Mildura

Mildura covers 37,528.84 square kilometres in the north-western corner of Victoria, the second largest district in the state by area. Mildura, Irymple, Red Cliffs and Merbein lie in the irrigation country along the Murray River, and Robinvale upstream to the east. Ouyen, Murrayville and Sea Lake lie in the Mallee, and Birchip, Charlton and Donald in the south. The part localities lie along the southern edge, among them 87.8 per cent of Beulah, shared with Lowan.

Enrolment stood at 48,364 in September 2026, up 423, or 0.9 per cent, on the 47,941 electors enrolled in 2022. The district adjoins Lowan to the south-west, Ripon to the south and Murray Plains to the east. At the 2021 Census its localities held 69,729 people on an area-weighted estimate; 20.4 per cent of them were aged 65 and over, 4.4 per cent were Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people, and 28.1 per cent of occupied dwellings were rented.

Jade Benham has been the member for Mildura since 26 November 2022, when she won the seat for the Nationals from Ali Cupper, the independent who had won it from the Nationals' Peter Crisp in 2018. She was the Nationals Whip in the Legislative Assembly from 21 December 2022 to 5 June 2026 and Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Development and Agriculture from 5 February 2026 to 5 June 2026, and since 5 June 2026 she has been Shadow Minister for Water, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs and Shadow Minister for Disability, Ageing, Carers and Volunteers. She has sat on the Integrity and Oversight Committee since 23 February 2023 and the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee since 28 November 2024. Her inaugural speech was on 20 December 2022. There has been no change of party and no vacancy in Mildura since the 2022 election. Her record is on her Parliament of Victoria profile, as at 17 October 2026.

Eleven candidates stood on 26 November 2022. Cupper polled 12,913 first preferences, 33.9 per cent, and Benham 9,868, 25.9 per cent. The Liberal Party also stood, and Paul Matheson's 7,291 votes, 19.1 per cent, took the Coalition's combined first preferences to 17,159, 45.0 per cent; Labor's Stella Zigouras polled 2,483, 6.5 per cent. Of 41,236 votes cast by 86.0 per cent of the 47,941 electors enrolled, 3,096 were informal, 7.5 per cent.

The count ran to nine exclusions, with Cupper ahead of both Coalition candidates throughout. Labor's Zigouras was excluded eighth with 3,297 votes, and they went 1,989 to Cupper, 60.3 per cent, 754 to Benham and 554 to Matheson. Matheson was excluded last with 8,847 votes: 6,820 of them, 77.1 per cent, went to Benham and 2,027, 22.9 per cent, to Cupper. The final count was 19,520 to 18,620, 51.2 to 48.8 per cent, a Nationals margin of 1.2 points over the independent; a shift of 451 votes at that last exclusion would have reversed it. Against the Commission's estimate of the 2018 vote on the 2021 boundaries, the independent 49.6 per cent, the result was a swing of 0.8 points to the Nationals; against the 2018 result on the old boundaries, 50.34, it was 1.5 points.

The booth and vote-type figures are the Commission's indicative two-candidate count by voting centre, 41,226 votes in all, which differs from the distribution of preferences by a few votes. Election-day votes carried the count. Of those 41,226 votes, 17,085, or 41.4 per cent, were cast at the 35 voting centres on election day, and they split 54.0 to 46.0 for Benham, a lead of 1,258 votes. The 19,920 early votes, 48.3 per cent of the total, split 51.3 per cent to Cupper, a lead of 476. Postal votes, 8.2 per cent of the total, split 53.7 to Benham, a lead of 238.

Benham led at 27 of the 35 voting centres, with Piangil at 75.2 per cent of the two-candidate vote, Woomelang at 72.5 and Boundary Bend at 70.6 her strongest. Cupper led at eight, with Mildura Deakin, where she polled 57.0 per cent, Birchip at 56.0 and Mildura West at 55.4 her strongest. Cupper's leads are in the city of Mildura and the settlements around it, Nichols Point, Cardross and Merbein, and at Birchip. Benham led at Mildura itself, the largest centre with 1,383 two-candidate votes, at Irymple and Red Cliffs, and at every centre beyond the city other than Birchip, Robinvale at 61.0 per cent and Charlton at 68.1 among them.

In 2010 and 2014 the distribution stopped when Peter Crisp reached an absolute majority with three candidates remaining: 51.8 per cent in 2010, ahead of Glenn Milne, an independent, on 28.11 and Ali Cupper, then standing for Labor, on 20.09, and 52.0 per cent in 2014, ahead of Cupper, by then an independent, on 28.01 and Danny Lee of the Australian Country Alliance on 19.96. In 2018 Cupper won the final count with 50.34 per cent, a margin of 0.34 points over Crisp. The Commission's two-party-preferred count, Labor against the Nationals, gave Labor 37.2 per cent in 2010, 29.8 in 2014 and 44.4 in 2018.

The 2021 redivision added Donald and Charlton, 2,252 electors, from Ripon District to a district that stood at 44,941 electors at 30 November 2020, 7.58 per cent below the average enrolment and falling. The Commission preferred that transfer, which united Buloke Shire in the district, to an area around Nyah West from Murray Plains District, and declined submissions to extend Mildura south into the Wimmera across the Big Desert. The new district held 47,193 electors, 2.94 per cent below the average. The Victorian Electoral Commission estimated the 2018 vote on the new boundaries at 50.4 per cent to the Nationals and 49.6 to the independent, a notional Nationals margin of 0.4 points. There has been no by-election since 2022.

Mildura is not on the Labor–Coalition pendulum. The seat is held by the Nationals against an independent, so the polls' average, 54.0 to 46.0 to the Coalition on 26 October 2026, from ten polls, an implied uniform swing of 9.0 points to the Coalition, does not measure the contest here. The margin that measures it is the 1.2 points between Benham and Cupper, in the under-2 band, and a shift of more than 1.2 points between those two sides changes the seat. Every poll in the statewide average is on the Victorian election polls tracker, and the leaders' ratings are on the pages for Ben Carroll's approval rating and Jess Wilson's approval rating.

In 2022 the count turned on the Liberal Party's 8,847 last-exclusion votes, which went 77.1 per cent to Benham. The electorate that votes on 28 November 2026 holds 48,364 electors as at September 2026, against 47,941 in 2022.

Mildura is one of the eleven districts of Northern Victoria Region, which elects five members of the Legislative Council. In 2022 the quota was 77,465 votes, and the members elected, in order, were Wendy Lovell (Liberal), Jaclyn Symes (Labor), Gaelle Broad (The Nationals), Georgie Purcell (Animal Justice Party) and Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell (Pauline Hanson's One Nation). All five sit as at 17 October 2026. The region and its members are set out in the Council section of the hub.

Results, enrolment, boundaries and the timetable are from the Victorian Electoral Commission; the 2022 result is its distribution of preferences and the booth shares its two-candidate-preferred count by voting centre. Members are from the Parliament of Victoria as at 17 October 2026; enrolment is as at September 2026. Boundaries, localities and postcodes are Vicmap Admin, © State of Victoria, CC BY 4.0, matched to the district by area. Population figures are the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021 Census, area-weighted by locality. The 2021 redivision is described in the Electoral Boundaries Commission's report. The polls' average is the Victorian election 2026 hub's register, updated 26 October 2026.