt the Liberals’ chance of finishing second.
• One Nation. The party won just 3.6% here in 2022. A statewide vote above 20% would transform that, though the seat’s demographics are less favourable to it than outer-suburban and other regional seats.
• The Greens. Marley McRae Mcleod polled 12.5% in 2022. Her preferences ran heavily to Labor.
• Preferences. With up to five candidates in double figures, who finishes in the final two will decide the seat. Greens and Animal Justice preferences have historically helped Labor; independent preferences are harder to predict.

Come to the local election forum to hear from the candidates

The Wombat Post and Daylesford Rotary are sponsoring a Daylesford Conversations Election Forum with a panel of the Labor, Liberal, One Nation and Greens candidates on the 5th of November from 6-8 pm at the Daylesford Town Hall. This is a free event but you must register here to get a seat and seats are going fast.

Sources

• ABC News, Macedon – VIC Election 2026 electorate guide
• The Poll Bludger, Victorian Politics (posts from 28 July to 13 October 2026)
• The Poll Bludger, BludgerTrack Victoria seat projection