The Poll Bludger

The Australian reports the latest Newspoll surpasses the recent RedBridge Group/Accent Research poll as the Coalition’s worst and One Nation’s best result to date. The former lose three points from the Newspoll three weeks ago to hit 18% (broken out to 15% for the Liberal and 3% for the Nationals, while One Nation is up five to 27%. Labor is up a point to 33%, and the Greens are steady on 12%. As a result of One Nation’s dominance over the Liberals, “Newspoll has not generated a two-party-preferred calculation”. My own estimate based on preference flows at the last election has it approaching 56-44 to Labor.

Sussan Ley is down five on approval to 23% and up six on disapproval to 62%, which The Australian identifies as the worst result for a major party leader in 23 years. Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 43% and steady on disapproval at 53%. Albanese hold’s a relatively modest 49-30 lead as preferred prime minister, shifting from 51-31 last time. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday, a change from recent practice when polling was conducted mostly during the week, from a sample of 1234.

With less than three weeks to go before the formal campaign period, the pace is picking up ahead of the March 21 South Australian election, including one particularly notable development overnight:

• One Nation announced yesterday that its Legislative Council ticket will be led by Cory Bernardi, who held a South Australian Senate seat from 2006 to 2020. Bernardi served as a Liberal until 2017, when he quit to form the short-lived Australian Conservatives. The party was abolished after its failure at the 2019 election, and he quit the Senate in January 2020. He has since maintained a profile as a conservative pundit and Sky News presenter. Bernardi’s elevation requires the demotion of the existing candidates on the ticket, which was to be headed by Victor Harbor councillor Carlos Quaremba. The party says it will field candidates in all 47 seats: its website currently records 31 lower candidates, together with three (soon to be four) for the upper house.

• Labor’s new candidate for the safe inner northern Adelaide seat of Enfield is Lawrence Ben, principal economic adviser to Peter Malinauskas. Ben fills the vacancy created by the retirement of Andrea Michaels, the Labor member since 2019, who last week announced she wished to return to her legal career. Michaels has served in the ministry since 2022 in consumer and business affairs, small and family business and the arts, the latter placing her at the centre at the recent imbroglio around the removal of Randa Abdel-Fattah from the Writers Week event at the Adelaide Festival.

• The Advertiser reports on a poll of the seat of Mount Gambier, which has been vacant since independent member Troy Bell resigned in September after the failure of his appeal against a fraud conviction. The poll records 23.1% support for independent Travis Fatchen, an electorate officer to Bell who is running as an independent. This is presumably exclusive of a 22% undecided component, which would effectively put Fatchen at 30%. A “hypothetical preference distribution” records Fatchen with a two-candidate preferred lead of 61.7-38.3 over Liberal candidate Lamorna Alexander. We are further told Labor is on 17% and that “conservative support was split between the Liberals, One Nation and independent Cody Scholes”, presumably suggesting each is on around 12% or 13%. Also included was a preferred premier question showing Peter Malinauskas with a 49.6-13.8 lead over Ashton Hurn.

• Other notable independent candidates include Port Lincoln business owner Meghan Petherick in Flinders, whose prospects have been rated highly by Aden Hill of The Advertiser; Matt Schultz, director of international recruitment at Flinders University and president of the Mount Barker Football Club, in Kavel, where he has the endorsement of outgoing independent member Dan Cregan; Airlie Keen, manager of Dan Cregan’s electorate office, who will run again in Hammond, where she polled 15.7% in 2022 and fell 306 short of reducing Labor to third place; and Claire Boan, mayor of Port Adelaide Enfield, in Port Adelaide, which will be vacated with the retirement of Susan Close.

• Former One Nation MLC Sarah Game’s Fair Go for Australians party has changed its lead upper house candidate for a second time. The ticket will now be led by Chris McDermott, the inaugural captain of the Adelaide Crows who played 138 AFL games with the club from 1991 to 1998, who was announced amid great fanfare as the party’s candidate for Dunstan a fortnight ago. He replaces Jake Hall-Evans, managing director of a signage and graphic business and the Liberals’ federal candidate for Hindmarsh in 2019, who will now run in the lower house seat of Colton. The originally named lead candidate was Henry Davis, Adelaide councillor and former Liberal preselection aspirant Henry Davis, who was replaced by Hall-Evans in December, which he claims he first heard of upon reading it in The Advertiser. At around the same time, Davis convened a meeting of the party’s incorporated association, at which he was the only member present, and declared that Game and her key allies were no longer members due to non-payment of their fees.

• The Nationals have announced as their lead upper house candidate Rikki Lambert, a former chief-of-staff to Victorian federal MP Anne Webster and Bob Day during his time as a Family First Senator. Lambert has run as an Australian Conservatives candidate at both federal and state elections. Port Lincoln councillor Dylan Cowley will run for the party in Flinders, while party state president Jonathan Pietzch is the candidate for MacKillop.

