US presidential election minus eight weeks

After a fortnight in which the balance of the polls tipped back towards Donald Trump, indications of a clear win to Kamala Harris in yesterday’s debate.

The most robust item on reaction to yesterday’s presidential candidates’ debate, at least so far as I’m aware, is a CNN poll “conducted by text message with 605 registered US voters who said they watched the debate”, which recorded a 63-37 win for Kamala Harris from a sample that going in had a 50-50 split on who they expected to win. This doesn’t quite match the 67-33 result in favour of Trump after the June 27 debate that marked the beginning of the end for Joe Biden, but it isn’t far off, and both seem about as close to decisive as can be expected by the polarised standards of American politics.

It was a win that Harris badly needed, if recent polls and forecast results are any guide. The latter have recorded what looks to my untrained eye like a dividend for Donald Trump from Robert F. Kennedy’s withdrawal, sufficient to reduce the modest lead Harris opened up in The Economist’s model to effectively nothing. Still more striking has been the recent form of Nate Silver’s model, which won the approval of Trump himself by swinging to a 64.4% probability in his favour as of Monday, though it’s since eased to 61.3%. The divergence between the two models, which were hitherto finely matched, appears to be largely down to Silver’s model correcting for an anticipated Harris convention bounce, of which the polls have offered no sign.

Adrian Beaumont has an update on the polling situation in The Conversation, dating from Monday.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 27, Coalition 37, Greens 14 in Victoria

Another poll suggesting Labor’s state primary vote in Victoria has a two in front of it, as The Greens fill the upper house vacancy arising from Samantha Ratnam’s federal election bid.

A huge week for state opinion polling continues with Resolve Strategic’s bi-monthly read on state voting intention in Victoria, combining survey results from its last two monthly national polls. As reported in The Age, this records no change for either major party since the June-July result, with Labor on 27%, the Coalition on 37% and the Greens down a point to 14%, suggesting a roughly even split on two-party preferred. There is also next to no change on preferred premier, with Jacinta Allan’s lead over John Pesutto in from 31-28 to 30-29.

The poll also finds 43% support for the Suburban Rail Loop project with 27% opposed. However, 53% favoured the airport-to-city rail link project when it was put to them that “some people have been argued” the money should be used for that instead, with only 16% preferring the Suburban Rail Loop and 19% saying it should be spent on neither. The sample for the poll was 1054.

Also of note from Victoria is the Greens’ choice of a new member of the Legislative Council for Northern Metropolitan region, following party leader Samantha Ratnam’s departure to contest the federal seat of Wills. A party ballot was won last week by Anasina Gray-Barberio, Samoan-born founder of Engage Pasefika, an organisation “committed to advancing Pacific Island Health equity”. Gray-Barberio was chosen from a field of eight that also included Yarra mayor Edward Crossland and former Merri-bek mayor Angelica Panopoulos.

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

Labor loses its very slight advantage in Essential Research but keeps it in Roy Morgan.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll has both parties up on the primary vote, the Coalition by two to 35% and Labor by one to 30%, with the Greens steady on 13%, One Nation up one to 8% and undecided down one to 5%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor and the Coalition tied on 48%, with the balance undecided. Further results show a 69-31 split in favour of the government’s cap on international students, together with various other findings on the theme of education. Fifty-three per cent expressed support for the Future Made in Australia policy, following a question that said it would “provide funding for large-scale renewable energy projects that support the creation of local jobs”, with 18% opposed. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1132.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, out from 50.5-49.5 last time, from primary votes of Labor 30% (down half), Coalition 36.5% (up half), Greens 14.5% (up one-and-a-half) and One Nation 6% (steady). Going off preference flows from the previous election rather than as allocated by poll respondents, Labor’s two-party lead is unchanged at 52-48. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1703.

Also, further results from the Resolve Strategic poll indicate remarkable pessimism on interest rates, which 40% expect to go up over the next year compared with only 15% for down and 34% for stay the same. Fifty-one per cent rated that the federal government and the Treasurer had “the greater responsibility for keeping inflation down” compared with 27% for the Reserve Bank and 22% for both equally. A question on gambling advertising found 51% support for banning gambling advertisements on television entirely, with 32% supporting the government’s policy of a cap on two ads per hour during live sports and none during children’s programming.

