Andy Burnham to be next UK PM

This article also covers upcoming UK by-elections for Greater Manchester mayor and Clacton and polls for the US midterm elections.

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.

To qualify for a membership ballot, a candidate for UK Labour leadership required 20% of all Labour MPs (81 MPs in the current parliament). Andy Burnham is the only candidate to meet this threshold, winning endorsements from 379 of the 403 Labour MPs (94%). He will be elected unopposed to replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader and PM and will become PM on Monday.

The Election Maps UK aggregate of national polls has the populist right Reform leading with 26.0%, followed by Labour at 20.8%, the Conservatives 19.8%, the Greens 13.0%, the Liberal Democrats 12.1% and the populist right Restore 3.2%. There has been movement since late May against Reform and towards Labour and the Conservatives. Seat projections give Reform 250 of the 650 seats, but they would reach a majority with the support of the Conservatives (87 seats).

The Greater Manchester mayoral by-election to replace Burnham after his June 18 election to the UK parliament will occur on July 30. It will be the biggest UK by-election. This by-election will be held using the “supplementary vote” system, where voters get two preferences. Mayoral elections prior to 2024 used this system, but the Conservatives regressed to first-past-the-post for 2024-26 mayoral elections. Labour reverted to the supplementary vote.

In the 2024 mayoral election, Burnham won 63.4%, with the Conservatives a very distant second with 10.4%, followed by 7.6% for an independent, 7.5% Reform, 6.9% Greens and 4.2% Lib Dems. An early July Find Out Now poll gave Labour 38%, the Greens 22%, Reform 19%, Restore 9% and the Conservatives 8%. After preferences, Labour defeats the Greens 64-36 and Reform 66-34.

On July 7, Reform leader Nigel Farage announced he would resign as Member for Clacton and recontest Clacton at the ensuing August 13 by-election. No other well-known party will contest this by-election. It’s likely Farage’s main opponent will be joke candidate Count Binface. In 2024, Farage defeated the Conservatives in Clacton by 46.2-27.9 with 16.2% for Labour.

US updates

At November midterm elections, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 senators will be up for election. At the 2024 elections, Republicans won the House over Democrats by 220-215 and the Senate by 53-47.

Owing to Republican gerrymandering, Democrats need about a four-point popular vote margin to win the House. The two senators per state rule helps Republicans, and Democrats will need a double-digit popular vote margin to win the Senate on a uniform swing.

In Nate Silver’s aggregate of the generic ballot, Democrats lead Republicans by 48.0-41.9, a 6.1-point margin that is down from a peak of 7.1 points in late May. Donald Trump’s net approval has climbed from a low of -20.2 in late May to -17.0.

Democratic nominee Graham Platner withdrew from the Maine Senate contest last Friday after sexual assault allegations. Democrats have until July 27 to select a replacement candidate. Maine should be the easiest gain for Democrats as Kamala Harris defeated Trump there by 6.9 points in 2024.

Republicans currently control the House by 219-212 with four vacancies. Two Democrats qualified for the August 18 runoff in California 14 after a June 16 jungle primary. After the death of the Democratic incumbent in late April, a jungle primary for Georgia 13 will occur on July 28 with a runoff if needed on August 25. No special for the two other vacancies that occurred in April (one Democrat, one Republican) has yet been scheduled.

Other elections

The 56 Cypriot seats are elected by proportional representation in six multi-member electorates. At the May 24 election, the conservative DISY won 17 seats (steady since 2021), the communist AKEL 15 (steady), the populist right ELAM eight (up four) and the centrist DIKO eight (down one). The DISY retained government.

Malta has 13 five-member seats using proportional representation with preferences, with extra seats added to ensure overall proportionality. At the May 30 election, Labour defeated the conservative Nationalists by 42 seats to 37, winning its fourth successive term (44-35 to Labour in 2022). Malta retains a strong two-party system, with Labour defeating the Nationalists on vote shares by 51.8-44.7.

