Newspoll: 50-50 (open thread)

Labor moves back to parity on two-party preferred in Newspoll, but Resolve Strategic finds their position continuing to deteriorate.

The Australian reports the first Newspoll in four weeks has an even result on two-party preferred, where the Coalition led 51-49 last time. Primary votes are little changed, with Labor steady on 33%, the Coalition down a point to 39%, the Greens steady on 11% and One Nation up two to 7%. Anthony Albanese is steady at 40% approval and down a point on disapproval to 54%, while Peter Dutton is down a point to 39% and steady on 51%. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister has widened from 45-41 to 45-38.

Also featured is a suite of questions on leader attributes that Newspoll has been running on a semi-regular basis since 2010. Dutton scores small leads on experienced, has a vision for Australia and understands the major issues, and a large lead on decisive and strong, for which Albanese’s 44% is significantly worse than for any of the previous prime ministers covered. Albanese’s two good marks are a 57% to 45% lead over Dutton on cares for people, and a 58% to 47% deficit on arrogant. The poll was conducted Monday to Friday from a sample of 1258.

UPDATE: I had missed that Nine Newspapers also have the monthly Resolve Strategic poll, which gives Labor its worst result of the term, their primary vote down three to 27%. The Coalition is also down, by one point to 38%, with the Greens up one to 12% and One Nation up two to 7%. Personal ratings for both leaders have significantly weakened: Anthony Albanese is down six on approval to 31% and up six on disapproval to 57%, while Peter Dutton is down five to 40% and up two to 42%. The poll continues to record a tie on preferred prime minister, shifting from 37-37 to 35-35. Other findings include 59% saying they are worse off since the 2022 election, with only 13% better off; 36% saying Dutton and the Coalition would improve things more over the next three years, compared with 27%; and 44% expecting the Coalition will win the next election, compared with 33% for Labor. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1604.

South Korean and French government crises

South Korea’s conservative president not impeached after declaring martial law, while France’s PM loses no-confidence motion. Also: Romania’s presidential election annulled

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

On Tuesday night, South Korean conservative president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, a move that got international media coverage.  Hours later, Yoon was forced to withdraw this declaration.

A two-thirds majority of parliament’s 300 seats was needed to impeach Yoon.  The opposition centre-left Democrats and allies hold a 192-108 majority, so they needed eight MPs from Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) to support impeachment.  But PPP MPs boycotted Saturday’s vote, and it was declared invalid with only 195 MPs voting, short of the 200 needed to impeach.  Impeachment required 200 votes, with abstentions effectively No votes.

If Yoon had been impeached, he would have been suspended and replaced by the PM, Han Duck-soo, a Yoon appointee.  If six of the nine judges of South Korea’s highest court agreed with the impeachment or Yoon resigned, new presidential elections would be required within 60 days.

Yoon won the March 2022 presidential election by a 48.6-47.8 margin over the Democratic candidate, and his five-year term ends in 2027.  Even before the current crisis, Yoon was very unpopular with over 70% disapproving of his performance.  At April 2024 parliamentary elections, the PPP was thumped.  A poll had 73.6% of South Koreans favouring impeachment.

French PM ousted after losing no-confidence vote

French President Emmanuel Macron called parliamentary elections for early July, three years before they were due.  The left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) won 180 of the 677 seats, Macron’s centrist Ensemble 159, the far-right National Rally (RN) and allies 142 and the conservative Republicans 39.  After the 2022 elections, Ensemble was easily the largest party with 245 seats, though well short of the 289 needed for a majority.

In September Macron appointed the conservative Michel Barnier PM.  With the NFP hostile to him, Barnier depended on RN not supporting a no-confidence motion.  Barnier used a French parliamentary procedure to force through an unpopular budget measure without a vote last Monday, so the only way to block this measure was by a no-confidence motion.  The RN supported the NFP’s no-confidence motion.  On Wednesday Barnier’s government was defeated by 331 votes to 244 after only three months.  It was the first successful no-confidence motion since 1962.

Macron cannot call new parliamentary elections until July 2025.  A centrist or conservative PM would be likely to suffer Barnier’s fate.  Whoever Macron appoints as his new PM will need to be someone who can keep the support of either the NFP or RN.  Either of these blocs combined with Ensemble would be enough for a governing majority.

Romanian court annuls presidential election

On November 24, a far-right and pro-Russia independent topped the first round of the Romanian presidential election with 22.9%, followed by a pro-EU candidate on 19.18%, a centre-left candidate on 19.15% and another right-wing candidate on 13.9%.  The runoff was to be held today, but on Friday a Romanian court annulled the election owing to Russian influence, so the first round will need to be rerun.