Freshwater Strategy: 55-45 to Labor in Western Australia

Multiple polls point to a win for Labor in Western Australia rather more on the scale of 2017 than 2021.

Hot on the heels of the Wolf & Smith national results on state voting intention, The West Australian had its own Freshwater Strategy poll on Monday which matched its headline figure on 55-45 in favour of the state Labor government, as compared with its unrepeatable 70-30 win at the 2021 election. The primary votes are Labor 39%, Liberal 32%, Nationals 6% and Greens 11%, with Roger Cook leading Libby Mettam 46-34 as preferred premier.

The accompanying reportage says Roger Cook has a plus seven net approval rating and that 37% “have either never heard of him or are unsure”, which presumably means he has 35% approval and 28% disapproval. This compares with plus four for Libby Mettam, minus two for the presumably little-known Nationals leader Shane Love, minus four for ambitious Liberal election candidate Basil Zempilas – and plus 41 for the departed Mark McGowan. The sample for the poll was 1045, with the field work period not identified.

UPDATE: The Freshwater Strategy website has the results, which show Libby Mettam at 21% approval and 17% disapproval (29% had never heard of her, compared with 10% for Roger Cook). The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday.

The voting intention results are little different from those of another Freshwater Strategy poll reported by The West Australian three weeks ago, commissioned in this case by the Liberal Party. Conducted in July from a sample of 1000, it had Labor leading 56-44 from primary votes of Labor 39%, Liberal 33%, Nationals 5% and Greens 12%. The primary votes from the Wolf & Smith poll were Labor 37%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 3%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%.

Recent-ish news relevant to the March 8 election:

• Labor determined the order of its Legislative Council ticket in mid-July, with Dylan Caporn of The West Australian helpfully listing all 22 candidates and their union and factional affiliations. With Labor on track for perhaps fourteen seats, nine of the 22 incumbents are in positions of greater or lesser comfort; another, Stephen Pratt, will run for the lower house seat of Jandakot; two (Sandra Carr and Dan Caddy) are on the cusp; and four in positions where they are unlikely to be returned. Four non-incumbents hold competitive or better positions, one being Nedlands MP Katrina Stratton at number ten. Andrew O’Donnell, a staffer for Balcatta MP David Michael, aligned with the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), is at nine; Lauren Cayoun, the party’s assistant state secretary, aligned with the Right faction Australian Workers Union, is at eleven; and Parwinder Kaur, biotechnician and associate professor at the University of Western Australia, aligned with the SDA, is at thirteen.

• One Nation’s sole incumbent, South West region MLC Ben Dawkins, has not won a position on his party’s Legislative Council ticket. Dawkins ran for Labor at the 2021 election, entered parliament as an independent when he filled Alannah MacTiernan’s vacancy on a countback in March 2023, and joined One Nation in February. The ticket will instead be headed by Rod Caddies, the head of the party’s state organisation, who told The West Australian he “would be the one responsible for who is on the ticket”. Caddies expressed the view that Dawkins had not “lived up to the professionalism of what I would expect”. Dawkins will nonetheless remain a member of the party, whose formal registration for the election was confirmed by the Western Australian Electoral Commission a fortnight ago.

• Aswath Chavittupara, whose daughter Aishwarya’s death while awaiting treatment at the Perth Children’s Hospital emergency department in April 2021 was a serious embarrassment for the government, will be the Liberal candidate for Morley, after earlier saying he would run as an independent. Jack Dietsch of The West Australian reports Chavittupara won preselection ahead of Nirmal Singh, owner of a beauty services company.

• The Liberal candidate for Bicton will be Christopher Dowson, a former policy officer at the Department of Premier and Cabinet and current postdoctoral fellow at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. Jack Dietsch of The West Australian reports Dowson won preselection ahead of Bill Koul, owner of an engineering consultancy and an unsuccessful candidate for the federal Tangney preselection.