In final results of the June 7 Peruvian presidential runoff election, right-winger Fujimori defeated left-winger Sánchez by 50.13-49.87. This was Fujimori’s first win after three consecutive runoff losses.

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

Broadly similar voting intention numbers from three separate pollsters, though they have followed different paths to get there.

Three new federal polls produce a range of movements for the leading parties, partly but not entirely due to their different time scales (weekly for one poll, fortnightly for another, monthly for a third). The fortnightly Sky News Pulse poll by YouGov, which was an outlier last time in failing to show a drop for One Nation, comes good this time with a four-point drop to 26%, while Labor is down a point to 28%, the Coalition are up three to 20% and the Greens are down one to 12%. Respondent-allocated two-party preferred measures have Labor’s lead out from 54-46 to 56-44 against One Nation, and in from 54-46 to 53-47 against the Coalition. Pauline Hanson also takes a hit on preferred prime minister against Anthony Albanese, whose lead is out from 49-40 to 54-35. Albanese is up two on approval to 38% and down one on disapproval to 56%, while Angus Taylor is down three to 33% and up two to 49%, and Albanese’s lead over Taylor as preferred prime minister is out from 44-35 to 45-34. The poll was conducted last Tuesday to this Tuesday from a sample of 1468.

The monthly DemosAU poll for Capital Brief has Labor down one to 26%, One Nation down one to 29%, the Coalition up three to 21% and the Greens up one to 14%. Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings are down one for positive to 25%, up two for neutral to 27% and and down one for negative to 48%; Angus Taylor is up two on positive to 24%, down one for neutral to 49% and down one for negative to 27%; and Pauline Hanson is down three on positive to 34%, steady on 23% neutral and up three on negative to 43%. A three-way preferred prime minister question has Albanese steady on 35%, Taylor up three to 22% and Hanson down two to 26%. Head-to-head ratings, which weren’t included last time, have Albanese and Taylor tied at 38-all, and Albanese leading Hanson 42-37. The poll was conducted July 3 to 8 from a sample of 2694.

As with the weekend’s Resolve Strategic poll, respondents were queried about their views on a range of statements advanced by Pauline Hanson during her National Press Club speech, with distinctly less favourable results – the most obvious explanation being that Resolve Strategic’s question specifically identified the views with Hanson whereas DemosAU did not. Resolve had 33% in favour and 39% opposed on the question of whether Australia “should be monocultural, rather than multicultural”, while an all but identically worded proposition from DemosAU has 25% in favour and 51% opposed. Hanson’s proposal for the ABC had 31% in favour and 40% opposed from Resolve, while DemosAU respectively has it at 21% and 54%. Where Resolve had 32% in favour and 36% against the contention that “it should be easier for companies to sack people”, DemosAU had 32% in favour and 43% opposed to the seemingly more gently worded “employers should have more flexibility to dismiss workers”.

After recording a nine-point slump for One Nation over its two previous polls, the weekly Roy Morgan series has them bouncing back five-and-a-half points to 28%, with Labor down half a point to 27.5%, the Coalition down one-and-a-half to 20% and the Greens down one-and-a-half to 12.5%. Labor’s respondent-allocated two-party lead over One Nation has duly narrowed, from 56-44 to 52.5-47.5, and its leads over the Coalition have narrowed from 55-45 to 54-46 on respondent-allocated preferences and from 54-46 to 52.5-47.5 on previous election preferences. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1612.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 27, Coalition 27, One Nation 22 in Victoria

Polling continues to point to a three-way contest in Victoria, as the government finally prepares to abolish group voting tickets for the upper house.

Resolve Strategic is publishing monthly Victorian state poll results for The Age ahead of the election in November, padding out the sample in its regular national polling and inquiring about state as well as federal voting intention. The latest result finds Labor and the Coalition remaining tied on the primary vote, with both up a point by 27%, while One Nation are down two to 22% and the Greens are steady on 12%. Jess Wilson’s lead over Jacinta Allan on preferred premier shifts from 39-20 to 43-24. The poll was conducted last Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1000.

