The federal electorates of Perth and Fremantle will go down in political history for the wrong reasons following the Super Saturday by-elections.
They are on track to record the lowest voter turnout in a by-election since compulsory voting was introduced into Australia in 1924.
Perth recorded voter turnout rates of 62.46 per cent with counting of all 46 polling booths completed by Sunday night, according to the Australian Electoral Commission website.
In Fremantle, the voter turnout was only slightly higher at 64.82 per cent with votes of all 40 polling places now counted.
New federal MP Patrick Gorman (pictured) had his seat of Perth record the lowest voter turnout in a by-election since 1924
Josh Wilson’s (pictured on Saturday) seat of Fremantle recorded the second lowest voter turnout since compulsory voting was introduced in Australia
The lowest previously recorded turnout in a by-election was 69.5 per cent in the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s Sydney seat of Wentworth in 1981.
The other by-elections in Braddon (87.93 per cent), Longman (81.36) and Mayo (79.22) attracted much higher voter turnouts.
Around 6801 people in Perth pre-polled – 46 per cent down on the 2016 rate. In Fremantle, only 6365 voters did the same.
The government chose not to field Liberal candidates in either seat, which were both easily won by Labor.
‘We have much less financial resources available to us than Labor, and so the WA party decided not to run in two seats which they believed they had no prospect of winning,’ Mr Turnbull said.
New Perth MP Patrick Gorman (pictured) celebrates his by-election win with wife Jess (right) and supporters on Saturday night
Not even the promise of a cup of coffee could interest voters to attend this polling booth (pictured) in the seat of Fremantle on Saturday
People who don’t vote in a federal election face a $20 fine, which increases to $50 if they’ve failed to vote previously.
Political analyst Professor David Black was not surprised about the ‘spectacularly low’ voting turnout and believes people weren’t aware the by-election was on.
‘I think for a very significant part of the population the by-election almost didn’t exist,’ Mr Black told the ABC.
AEC said it conducted the same communication campaigns in both electorates as it did for the other by-elections in Tasmania, Queensland and South Australia.
‘We’ll continue doing all those things we have been doing and we will look at improvements we can make, but it’s a shared responsibility between us, political parties, the media and the public to get people’s intentions into Parliament,’ WA state manager Fleur Hill Hill told the ABC.
Fremantle MP Josh Wilson said he would have liked to have seen a better voter turnout in his electorate
Of the 103,226 voters in Fremantle (electorate map pictured), only 64.83 per cent voted
Of the 100,737 voters in the Perth electorate (map pictured), only 62.46 per cent per cent voted
Patrick Gorman is the new Perth MP after party colleague Tim Hammond resigned just two years into his first term for personal reasons.
He won 62.9 per cent in the two-party preferred vote against Greens candidate Caroline Perks.
Former dual citizen and Labor MP Josh Wilson comfortably held onto his Fremantle electorate with 66.8 per cent of two-party preferred vote against Greens candidate Dorinda Cox.
Mr Wilson would have liked to see a better voter turnout, but took bigger issue with the delay getting to the by-election.