The Poll Bludger

Roy Morgan has published a weekly result for the second week in a row, perhaps suggesting a return to old form after its post-election practice of combining its regular surveying into large-sample monthly results. The latest result has Labor down one-and-a-half points on last week to 28.5% and the Coalition down fully six-and-a-half points to 24%, with a six-point increase pushing One Nation to 21% and bringing the pollster closer into line with its rivals. The Greens are steady on 13.5%. Labor leads 53.5-46.5 on respondent allocated preferences and 53-47 when preference flows from the last election are applied, in both cases out from 52-48 last week. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1715 – the full release has two-party preferred breakdowns by state, gender and age cohort, which unfortunately does not extend to primary votes as the monthly aggregations were doing.

The Daily Mail reports a Freshwater Strategy poll of 1050 respondents has Labor on 33% of the primary vote, the Coalition on 28%, the Greens on 11% and One Nation on 19%, with Labor leading 53-47 on two-party preferred. Pauline Hanson records a plus six net approval rating, with Anthony Albanese on minus nine and Sussan Ley on minus five, and Albanese leading Ley 45-32 on preferred prime minister. “About 75%” supported “a temporary cap on migration while housing and infrastructure catches up, while 81% backed stricter character tests and background checks for visa applicants”. We may see full details of the poll reported on the company’s site at a later time.

Newspoll for The Australian and Resolve Strategic for Nine Newspapers have reported their first results for the year:

• Newspoll has Labor’s two-party lead at a seemingly robust 55-45, in from 58-42 in the last Newspoll way back in mid-November. However, the headline-grabber here is that One Nation is ahead of the Coalition on the primary vote: Labor is down four to 32%, the Coalition down three to 21%, One Nation are up seven to 22%, and the Greens are down one to 12%. Anthony Albanese is down five on approval to 42% and up six on disapproval to 53%, while Sussan Ley is respectively up two to 28% and up one to 56%. Albanese’s lead on preferred prime minister narrows from 54-27 to 51-31. The sample for the poll was 1224 – as well as a full set of results for questions on leader attributes, we will have to wait on field work dates, though presumably it was conducted Monday to Friday.

• Resolve Strategic has Labor’s two-party lead narrowing to 52-48 from 54-46 in a poll conducted in the immediate wake of the Bondi shootings. On the primary vote, Labor is down two points to 30%, the Coalition steady on 28%, the Greens down two to 10% and One Nation up two to 18%. Anthony Albanese is down a further five points on approval to 35% and seven on disapproval to 56%, compounding an eight-point drop and six-point increase in the previous poll, and lead on preferred prime minister has narrowed substantially, from 41-26 to 33-29. Sussan Ley is down one on approval to 35% and up two on disapproval to 42%, despite her response to the Bondi attack being rated good by 53% and poor by 29%, compared with 32% and 56% for Albanese. The poll was conducted Monday to Friday from a sample of 1800.

The second and third federal polls for the year have been published over the last few days, the more recent being a Roy Morgan result that has Labor down two on last month to 30%, the Coalition up four to 30.5%, One Nation down half to 15% (a distinctly different result from the other two recent polls) and the Greens steady on 13.5%. Whereas Morgan’s practice since the May election has been to publish large-sample monthly results compiled from its regular surveying, this result is limited to a 1676 sample over a one-week period from January 5 to 11, the former date marking the resumption of its surveying after a break that began in mid-December. Labor is credited with a 52-48 two-party lead using both respondent-allocated preferences and previous election preference flows, compared with respective leads of 55-45 and 55.5-44.5 last month.

The other comes from Fox & Hedgehog, a new outfit founded by former Peter Dutton staffer Michael Horner, and has Labor leading 53-47 from primary votes of Labor 29%, Coalition 25%, One Nation 21% and Greens 14%. Also featured are further two-party preferred match-ups showing Labor leading One Nation 56-44 and the Coalition leading One Nation 63-37, and a “three-party preferred” result with Labor on 46%, the Coalition on 29% and One Nation on 25%. Together with Anthony Albanese (33% approval and 48% disapproval) and Sussan Ley (19% approval and 32% disapproval), personal ratings were included for six further politicians, with Pauline Hanson scoring 38% approval and 41% disapproval. Albanese leads Ley 39-31 on preferred prime minister.

As well as extensive breakdowns on voting intention, the poll further offers the striking findings that 51% consider the Australian political system “fundamentally broken”, with only 22% disagreeing, and 55% in favour of “a pause to all migration to Australia other than tourists”, with only 22% disagreeing. Twenty-eight per cent favoured the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, with 32% opposed. The poll was conducted January 5 and 6 from a sample of 1608.

The first voting intention poll of the new year has been conducted by DemosAU for Capital Brief, and it offers the remarkable finding that One Nation has drawn level with the Coalition at 23% of the primary vote. The further surge to One Nation has also taken its toll on Labor, whose 29% is three points lower than in any published poll since the election. The Greens are on 12%, leaving 13% for “any other candidate”.