Queensland: Resolve Strategic and RedBridge Group polls

Two polls offering a somewhat mixed picture of the scale of the defeat awaiting Labor in Queensland, plus other election-related developments.

Three items of Queensland state polling have emerged over the past few days, one being the previously reported national poll by Wolf & Smith that featured results for each state:

• The Brisbane Times has published a state voting intention results from the Queensland components of Resolve Strategic’s monthly national polls from June through to September. This suggests seemingly no end to Labor’s slide, their primary vote down three points from February-to-May to 23%, with the LNP up one to 44%, the Greens down one to 12% and One Nation steady at 8%. While the size of the minor party and independent vote allows for a wide range of uncertainty, I would conservatively put the LNP’s two-party lead at 58-42 based on these primary votes. The sample for the poll was 939.

• Nine’s television news reports a RedBridge Group poll showing the Liberal National Party with a two-party lead of 54.5-45.5, the least bad result for Labor government in some time. However, all that’s reported beyond that is that the Labor is at 29% on the primary vote and the LNP 42%. RedBridge Group director Kos Samaras relates that Labor is in “a very strong position along the Brisbane river”, but “travel out further from that and it gets very very ugly”.

• The aforementioned Wolf & Smith results were not far off Resolve Strategic’s: Labor 24%, LNP 42%, Greens 12% and One Nation 8%, with the LNP leading 57-43 on two-party preferred. The poll was conducted August 6 to 29 from a sample of 1724.

Other happenings relevant to the October 26 state election:

• Stephen Andrew, who has held the central Queensland seat of Mirani for One Nation since 2017, finalised his defection over the weekend from One Nation to Katter’s Australian Party after the former advised him he would not be its endorsed candidate at the election. A letter from Pauline Hanson cited his failure to bring any private members’ bills before parliament, and accused him of planning to join another party or become an independent. One Nation’s new candidate for the seat is Brettlyn Neal, a travelling tent boxer known to the sporting public as “Beaver Brophy”, who ran in the far north Queensland seat of Cook at the 2020 election.

• The LNP candidate for the southern Brisbane seat of Capalaba will be Russell Field, whose son, daughter-in-law and unborn granddaughter were killed when hit by a stolen car in 2021. Field says he is motivated by Labor incumbent Don Brown’s description of youth crime as a “media beat-up” in a social media post he removed when it attracted media attention last year.

• Curtis Pitt has announced he will not seek re-election in the Cairns seat of Mulgrave, which he has held for Labor since 2009. Samuel Davis of the Cairns Post reports Pitt’s favoured successor is Aaron Fa’Aoso, a Logie-winning Indigenous actor, whom Steven Miles has “fallen short of endorsing”. The LNP candidate is former Cairns Regional councillor Terry James.

Polls: Resolve Strategic, RedBridge/Accent MRP poll, Wolf & Smith federal and state (open thread)

One regular and two irregular polls, one projecting a Labor minority government, the other offering a rare read on state voting intention across the land.

A lot going on in the world of polling:

Resolve Strategic

Nine Newspapers has the regular monthly Resolve Strategic poll, which has Labor on 28% (down one), the Coalition on 37% (steady), the Greens on 13% (steady) and One Nation on 6% (steady). My estimate of two-party preferred from these results is 50-50, based on preference flows from the 2022 election. Anthony Albanese holds a 35-34 lead as preferred prime minister, after trailing 36-35 last time. Albanese’s combined very good and good rating is up one to 35%, with poor and very poor at up two 53%, while Peter Dutton is respectively steady at 41% and up four to 42%. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1614.

Accent Research/RedBridge Group MRP poll

Accent Research and RedBridge Group have published their second multi-level regression with post-stratification (MRP) poll, in what looks like being a regular quarterly series. This aims for a detailed projected election result by surveying a large national sample, in this case of 5976 surveyed from July 10 to August 27, and using demographic modelling to produce results for each electorate. The full report isn’t in the public domain as far as I can tell but it’s been covered on the ABC’s Insiders and in the Financial Review. UPDATE: Full report here.