The Financial Review has the first RedBridge Group/Accent Research federal poll since immediately before the Bondi shootings, and it shades last week’s YouGov in recording the highest One Nation vote and the lowest “former Coalition parties“ vote of any poll so far. Labor is at 34%, which is down one on the previous poll but still their best result in any poll since that time. One Nation is up fully nine points to 26%, while the Coalition is down seven to 19%, with the Greens down two to 11%. The increasingly speculative two-party preferred measure has Labor back in the territory of its landslide win last May with a lead of 56-44 over the former Coalition parties. Contrary to a consensus that the One Nation surge will likely prove ephemeral, the poll in fact finds slightly more of the party’s supporters saying their choice is “solid” than for other parties with meaningful sample sizes.

The full release for the poll has helpfully presented favourability ratings for various politicians, which bring together the equally important considerations of net favourability and name recognition. Andrew Hastie shades his erstwhile leadership rival Angus Taylor on net favourability, but both have roughly a third saying they have never heard of them, with many of those who have on the fence about them. Both Anthony Albanese and Sussan Ley have taken a knock over the past month, with the latter doing less well than both Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce. Donald Trump scores 16% favourable and 67% unfavourable.

A preferred prime minister question has 37% favouring Albanese, down four on last month; 9% favouring Ley, down three; 8% opting for about the same, down one; and 34% opting for neither, with 12% unsure. A particularly soft 29% reckon the country “generally headed in the right direction”, compared with 55% for wrong direction, and 44% responded to a question on “Australian federal politics right now” with a view that the system needs “major changes”, on top of 15% for the more radical version that “the system needs to be burned down so we can start over”. Twenty-nine per cent held that the system needed minor changes, with only 5% holding that the system is fine as it is. Issue salience questions find an increase in concern about the rate of immigration and national security. The poll was conducted January 22 to 29 from a sample of 1003.

Sky News has the first in what promises to be fortnightly polling series by YouGov, and its report includes a display with a useful range of breakdowns. Interestingly, it also has a chart showing results from three previous polls going back to November, none of which were published to my knowledge. The latest result has Labor on 31%, up one on a poll conducted shortly before Christmas; One Nation on 25%, up five; the “former Coalition parties” on 20%, down four; and the Greens on 12%, down one. The page also features video from Paul Murray Live which shows a Labor two-party lead of 55-45 over the Coalition and 57-43 over One Nation. Anthony Albanese is on 39% approval and 55% disapproval and holds a 47-29 lead on preferred prime minister over Sussan Ley, who is on 26% approval and 57% disapproval. The poll was conducted last Tuesday through to Monday from a sample of 1500.

The YouGov results are all but precisely matched in a new poll from DemosAU for Capital Brief, which has Labor on 30%, up one on a poll earlier in the month; One Nation on 24%, up one; what I will continue to refer to as the Coalition on 21%, down two; and the Greens on 13%, up one. The accompanying report has extensive breakdowns, most tellingly in relation to current voting intention by vote at last year’s election. A three-way preferred prime minister question has Anthony Albanese on 39%, Pauline Hanson on 26% and Sussan Ley on 16%. Albanese is viewed positively by 27% (down two), neutrally by 32% (up two) and negatively by 41% (steady); Sussan Ley positively by 15% (down two), neutrally by 52% (down three) and negatively by 33% (up five). Hanson scores 35% positive, 25% neutral and 40% negative. A seat projection has Labor in a range from 87 to 95, One Nation from 29 to 38, and the Coalition from 10 to 22. The poll was conducted January 13 to 21 from a sample of 1933. The pollster also has an explanatory note on its approach to the problem of two-party preferred with a Coalition fracturing and running third.

Roy Morgan has a third successive weekly result, though I’m told this will not necessarily be a consistent arrangement. It has Labor up two points to 30.5%, the former Coalition parties down one-and-a-half to 22.5% (breaking them out for the first time to Liberal 20% and Nationals 2.5%, which presumably means it folds Queensland’s Liberal National Party into the Liberal vote), One Nation up one-and-a-half to 22.5% and the Greens down half to 13%. Labor leads 56.5-43.5 on respondent-allocated preferences, out from 53.5-46.5, and 54.5-45.5 on previous election preferences, out from 53-47. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1653.

The Guardian also brings us voting intention results from Essential Research, which will presumably have a full report later today. It has Labor on 31%, down three on last month’s result, which was conducted a week before the Bondi shootings; the Liberals and Nationals on 25%, down one; One Nation on 22%, up five; and the Greens on 9%, down one. Anthony Albanese is down four on approval to 39% and up eight on disapproval to 55%, while Sussan Ley is down four to 30% and up four to 47%. Albanese is deemed to have handled Bondi well by 36% and not well by 55%. The poll was conducted last Tuesday to Friday from a sample of 1022.

Nine Newspapers also reports last week’s Resolve Strategic poll found an ongoing decline in support for changing the date of Australia Day, with 68% now opposed and 16% in favour, down from 61% and 24% last year and 47% and 39% in 2023. A Freshwater Strategy poll found 70% support for January 26, with only 12% opposed.

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.