Romanian parliamentary elections occurred on December 1.  The 331 lower house MPs and 136 senators were elected by proportional representation in 43 multi-member electorates based on Romania’s counties with a 5% national threshold.  After the fall of the previous government in September 2021, the centre-left PSD and conservative PNL had formed a grand coalition.  At this election, the PSD and PNL lost their combined majority, with big gains for three right-wing to far-right parties.  The PSD and PNL will need the cnetre to centre-right USR to form a majority.

Irish election results wrap

At the November 29 Irish election, there were 174 seats in 43 multi-member electorates that used the Hare-Clark system with three to five members per electorate.  There were 14 more total seats than at the March 2020 election.

The conservative Fianna Fáil won 48 seats (up ten from 2020), the left-wing Sinn Féin 39 (up two), the conservative Fine Gael 38 (up three), the Social Democrats 11 (up five), Labour 11 (up five), the right-wing Independent Ireland four (new) and independents 16 (down three).  The Greens were reduced to just one seat (down 11) after being part of the previous FF/FG government.  FF and FG combined have 86 seats, only two short of a majority.

Weekend miscellany: Accent-RedBridge MRP poll, JWS Research polling, preselection latest (open thread)

A modelled election result forecast now rates the Coalition more than likely to emerge with the most seats in what still looks like being a hung parliament.

Accent Research and RedBridge Group have published their third quarterly multi-level regression with post-stratification (MRP) poll, which survey a large national sample (in this case of 4909, conducted from October 29 to November 20) and use demographic modelling to project a detailed seat-by-seat election result. It records a continuing deterioration in Labor’s position: where the first result had Labor on a minimum 73 seats with another nine two close to call, and the second had it down to 64 with 14 too close to call, now Labor is down to 59 with too-close-to-call still at 14. With the Coalition credited with a clear lead in 64 seats, this means the poll gives Labor no chance of retaining a majority on the present numbers, with the probability of the Coalition doing so at 2%.

The seats that get the Coalition from their present 55 to 64 are Bennelong, Gilmore, Macarthur, Paterson and Robertson in New South Wales; the by-election loss of Aston in Victoria; the new seat of Bullwinkel in Western Australia, which is notionally marginal Labor; Lyons in Tasmania; and Lingiari in the Northern Territory. Potential further gains are Dobell, Hunter, Macquarie, Reid, Shortland and Werriwa in New South Wales; Chisholm, Corangamite, Hawke and McEwen in Victoria; and the teal seats of Mackellar in New South Wales and Curtin in Western Australia. Conversely, Labor is rated a chance of gaining Casey in Victoria and Sturt in South Australia. A line chart display of the national primary vote looks to me like it has the Coalition on 39%, Labor on 31% and the Greens on 11%.

Also:

• JWS Research has results from a survey on attitudes to the US presidential election result, which was rated negatively by 51% and positively by 28%. Here as in the US, a wide gender gap was recorded, men being 35% positive and 40% negative compared with 22% positive and 60% negative for women. The survey was conducted November 8 to 11 from a sample of 1000.

• The JWS Research survey was conducted in tandem with its quarterly True Issues issue salience survey, which found concern about cost-of-living at a new high: 61% named the issue unprompted when asked to identify three the government should be most focused on, up twelve points since August. It also ranks last out of 25 on a measure of the government’s performance, behind interest rates and housing affordability, with its best scores being for defence, innovation, mining and provision of public services. Another finding of the survey was that 49% supported the government’s cut to HECS debts, with 32% opposed. The latter finding was approximated by the last Resolve Strategic poll, which Nine Newspapers this week reported found 54% supportive and 27% opposed.

• Anthony Albanese has asked the Labor national executive to intervene in the preselection process for the Sydney seat of Barton with a view to favouring his Left faction colleague Ashvini Ambihaipahar, a regional director for the St Vincent de Paul Society, Georges River councillor and unsuccessful candidate for Oatley at last year’s state election. The seat will fall vacant with the retirement of Linda Burney, the member since 2016 and likewise a member of the Left. Others seeking the position include Sam Crosby, who also has a director role at the St Vincent de Paul Society, and was formerly executive director of progressive think tank the McKell Institute and unsuccessful candidate for Reid in 2019; Shaoquett Moselmane, a former member of the state upper house; and state upper house member Mark Buttigieg.

• The Guardian reports state party president Leah Blyth is the front-runner for Liberal endorsement to fill the South Australian Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Simon Birmingham. Whereas Birmingham is a leading moderate, Blyth has the backing of arch-conservative Senator Alex Antic. Adelaide councillor Henry Davis is also nominating with a promise to represent the “sensible centre”, but The Advertiser reports he has “acknowledged he would not be favourite”.