The results are not encouraging for Labor: where the previous exercise rated Labor a strong chance of retaining majority government, with a floor of 73 seats and a further nine nine too close to call, they are now down to 64 with 14 too close to call, with the Coalition up from 53 to 59. The median prediction from a range of potential outcomes is that Labor will hold 69 seats, the Coalition 68, the Greens three and others ten. This is based on primary vote projections in line with the recent trend of national polling, with Labor on 32%, the Coalition on 38% and the Greens on 12%.

Five seats are rated as Coalition gains that weren’t last time, Gilmore, Lingiari, Lyons and Aston having moved from too-close-to-call and Paterson going from Labor retain to Coalition gain without passing go. Bruce, Dobell, Hunter, Casey, Tangney, McEwen and Bennelong go from Labor retain to too-close-to-call, while Coalition-held Deakin and Moore are no longer on their endangered list. However, the traffic is not all one way, with Casey in Victoria and Forde in Queensland going from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call. So far as the underlying model is concerned, it is presumably not a coincidence that both seats are on the metropolitan fringes.

The results show a mixed picture for the teals, who are reckoned to have gone backwards in the city, such that Curtin goes from too-close-to-call to Coalition retain and Goldstein goes from teal retain to Liberal gain, but forwards in the country, shifting Wannon from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call while maintaining Cowper as a teal gain. For the Greens, Ryan goes from retained to too-close-to-call while Brisbane does the opposite, with Melbourne and Griffith remaining Greens retains.

Whereas the last assessment was based on 2022 election boundaries, the latest one makes use of the redistribution proposals for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. Respectively, this takes the teal seat of North Sydney out of contention and moves Hughes from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call; costs Labor Higgins and moves Chisholm from Labor retain to too-close-to-call; and introduces Bullwinkel to the too-close-to-call column.

My routine caveat with MRP is that it handles major parties better than independents and minors, perhaps especially with what by MRP standards is fairly modest sample (a similar exercise before the last election involving some of the same personnel had a sample of 18,923). I am particularly dubious about its projection of a blowout Labor win against the Greens in Wills. There also seems reason to doubt its precision in relation to a demographic wild card like Lingiari.

Wolf & Smith federal and state polling

Also just out is an expansive national poll from a new outfit called Wolf & Smith, a “strategic campaign agency based in Sydney” that appears to involve Jim Reed, principal of Resolve Strategic and alumnus of Liberal Party pollsters Crosby Textor. The poll was conducted from August 6 to 29 through an online panel from a vast sample of 10,239, and includes results federally and for each state government. The federal poll has Labor leading 51-49, from primary votes of Labor 29%, Coalition 36%, Greens 13% and One Nation 6%. At state level:

• The poll joins RedBridge Group and Resolve Strategic in recording weak numbers for the Minns government in New South Wales, showing a 50-50 result on two-party preferred from primary votes of Labor 32%, Coalition 38% and Greens 12%, from a sample of 2047.

• The Coalition leads 52-48 in Victoria from primary votes of Labor 28%, Coalition 40% and Greens 14%, from a sample of 2024, which is likewise broadly in line with recent results from RedBridge Group and Resolve Strategic.

• The Liberal National Party leads 57-43 in Queensland from primary votes of Labor 24%, Coalition 42%, Greens 12%, One Nation 8% and Katter’s Australian Party 3%, from a sample of 1724, which lines up well with the most recent YouGov poll.

• Labor leads 55-45 in Western Australia from primary votes of Labor 37%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 3%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%, from a sample of 878. Again, this sits well with the most recent other poll from the state, conducted for the Liberal Party by Freshwater Strategy in July from a sample of 1000 and published in The West Australian, which had Labor leading 56-44 from primary votes of Labor 39%, Liberal 33%, Nationals 5% and Greens 12%.

• In the first poll result of any substance from the state since the March 2022 election, Labor leads 60-40 in South Australia from primary votes of Labor 41%, Liberal 28%, Greens 11% and One Nation 5%, from a sample of 856. The Liberal leadership change occurred in the first week of the poll’s three-week survey period.