There is also a report in the Herald Sun on a 6500 sample poll conducted for Trades Hall by RedBridge Group which has One Nation on 27%, Labor and the Coalition each on 26% and the Greens on 12%. The polling “includes low, median and high scenarios for seats likely to be obtained by each party, and Labor is understood to be able to scrape across the line with its number of seats in the mid-40s on a ‘high’ sensitivity scenario – but could fall into the 20s under the ‘low’ scenario”.

There was a major development over the weekend with reports the government will shortly legislate to abolish group voting tickets for the Legislative Council, which it has taken a confoundingly long time to get around to despite the urgings of a parliamentary committee inquiry in December. The reports are scarce on details, beyond that fact that the reforms follow other jurisdictions in allowing above-the-line voters to number multiple preferences, rather than voting for a single party and accepting its full nominated preference order. The existing system helped two parties win seats from less than 1% of the vote in 2018, and has recently encouraged a rash of registration applications by parties plainly devised with the intention of harvesting preferences. Antony Green noted a fortnight ago that the Victorian Electoral Commission has advised a bill would need to be passed at the next sitting of parliament later this month to take effect in time for the election.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 28, One Nation 26, Coalition 23 (open thread)

Another poll finds One Nation taking a knock, the dividend this time yielded by a still struggling Coalition.

The monthly Resolve Strategic poll for Nine Newspapers is the latest to record a decline in support for One Nation, though the three-point drop on last month to 26% still leaves them ahead of the 24% recorded in the post-budget poll in May. The Coalition is up three to 23%, with Labor and the Greens steady on 28% and 12% respectively.

Movement on the three-way preferred prime minister question, which was posed for the first time last month, is yet more pronounced: Pauline Hanson slumps eight points to 25% with Anthony Albanese up four to 33% and Angus Taylor up five to 21%. Albanese’s combined very good plus good rating is up four points to 39%, his best since December, while poor and very poor are down two to 53%. Angus Taylor is respectively up three to 41% and up two to 34%. The question was posed of Pauline Hanson for the first time, who recorded a positive rating of 45%, but the negative rating is not provided in the report.

Responses were gauged to 13 propositions advanced by Hanson in her National Press Club speech, including some that polled favourably because they were unobjectionable. Of interest was that 39% agreed with Hanson that zero should be dropped and fossil fuels favoured over renewables in future, compared with 33% who were neutral and 27% who disagreed, a distinctly more climate-skeptical result than is usual from such questions. Hanson scored predictably well on immigration, but less so on cutting public broadcasting and withdrawing from the United Nations.

The poll had an unusually large sample of 2252, with around 1800 being the norm. I believe this is because its Victorian samples are being beefed up from now until the November state election to allow for monthly state poll results from samples of around 1000, as compared with the pollster’s normal practice of publishing bi-monthly results combining samples of around 500 from two national polls (as it will continue to do for New South Wales).

Friday miscellany: Morgan poll, by-election and redistribution news, Tasmanian state poll (open thread)

A second sharp drop for One Nation in a weekly poll series, an intriguing by-election on the way in Western Australia, and more.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll records One Nation tumbling another three-and-a-half points after their five-and-a-half point drop last week, reducing them to 22.5%. This still isn’t enough to cost them their lead over the Coalition, who are unchanged at 21.5%, while Labor is likewise steady at 28%. The difference is instead made up by a one-point gain for the Greens to 14% and a two-and-a-half point gain for independents and others to 14%. A Labor-versus-One Nation two-party measure based on respondent allocation has Labor’s lead out from 53-47 to 56-44. The lead over the Coalition is 55-45 based on respondent allocation, out from 53.5-46.5, and 54-46 based on 2025 election preference flows, out from 52.5-47.5. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1584.