Federal polls: Essential Research, Roy Morgan, ANU survey (open thread)

More polls showing a tight race on two-party preferred, plus the first in what promises to be a multi-wave series gauging changes in attitudes between now and the federal election.

The fortnightly Essential Research poll has a broadly static result on federal voting intention, with a two-point gain for Labor to 32% coming at the expense of the Greens (down two to 11%) rather than the Coalition (steady on 35%). One Nation is up a point to 8% and undecided is unchanged at 5%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure reverses the last result in having the Coalition leading 48-47, with the balance undecided. Questions on government performance on various issues suggest support for its social media policies, as do findings that 45% favour “strong regulation” to “prevent online harms” against 24% for the offered alternative of “absolute freedom of speech on digital platforms”, and that large majorities are in favour of various limitations on free speech. Further questions find “reduced tariffs and regulation” viewed positively by 37% and negatively by 33%, and the government’s performance on affordable housing rated positively by 20% and negatively by 54%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1123.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor down one-and-a-half to 30% and the Coalition up the same amount to 38.5%, with the Greens and One Nation steady on 12.5% and 6.5%. The Coalition leads 51-49 on two-party preferred, reversing last week’s result. The two-party measure using 2022 election preference flows is 50-50, where Labor led 51.5-48.5 last week. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1666.

The Australian National University’s Centre for Social Policy Research has results from the first survey of what promises to be a multi-wave series tracking changes in voting intention and related attitudes between now and the election. With due regard to the fact it was conducted in October, the survey records Coalition support at 38.2%, Labor at 31.8%, the Greens on 11.8% and 9.5% uncommitted, with a Sankey diagram on page 44 suggesting the Coalition’s gains have been in roughly equal measure from Labor and “other party”. The survey also finds 40% satisfied and 60% dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and similar results for the federal government. Still less trusted are political parties, traditional media, religious institutions and most especially social media. Asked to place themselves on a ten-point left-to-right spectrum, 47.0% of women and 37.3% of men chose the median option. The survey was conducted October 14 to 25 from a sample of 3622.

RedBridge Group: 51-49 to Coalition in Victoria

Another poll showing soft support for Labor in Victoria, where it has opted to sit out the Prahran by-election.

RedBridge Group last week had a poll of state voting intention in Victoria that has the Coalition leading 51-49, unchanged on the last such poll in late September and October. However, the primary votes suggest this implies an unusually strong preference flow to Labor: the Coalition is up three on the primary vote to 43%, which reflects a five-point drop in others to 13% rather than a further loss of support for Labor, who are steady on 30%, or the Greens, who are up two to 14%. The poll was conducted November 6 to 20 from a sample of 920. UPDATE: Full report here.

Labor has announced it will not field a candidate for the looming by-election in Prahran resulting from the resignation of Greens-turned-independent member Sam Hibbins, despite having held the seat as recently as 2010. The Greens have endorsed Angelica Di Camillo, a 26-year-old environmental engineer who had been preselected for the federal seat of Higgins before the redistribution abolished it. The Age reports a Liberal preselection vote is expected to be held on December 15, but there has been no indication as to who might run.

RedBridge Group also had a state poll for New South Wales, which doesn’t get its own post because I’m presuming there will be another along from Resolve Strategic in a week or two. This maintained a pattern of soft polling for the first term Labor government, credited with a 50.5-49.5 two-party lead that compares with a 54.3-46.7 result at the March 2023 election. The primary votes are Labor 37% (unchanged from the election), Coalition 41% (up from 35.4%) and Greens 9% (down from 9.7%). This poll was also conducted November 6 to 20, from a sample of 1088.

Monday miscellany: Senate resignations, preselections, campaign finance latest (open thread)

Simon Birmingham calls it a day, Labor’s Tasmanian Senate ticket sorted, and campaign finance reform stalls in the Senate.

Newspoll has not reported on its more-or-less usual three-weekly schedule, but the usual weekly Roy Morgan should be along later today, followed by the usual fortnightly Essential Research poll tomorrow. In other developments:

• Simon Birmingham, Shadow Foreign Minister and Senate Opposition Leader, announced last week he will retire from parliament by the end of the year. As well as creating a vacancy for his South Australian Senate seat, his departure has resulted in the Senate leadership going from a leading moderate to a factional conservative in Western Australian Senator Michaelia Cash.