A two-party preferred result has Labor leading the Coalition 52-48 uses preferences flows from last year’s election, which means the 74.5-25.5 split of One Nation preferences in favour of the Coalition is doing exceptionally heavy lifting. The pollster further stirs the pot with a highly speculative Labor-versus-One Nation two-party result of 50-50, which applies Coalition preferences 83-17 in favour of One Nation based on the result in Hunter, splits Greens preferences 88-12 by assuming the same split as between Labor and the Coalition, and the rest 50-50.

Anthony Albanese’s performance is rated positively by 29%, neutrally by 30% and negatively by 41%, while the respective numbers for Sussan Ley are 17%, 55% and 28%. Albanese leads 42-29 on preferred prime minister. The poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday from a sample of 1027 – based on the amount of weighting involved, the pollster estimates an effective sample size of 586 and a margin-of-error of 4%. Demographic breakdowns will be provided in a full report to be published later today. UPDATE: Full report here.

The inevitable New Year polling drought continues, though Roy Morgan’s regular monthly result may perhaps be along next week. We do have the following:

• The News Corp papers report a poll by Fox & Hedgehog, founded by former Liberal staffer Michael Horner, shows 54% in favour of a royal commission into the Bondi shootings, including 32% strongly in favour. Nineteen per cent disagree, 7% strongly so, while 27% are neutral or unsure. Coalition voters are considerably more likely to be strongly supportive, but even 42% of Labor voters are in favour with 32% unfavourable. The sample for the poll was 1608, with field work dates not reported.

• Nine Newspapers last week ran “net likeability” scores for an array of politicians from the recent Resolve Strategic poll, together with familiarity scores. These found respondents more favourably disposed than when the same exercise was conducted a year ago, with only two scoring net negative ratings: Barnaby Joyce at minus four and Lidia Thorpe at minus 12. David Pocock has ascended to join Jacqui Lambie at the top of the table with plus 15, the two respectively improving by one and ten points. The aftermath of Bondi notwithstanding, Anthony Albanese went from near the bottom of the table at minus 17 last year to the top end at plus nine. Other strong performers were Anne Aly (plus 12), Penny Wong (plus 11) and Catherine King (plus 11) for Labor, and Tim Wilson (plus 11) and Sarah Henderson (plus 10) for the Liberals. The biggest improvers were Joyce, whose poor result was an 18 point improvement on last year, and Pauline Hanson, up 16 to plus three. Both have a higher familiarity rating than Sussan Ley, who was known to 83% and scored plus eight on net likeability.

• Pew Research has findings from a mid-year international survey on views of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu, which found 25% of Australians holding a favourable and 74% an unfavourable view of Israel, compared with a net median across 24 countries of 29% and 64%. Australia tied with the United States as the country with the highest ideological polarisation on the subject: 90% of left-identifiers professed themselves unfavourable compared with 76% for centrists and 46% for those on the right. Australians held a more negative view of Netanyahu than Americans, with 20% expressing some or a lot of confidence that he would do the right thing in world affairs, compared with 72% for little or no confidence.

• Sarah Elks of The Australian reports Queensland’s Liberal National Party has opened nominations for Senate preselection. Incumbents James McGrath and Matt Canavan are expected to retain first and second position. Potential nominees for third position, which last availed the party in 2019, are moderate-aligned Maggie Forrest, a barrister who ran unsuccessfully in Ryan at the May federal election; conservative-aligned Susanna Damianopoulos, a small business owner and former electorate officer who ran unsuccessfully in Springwood at the October 2024 state election; and Benjamin Naday, a lawyer and former staffer to Karen Andrews, who unsuccessfully contested the preselection to succeed her in her Gold Coast seat of McPherson.

• Sarah Elks of The Australian (again) reports Capricornia MP Michelle Landry will “decide on her future closer to the next election”, amid suggestions her retirement could make the central Queensland seat available to conservative Nationals Senator Matt Canavan.

Last week’s release of the regular quarterly Newspoll breakdowns was the cherry on top of a fairly rich pool of state-level data on voting intention since the May federal election, with Roy Morgan having helpfully adopted the practice of providing state breakdowns on the primary vote as well as two-party preferred with its monthly results, Resolve Strategic continuing to provide results from the three largest states, and RedBridge Group/Accent Research intermittently joining the fun. I have thus felt emboldened to expand the BludgerTrack poll aggregate to encompass state-level measures, which you can observe through the voting intention trend page by clicking on the tabs for the five mainland states (Tasmania, alas, yields too little data to produce plausible results. This is something I didn’t get around to doing in the previous term until a few months before the election.

Things are still a bit shallow and noisy – I am dubious that One Nation is riding higher in New South Wales than Queensland, a conclusion that leans heavily on the most recent Resolve Strategic poll – but it’s useful nonetheless to have the infrastructure in place. I should also take the opportunity to again plug the Victorian state BludgerTrack, made possible by a steady stream of data from RedBridge Group/Accent Research together with the regular bi-monthly numbers provided by Resolve Strategic.