Other news:

• A Western Australian state by-election looms in the seat of Secret Harbour after Paul Papalia, who had been in parliament since 2007 and in cabinet since Labor came to power in 2017, announced his resignation on Monday citing a family illness. Labor confirmed yesterday its candidate will be Georgia Tree, a former staffer to local federal MP Madeleine King and government relations employee at Woodside. With its low ethnic diversity and abundance of trades workers, the outer southern suburbs seat appears to be promising terrain for One Nation. Tom Rabe of the Financial Review reports “multiple Labor sources” say recent internal polling from the seat has One Nation running neck-and-neck with Labor in the “mid-30s”, with the Liberal vote “hovering in the high teens”. Perhaps surprisingly, Liberal leader Basil Zempilas has vowed the party will field a candidate.

• The finalised boundaries were published this week for the federal redistribution of the Australian Capital Territory, with those for South Australia and Tasmania to follow over the coming weeks. This involves two seats that Labor won in 2025 by margins of around 20%, one over the Greens (Canberra, held by Alicia Payne) and one over the Liberals (Fenner, held by Andrew Leigh), and one the party came within 700 votes of losing to teal independent Jessie Price (Bean, held by David Smith). Bean both gains from and loses to Canberra: I calculate a 54.0-46.0 split in favour of Labor over Price out of the roughly 9500 formal votes being transferred from Bean to Canberra, and a near tie in the remainder. The extent to which the former helps Price, should she run again, depends on the unknown quantity of her latent support from the similarly sized area transferred from Canberra to Bean. What does favour her, albeit modestly, is the reversal of a plan from the originally proposed boundaries to transfer Norfolk Island from Bean to Canberra, whose votes I estimate as having broken 576-305 in Price’s favour in 2025.

• A DemosAU Tasmanian state poll for Pulse Tasmania has Liberal on 28%, One Nation on 21%, Labor on 21%, the Greens on 14% and independents on 12%. The last such poll in November did not feature One Nation as a response option, and had Liberal on 35%, Labor on 23%, the Greens on 15% and independents on 17%. The result at the election in July last year was Liberal 39.9%, Labor 25.9%, Greens 14.4% and independents 15.3%, producing a seat result of Liberal 14, Labor 10, Greens five, independents 5 and Shooters Fishers and Farmers one. The poll credits Premier Jeremy Rockliff with a 41-32 lead over Labor’s Josh Willie, in from 43-32. Rockliff is rated positively by 35%, neutrally by 27% and negatively by 38%; Willie positively by 23%, neutrally by 48% and negatively by 29%. The poll was conducted June 21 to July 6 from a sample of 999.

Monday miscellany: Newspoll quarterly breakdowns and more (open thread)

Newspoll breakdowns show uneven patterns across the states; Labor and the Coalition at loggerheads over aggressive behaviour at polling booths; redistribution latest.

With nearly every pollster in the game having pitched in last week, a quiet period looms. The weekly Roy Morgan should be along later today as always, and DemosAU is about due for one of its big-sample MRP projections. On the broader electoral front, there is the following to report:

• The Weekend Australian had the quarterly Newspoll detailed breakdowns from its four polls conducted in April, May and June. The state results show movement towards One Nation and away from Labor clearly evident in Victoria and South Australia, less evident in New South Wales, and not at all evident in Queensland and Western Australia, with Labor gaining three points in the former case. Breakdowns by education are distinctive in that One Nation is up six among those with technical qualifications, but effectively unchanged for everyone else. Voting intention is barely changed among 18-to-34s, whereas One Nation are up significantly among the older cohorts. Presumably inspired by the budget tax measures, the breakdowns now include housing tenure, as commonly featured by other pollsters. To commemorate the occasion, I have added tabs for these results to the BludgerTrack poll data features (keep clicking the “more” tab until you see them).

• The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has published an interim report from its routine inquiry into the last election, which notably focuses on aggressive behaviour at polling booths. The majority report cites data on public complaints received by the AEC, and recommended that “election participants” be required to register and observe a code of conduct. The AEC, whose bailiwick currently ends six metres from the entrance, would enforce this code within a “campaign zone” around the polling place, in which signage limits would also apply. The report argued that much of the offending behaviour “seemed to involve third parties”, and while it didn’t name names, committee chair Jerome Laxale told parliament while tabling the report of “an assault by third parties identified in submissions like the Plymouth Brethren and Advance”.