• Labor in Tasmania has confirmed its Senate ticket will be headed by Left faction incumbent Carol Brown followed by Right-aligned newcomer Richard Dowling, adviser to state Labor leader Dean Winter and former director of public policy with Meta. Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports Jessica Munday, Left-aligned secretary of Unions Tasmania, withdrew after recognising she lacked support, but now hopes to fill the casual Senate vacancy created by Anne Urquhart’s looming bid for the lower house seat of Braddon. Munday was subject to a party disciplinary process earlier this year after featuring a poster for Labor-turned-independent member David O’Byrne in her yard during the March state election campaign.

• Lachlan Leeming of the Daily Telegraph reports three candidates have nominated for preselection to succeed retiring Nationals member David Gillespie in Lyne: former Berejiklian-Perrottet government minister Melinda Pavey; Alison Penfold, senior adviser to Gillespie; and Forster-based accountant Terry Murphy.

• Hawkesbury councillor Mike Creed has been preselected as Liberal candidate for the Sydney fringe seat of Macquarie, held for Labor by Susan Templeman on a post-redistribution margin of 6.3%.

• The flurry of legislation the government was able to pass through the Senate last week did not include its campaign finance reform bill, which was pulled from the notice paper after a failure to land an agreement with the Coalition. Michelle Grattan at The Conversation reports the Liberals sought to “insert a potential legal time bomb” in the form of a provision that would likely mean the entire bill would be invalidated if the High Court found against any of it in the seemingly likely event of a High Court challenge. The Liberals also pushed for higher donation caps and disclosure thresholds and less generous caps for peak bodies, being specifically concerned about the ACTU. The responsible minister, Don Farrell, says consultations will continue over summer, seemingly with both the Coalition and the cross-bench.

Irish election vote counting live

Updates on the Irish vote counting from tonight. Also covered: near-final US election results, UK news and polls and other recent European elections.

9:41am Tuesday With all 174 seats declared, it’s 48 FF, 39 SF, 38 FG, 11 Labour, 11 Social Democrats, four Independent Ireland, three People Before Profit, two Aontu, one Green, 16 independents and one other. Adding FF and FG gives 86 seats for the two main conservative parties, only two short of a majority. They’ll retain their governing coalition with support from either Independent Ireland or some of the independents.

9:16am Monday With 130 of 174 seats declared it’s 34 FF, 30 SF, 29 FG, nine Social Democrats, eight Labour, three Independent Ireland (right-wing), three People before Profit, two Aontu (conservative, anti-abortion), one Green and 11 independents. Final vote shares were 21.9% FF, 20.8% FG, 19.0% SF, under 5% for various other parties and 13.2% for independents.

10:50pm There’s still one electorate that hasn’t yet reported its first preference count. So far 46 of the 174 seats have been declared, with FF and FG both doing better than SF.

10:40am It’s now 11:40pm Saturday in Ireland, and nearly 15 hours after counting started there are still four of 43 electorates that haven’t yet completed their first preference counts. I don’t think pre-poll or postal votes were allowed, so this is slow progress.

9:53am With 36 of 43 electorates having completed their first preference count, SF is down 6.0% from 2020 and the Greens down 4.5%. The biggest gainer is the right-wing Independent Ireland (up 3.6%, new), with the Social Democrats up 2.4% and the conservative Aontu up 2.1%. The two main conservative parties, FF and FG, are roughly flat compared with 2020.

6:49am Sunday With 20 of 43 electorates having completed their first preference counts, SF is down 6.9% from 2020 on a matched electorate basis and the Greens are down 4.9%. The gains are going to independents (up 4.0%) and other small parties, with FF and FG both down 1%. Completed electorates so far are mainly in Dublin, so overall vote shares still look close between the top three parties. But a 6.9% swing against SF from 2020 would give them only 17.6%.

11:02pm With all votes counted in Dublin Central, SF leader Mary Lou McDonald has 20%, which is down 16% from what she got in this seat in 2020. If this is repeated in other seats, SF will do much worse than polls indicate. There won’t be official results posted until all first preference counting has been completed in an electorate.

9:46pm Irish broadcaster RTE has a live blog with reports of counts of ballot boxes that have been opened so far. However, I can’t see any information about the overall totals, only information on particular electorates presented without any swing info.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

The Irish election was held on Friday, but vote counting doesn’t start until 9am Saturday in Ireland (8pm AEDT). Ireland uses the Hare-Clark proportional system that is used in Australia for Tasmanian and ACT elections. At this election there will be 174 members elected in 43 multi-member electorates, with three to five members per electorate. It will take at least a few days to get the final number of MPs for each party.