• A Tasmanian sample of 786 finds both major parties down from the March election result, Liberal from 36.7% to 32% and Labor from 29.0% to 23%, with the Greens steady on 14% (13.9% at the election) and the Jacqui Lambie Network up from 6.7% to 11% – though most of the survey period predated the party’s recent implosion.

And the rest

• The University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre has results of polling conducted by YouGov in June concerning the US alliance and related matters of regional strategy, conducted in conjunction with polling in the US and Japan. Together with an Essential Research poll in July, it points to a softening in attitudes towards Donald Trump, with 26% now rating that Australia should withdraw from the alliance if he wins, down from 37% last year. However, 46% would be “very concerned about the state of US democracy. Twenty per cent of Australian respondents felt US handling of China was too aggressive, compared with only 9% in Japan and 10% in the US, and 40% agreed Australia should send military forces “to help the United States defend Taiwan … if China attacks”, down six from last year, with 32% disagreeing, up ten. Respondents in all three countries were asked if it were “a good idea for Australia to have nuclear-powered submarines”: 51% of Australians agreed while 19% disagreed, compared with 35% and 16% of Americans daring to venture an opinion one way or the other. The survey was conducted from June 17 to 25, from sample of a little over 1000 in each country.

• JWS Research has the results of its latest quarterly True Issues survey on issue salience. Cost of living remains by far the issue most frequently invoked as being among the “most important issues the Australian government should focus on”, despite a six-point drop since May. The survey also finds a net minus 22 rating for direction of the national economy, down two on May and the equal worst result going back to the series’ inception in 2013.

Friday miscellany: redistributions and preselections (open thread)

Federal redistributions for Victoria and Western Australia confirmed with only minor amendments, while Bill Shorten calls time on his political career.

The federal redistributions for Victoria and Western Australia have been finalised, with only minor changes made to the proposals published in May. Higgins duly remains abolished, with adjustments made to the boundaries between Ballarat and Bendigo, Bendigo and Nicholls, Chisholm and Hotham, Corangamite and Wannon, and McEwen and Scullin. My estimates of the new margins suggest this increases the Labor margin from 3.5% to 3.7% in McEwen as compared with the original proposal, reduces it from 12.0% to 11.3% in Bendigo, and is barely measurable anywhere else.

In Western Australia, Fremantle and Tangney swap territory and Canning gets to keep the Shire of Waroona. The closest any of this comes to being of electoral interest is that Labor’s margin in Tangney is down from 2.9% on the proposed boundaries to 2.6%. The finalisation of the New South Wales boundaries can presumably be expected very shortly.

Preselection news:

• Bill Shorten announced yesterday he will bow out of politics at the next election, creating a vacancy in his safe Labor western Melbourne seat of Maribyrnong. Shorten will take up a position as vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra in February, which will presumably be close enough to the election that no by-election will be held. John Ferguson of The Australian reports the ascendant Left is hopeful of gaining the seat, with one potential contender being Jo Briskey, national political co-ordinator of the United Workers Union and unsuccessful candidate for the Brisbane seat of Bonner in 2019. Potential candidates from within Shorten’s own Right faction Australian Workers Union orbit include state minister Natalie Hutchins and former AWU official and political staffer Shannon Threlfall-Clarke.

• Labor’s candidate for the new seat of Bullwinkel on Perth’s eastern fringe will be Trish Cook, deputy president of the Shire of Mundaring. Cook was chosen ahead of widely touted front-runner Kyle McGinn, a member for the state upper house region of Mining and Pastoral who failed to secure a winnable position on the ticket for the March state election. Hamish Hastie of WAtoday reports the preselection was determined by the party’s national executive, at which “some in the party were surprised” since it would normally be left to the state party administration.

• Jeremy Neal, a paramedic and former Cairns councillor, won a Liberal National Party preselection vote last weekend to succeed retiring veteran Warren Entsch in the far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt. The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reported rival contenders included “local aviation identity” Alana McKenna, who had the backing of Entsch.