• Certainly the Plymouth Brethren angle had been divined by the committee’s Coalition members, who headlined their dissenting report “less inquiry, more hyperpartisan witch hunt” – the latter having been directed against “Australians based on their religious faith”. While acknowledging aggressive behaviour was an issue, their own volunteers having been “targets for intimidation by unions and other third party organisations on polling booths for many elections”, the Coalition members forcefully rejected the recommendations as burdensome, open to abuse and possibly unconstitutional. Also in the Coalition report was a call for the early voting period, already truncated from three weeks to two before the 2022 election, to be reduced to one week, and for the AEC to be “more strident on ensuring that people accessing pre-poll are doing so for one of the reasons prescribed in the Act”.

• The official determination of how many seats each state and territory will be entitled to at the next election, which is calculated a year into each parliamentary term, will be made later this month. Antony Green has done their work for them based on the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics population data, and concludes there will be no change from the status quo, Queensland having recorded not quite enough growth to get it over the line for a thirty-first seat. Queensland will nonetheless get a redistribution under the seven-year rule, which is now overdue after being twice delayed: first because of the election, and then because there was no point commencing the process until it was clear how many seats the state would have. Proposed boundaries were published in March for South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, final boundaries for which are expected later this month.

• Wendy Askew has brought forward the retirement she recently announced for the end of her term in mid-2028, now to take effect in a “few weeks”. This means two vacancies are now available for Tasmanian Liberal Senate seats, together with that created by Jonathan Duniam’s surprise retirement announcement last month.

RedBridge Group: Labor 26, One Nation 27, Coalition 26 in Victoria

A new poll finds the Coalition struggling to keep up with One Nation, even in the seemingly promising context of Victoria.

RedBridge Group/Accent Research have a large-sample Victorian state poll in the Financial Review, showing One Nation overtaking the Coalition since the last such poll in February. The primary votes all but record a three-way tie between Labor, up a point to 26%, One Nation, up three to 27%, and the Coalition, down two to 26%, with the Greens steady on 13%. Two-party results have the Coalition leading Labor 54-46, and Labor leading One Nation 52-48. Jacinta Allan records 17% favourable, 24% neutral and 59% negative (which the Financial Review says are the worst recorded for any leader other than Anna Bligh and John Cain, though on what basis is unclear), and Jess Wilson is on 31% favourable, 51% neutral and 18% unfavourable. Pauline Hanson was thrown in for good measure, recording 37% favourable, 17% neutral and 46% negative. The poll was conducted June 17 to 28 from a sample of 5516.

Further electorally relevant news from Victoria:

• The Liberal Party state executive meets tomorrow to decide whether to remove Moira Deeming as lead upper house candidate for Western Metropolitan. The Age reports a “broad consensus” within the party that she should be dropped, as there would have to be to get the required agreement of 75% of the executive’s roughly 20 members. Deeming’s defeat in an April preselection vote by restaurateur and Indian community figurehead Dinesh Gourisetty prompted a backlash on the right, and she was shortly able to recover the position when Gourisetty was obliged to withdraw. However, last week’s events appear to have damaged Deeming’s prestige. Pauline Hanson bluntly told Melbourne station 3AW today that the party “don’t want her”, and hitherto strong supporter Peta Credlin, who is married to state executive chair Brian Loughnane, “has let it be known that she is now done with Deeming”, according to Chip Le Grand of The Age.

• Sumeyya Ilanbey of the Financial Review reports Labor has written off nine seats, including several where the threat would presumably be from One Nation: Sunbury, Ashwood, Melton, Yan Yean, Glen Waverley, Hastings, Pakenham, Bayswater and Bass. The party is confident of 19 seats and targeting another 26, suggesting it is plotting a bare minimum path to a majority of 45 seats out of 88.