Ireland has been governed for most of its history by one of two rival conservative parties: Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. After the 2020 election, these two parties formed a coalition government for the first time in Ireland’s history, with the Greens also included. The left-wing Sinn Féin had won the most votes in 2020 with 24.5%, the first time in almost a century that neither FG nor FF had won the most votes.

In Irish polls, SF support had surged to a peak of about 35% in May 2022, but since November 2023, SF support has slumped back to about 18%, behind both FF and FG. Pre-election polls suggest SF support has recovered slightly, and there’s a three-way tie between the leading parties, but the two conservative parties are likely to form a coalition government.

US election near-final results

With nearly all votes counted for the November 5 US election, Donald Trump won the presidency by 312 electoral votes to 226 for Kamala Harris. Trump swept the seven key states of Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan. He won the popular vote by 49.8-48.3 (77.15 million votes to 74.75 million). In 2020 Joe Biden had defeated Trump by 306 electoral votes to 232 on a popular vote margin of 51.3-46.8 (81.3 million votes to 74.2 million).

All 435 House of Representatives seats are up for election every two years. Republicans won the House by a narrow 220-215 margin, a two-seat gain for Democrats since the 2022 midterms.

Each of the 50 states has two senators, with one-third up for election every two years. Before this election, Democrats and allied independents held a 51-49 Senate majority, but they were defending 23 of the 33 seats up, including three in states Trump won easily. Republicans gained these three seats and also Pennsylvania, to take a 53-47 Senate majority. But Democrats defended their seats in four of the five presidential key states that also held Senate elections.

UK news and polls

On November 2, Kemi Badenoch was elected Conservative leader, defeating Robert Jenrick in a Conservative members’ vote by 56.5-43.5. Both candidates had qualified by not getting eliminated in the rounds of Conservative MPs’ votes.

Labour’s lead has dropped quickly, and they’re in a rough tie with the Conservatives, with two recent polls giving the Conservatives a lead. Reform has about 18%, the Liberal Democrats 12% and the Greens 8%. In other news, there’s a push by Labour MPs to change the electoral system from first past the post to proportional representation.

Lithuania, Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania

Of the 141 Lithuanian seats, 71 are elected in single-member electorates using a two-round system and the remaining 70 by national PR. At October 13 and 27 elections, the centre-left LSDP won 52 seats (up 39 since 2020), the conservative TS-LKD 28 (down 22), the populist PPNA 20 (new), the green DSVL 14 (new) and a green-conservative party eight (down 24). The LSDP formed a governing coalition with the PPNA and DSVL.

At the November 3 Moldovan presidential runoff, the pro-western incumbent defeated the pro-Russian candidate by a 55.4-44.6 margin.

Owing to failure to form a lasting government, there have been six elections in Bulgaria since 2021, with the latest on October 27. PR in multi-member electorates was used to allocate the 240 seats with a 4% national threshold. It appears unlikely that a government will be formed after this election.

In the first round of the Romanian presidential election on November 24, a far-right and pro-Russsia independent topped the poll with 22.9%, followed by a pro-EU candidate on 19.18%, a centre-left candidate on 19.15% and another right-wing candidate on 13.9%. A recount is being held to determine who finishes second and proceeds to the December 8 runoff.

Federal polls: YouGov, DemosAU and Roy Morgan (open thread)

A new federal polling entrant produces results well in line with the general trend, while Roy Morgan finds Labor with its nose back in front.

Two new federal poll results to relate:

• New-ish polling outfit DemosAU has published what I believe to be its first national federal voting intention result, recording a 50-50 split on two-party preferred from primary votes of Labor 32%, Coalition 38%, Greens 12% and One Nation 7%. The full report for the poll, which was conducted last Tuesday to Thursday from a sample of 1038, features breakdowns by gender, age, education, residential tenure and personal income.

• The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor recovering a 51-49 lead on the headline two-party measure, reversing last week’s result, from primary votes of Labor 31.5% (up two-and-a-half), Coalition 37% (down two), Greens 12.5% (down one) and One Nation 6.5% (steady). The two-party measure based on preference flows from 2022 has Labor leading 51.5-48.5, after a dead heat last time. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1663.

UPDATE (YouGov): And now a third. YouGov, which has typically reported on Fridays, has its first federal poll since September, showing a dead heat on two-party preferred, unchanged on last time. The primary votes are Labor 30% (steady), Coalition 38% (down one), Greens 13% (down one) and One Nation 9% (up two). Anthony Albanese is steady at 36% approval and down two on disapproval to 56%, while Peter Dutton is steady at 40% and down two to 48%. Albanese holds an unchanged 42-39 lead as preferred prime minister. The poll was conducted last Friday to Thursday from a sample of 1515.

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