• Mal Hingston, a defence contractor with “a long history of work in the manufacturing, mining, oil and gas industries”, has won Liberal preselection for the north-western Tasmanian seat of Braddon, which will be vacated at the election with the retirement of Gavin Pearce. Earlier reports indicated there were five candidates, including Belle Binder, founder of a farm labour scheme, and Vonette Mead, Latrobe deputy mayor.

• Alex White of the Herald Sun reports Fiona Patten, who enjoyed a high profile as member of the state upper house with the Sex Party and Reason Australia from 2016 to 2022, has been announced as the lead Victorian Senate candidate of Legalise Cannabis party.

US presidential election minus nine weeks

Kamala Harris’ win probability dropping in Nate Silver’s model. Also covered: UK polls since the election, still no new PM in France after the election and two German state 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, and his own website is here.

The US presidential election is on November 5. In Nate Silver’s aggregate of national polls, Kamala Harris has a 48.9-45.5 lead over Donald Trump. In my article for The Conversation last Friday, Harris led by 48.8-45.0. The next important US event is the debate between Harris and Trump next Tuesday (Wednesday at 11am AEST).

It is the Electoral College, not the national popular vote, that is decisive in presidential elections. The Electoral College is expected to be biased to Trump relative to the popular vote, with Harris needing at least a two-point popular vote win in Silver’s model to be the Electoral College favourite.

Harris’ probability of winning the Electoral College in Silver’s model has dropped from 47% last Friday to 42%, with Trump now the favourite at a 58% chance to win. Trump’s win probability has increased every day in this model since August 27, and he’s now at his highest win probability since July 30. Current polling in the most important swing state (Pennsylvania, with 19 electoral votes) only gives Harris a one-point lead, and the model expects further declines for Harris as her convention bounce fades.

UK: no honeymoon for Starmer and Labour after election

At the July 4 UK general election, Labour won a thumping victory with 411 of the 650 House of Commons seats, to 121 Conservatives and 72 Liberal Democrats. This occurred despite Labour winning just 33.7% of the vote, to 23.7% for the Conservatives, 14.3% Reform (but only five seats), 12.2% Lib Dems and 6.7% Greens (four seats).

A new government would normally expect a polling honeymoon, but not this one. There haven’t been many voting intention polls since the election, but a late August BMG poll gave Labour just a 30-26 over the Conservatives with 19% for Reform. A late August More in Common poll gave PM Keir Starmer a net -16 approval rating, while a mid-August Opinium poll had Starmer at -6 after their first poll after the election gave him a +18 net approval. I believe the economic messages from Labour that there’s more pain ahead for the UK are backfiring.

France: still no PM two months after election

The French president (Emmanuel Macron) is the most important French politician, but the system still requires a PM who has the confidence of the lower house of parliament. At snap parliamentary elections that Macron called for June 30 and July 7, the left-wing NFP alliance won 180 of the 577 seats, Macron’s Ensemble 159, the far-right National Rally and allies 142 and the conservative Republicans 39.

While without a majority before the election, Ensemble was in a far better position with 245 seats. On July 23, the NFP agreed on a PM candidate, Lucie Castets, but Macron has no interest in appointing her. A PM needs to be appointed by October 1, the deadline to submit a draft 2025 budget.

Far-right gains at two German state elections

German state elections occurred in Thuringia and Saxony last Sunday. Proportional representation with a 5% threshold was used. In Thuringia, the far-right AfD won 32 of the 88 seats (up ten since 2019), the conservative CDU 23 (up two), the economically left but socially conservative BSW 15 (new), the Left 12 (down 17) and the centre-left SPD six (down two). The Greens and pro-business FDP fell below the 5% threshold and were wiped out.

In Saxony, the CDU won 42 of the 120 seats (down three), the AfD 41 (up three), the BSW 15 (new), the SPD nine (down one), the Greens six (down six) and the Left six (down eight). In Thuringia, the AfD is well short of the 45 seats needed for a majority, and the most likely outcome is a non-AfD government. A year out from the next federal German election, the polls are grim for the current governing coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP.

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