• Kieran Rooney of The Age reported last week that Labor internal research indicated the Nationals seats of Gippsland South, Murray Plains and Gippsland East were likely One Nation wins, with Shepparton, Benambra and Lowan “leaning orange”. Also in the latter category were Berwick, the Melbourne fringe seat held by former Liberal leader Brad Battin, along with Liberal-held Narracan, Warrandyte, Eildon and Rowville. No Labor seats were identified, but One Nation was acknowledged to be “a major problem for both sides of politics”. Liberal sources expressed high hopes for gaining Niddrie and Macedon from Labor.

• Ryan Bourke of the Herald Sun reports One Nation “remains without a frontrunner” after an apparent failure to recruit as candidates Adam Giles, former Northern Territory Chief Minister and now chief executive of Gina Rinehart’s agricultural arm, and Heston Russell, former commando and founder of a party that ran at the last state election as Angry Victorians.

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

One out of two new polls bucks the recent trend in having One Nation higher, but both concur that Labor are up.

It’s been a particularly busy few days on the poll front, with Newspoll’s three-week cycle coinciding with YouGov’s fortnightly cycle and Essential Research’s monthly cycle and RedBridge Group thrown in for good measure. The fortnightly Sky News Pulse poll by YouGov parts company with the others in finding One Nation continuing to rise, at the expense of the hapless Coalition rather than Labor. Labor is up three to 29% and One Nation two to 30%, the latter a new record for the party from YouGov. The Coalition is down four to 17%, two points below its previous nadir around the time of the February leadership change, while the Greens are steady on 13%. Anthony Albanese is up one on approval to 38% and down three on disapproval to 55%, while Angus Taylor is down one to 36% and steady on 47%. Albanese’s leads on preferred prime minister are out from 43-38 to 44-35 against Taylor, and from 48-41 to 49-40 against Pauline Hanson. The poll was conducted last Tuesday to this Tuesday from a sample of 1502.

The Guardian reports on the monthly Essential Research poll, with which the pollster’s data feature has been updated, though its full report with all its attitudinal questions will come later today. Inclusive of a steady uncommitted result of 5%, it has Labor up a point to 30%, One Nation down two to 26% and the Greens down one to 10%. The drop for One Nation might be thought especially significant coming from a monthly series, since the BludgerTrack trend measure records them gaining two-and-a-half points over this period.

The pollster’s 2PP+ continues to be unusually strong for the Coalition, who recover a 48-46 lead with the balance undecided, after Labor gained a 48-47 lead last month – my rough measure based on 2025 election flows has Labor ahead 51.3-48.7, out from 50.6-49.4. Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 38% and down three on disapproval to 51%. Contrary to other recent polling, Angus Taylor is up three on approval to 36% and steady on disapproval at 37%.

The Guardian report relates negative responses to various One Nation positions: 15% in favour of privatising the ABC, 11% for shutting down SBS, 20% for ending multiculturalism, 18% for withdrawing from the United Nations, 18% for revising workplace laws in favour of employers, and 25% for stopping the renewables transition and focusing on fossil fuels. Only 26% were in favour of the party’s position on banning abortion after 20 weeks, but results were somewhat more conservative than when the question was last posed in November 2024: the 72% supporting abortion being legal in some or all cases was down seven points, and the 28% holding it should be illegal in some or all cases was up seven. Fifty per cent said they were concerned about One Nation being backed by Gina Rinehart, and 45% were concerned the party would “turn Australians against each other”. The poll was presumably conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample that will have been a bit over 1000.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll has the biggest hit to One Nation of them all, down five-and-a-half points to 26%, with Labor up one to 28%, the Coalition up four to 21.5% and the Greens down half to 13%. Labor’s two-party lead over One Nation on a measure based on respondent-allocated preferences is out from 51-49 to 53-47, while its leads over the Coalition are in from 54-46 to 53.5-46.5 on respondent-allocated preferences and unchanged at 52.5-47.5 on previous election preference flows. The poll was conducted last Sunday to Monday from a sample of 1639.

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