Budget polling avalanche: phase three (open thread)

A new federal poll of voting intention in New South Wales, yet more budget polling, and a more detailed look at what’s come through over the past few days.

Before we proceed with squeezing some last juice out of the post-budget polling, note that there are two other fresh posts below this one: one a guess post from Adrian Beaumont on Canada and the United States, the other a summary of recent state polling from New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.

Part of the latter is a new DemosAU poll from New South Wales encompassing federal as well as state voting intention. The federal voting intention numbers have the Coalition leading 51-49, compared with 51.4-48.6 to Labor at the 2022 election, from primary votes of Labor 30% (33.4% in 2022), Coalition 38% (36.5%), Greens 12% (10.0%) and One Nation 9% (4.9%). The poll also finds Anthony Albanese leading Peter Dutton 39-38 on preferred prime minister, and 31% holding that Australia is headed in the right direction compared with 52% for the contrary view. The poll was conducted last Thursday to Saturday from a sample of 1013.

The full results from the Essential Research poll included results on the budget, including a finding that less attention was paid to it than the last two, with 36% saying they paid a lot of attention (down four on last year and nine on the year before) and 15% that they had paid no attention (up four on last year and three on the year before). Forty-one per cent felt the budget would be good for the well off (down five on last year and unchanged on the year before) and 27% felt it would be good for those on lower incomes (down three last year and fourteen on an unusual result the year before). A question on the Trump administration’s tariffs finds 37% holding that Australia should look for new trade relationships, 29% that retaliatory tariffs should be imposed, and 35% that the priority should be to remain on good terms with the US and seek exemptions.

Now for a closer look at Newspoll’s budget responses, which maintain a consistent set of such questions that the pollster in its various incarnations has been posing after each budget since 1988, encompassing 39 budgets overall. The minus 10 rating for last week’s budget in terms of its impact on the economy was the fourth worst result yet recorded, surpassed only by three successive Hawke-Keating government budgets in 1991, 1992 and 1993 (the latter was in a league of its own at minus 42, the budget in question being remembered for its breach of Paul Keating’s “L-A-W” tax cuts promise). The minus 19 rating on impact on personal situation, by contrast, rates around the middle of the field.

The chart below records how each budget scored on the two measures. While respondents invariably score budgets more favourably on economic than personal impact (last year’s two-point differential was the closest any had yet come to breaking the mould), the trendline points to a tendency for budgets to be generally perceived either as good or bad, reflected in relatively strong or weak results for both measures. Last week’s budget is the one marked in red – its placement below the trendline indicates that, as mediocre budgets go, respondents felt this one relatively better for themselves than for the economy.

Lest anyone overestimate the electoral significance of this result, the best result of plus 48 was at the budget preceding the defeat of the Howard government in 2007. Perhaps more to the point, the minus 11 rating on the question of whether the Coalition would have done better is part of the course for a Labor budget (overall average minus 10.4%) – consistent with the fact that the Coalition generally does better on economic management polling, their budgets tend to do better on this question than Labor’s (average of minus 17.3%, the overall overage being minus 14.2%). Another reason to doubt the budget’s electoral impact is the one just noted by Essential Research – that voters were unusually disinterested on this occasion, which does not factor in to Newspoll’s calculations.

Finally, some more on YouGov’s MRP poll, which didn’t get the attention it warranted amid the Sunday polling avalanche. Even more so than the first wave in late January and early February, the second wave from March was distinctive in suggesting that Labor is actually holding up well in Victoria – so much so that the lineball Liberal-held seat of Deakin is rated “toss-up Labor”, while the two seats rated more likely than not to be Liberal gains in the first wave, Chisholm and Deakin and now rated “lean Labor”. Even with five seats in the state now back in the their column, New South Wales continues to be rated the most troublesome state for Labor, being home to all four of the seats likely to be lost.

Since the post-stratification approach leans heavily on demographic variables in estimating seat-level results, I have made an effort to identify the underlying changes in the survey that have yielded the movement from the first wave to the second, which ranges from five points towards Labor (in Bean and Canning) to three points towards the Liberals (in Watson). This has been done through a linear regression analysis that uses the change in Coalition two-party preferred from one wave to the next as the dependent variable, with predictor variables of state/territory, AEC seat classification (inner metropolitan, outer metropolitan, provincial or rural) and four census demographic variables yielded through trial and error.

The demographic variables found to be highly significant (as indicated by the three asterisks) are Index of Relative Socioeconomic Advantage and Disadvantage, which is an Australian Bureau of Statistics measure of general affluence that avoids the pitfalls of income-based measures; the percentage of the population aged 55 and over; the percentage of the 18-plus population with trade certificates; and the percentage who primarily speak a Chinese language at home. The negative coefficients indicate that electorates scoring high on these measures tended to move most strongly to Labor from the first wave to the second. Conversely, the state/territory and AEC region classification variables prove not to be too illuminating. Keep in mind that what’s being measured here is change between wave one and wave two, not swing since 2022 – a potential subject for a future post.

State polling: NSW, Victoria and Queensland

State Labor governments afloat in New South Wales and sinking in Victoria, while a new conservative government enjoys its honeymoon in Queensland.

Four recent state poll results from the three largest states:

• DemosAU had been a handy supplier of state-level polling lately, its latest entry being from New South Wales, where Labor is credited with a two-party lead of 54-46. This compares with 54.3-45.7 at the March 2023 election, and is a happier set of numbers for the Minns government than most of its mid-term polling. Labor is nonetheless only 33% of the primary vote, compared with 37.0% at the election, but the benefit has been yielded by the Greens, up from 9.7% to 14%, with the Coalition down from 35.4% to 34% and others on 19%. Chris Minns holds a 42-24 lead over Mark Speakman as preferred premier. The poll was conducted last Thursday to Saturday from a sample of 1013.

• The bi-monthly Resolve Strategic Victorian state poll, combining 1000 responses from the last two monthly national polls, is only slightly better for Labor than a diabolical result last time: they are up two points to 24%, with the Coalition down one to 41% and the Greens up one to 14%. Two-party preferred gets hard to estimate with the non-major party vote at 35%, but I make the Coalition’s lead to be between 53-47 and 56-44. It will likely be the lead story on The Age website come morning, but in any case you can see the numbers through its Resolve Political Monitor feature (click on “VIC” near the top of the page). Demos AU also had a poll last week for Victoria, conducted March 17 to 21 from a sample of 1006, which had the Coalition leading 52-48 on two-party preferred from primary votes of Labor 25%, Coalition 39%, Greens 15% and others 21%. The November 2022 election result was 54.8-45.2 to Labor, from primary votes of Labor 36.7%, Coalition 34.5% and Greens 11.5%. Brad Battin led Jacinta Allan for preferred premier in both polls, by 36-23 in Resolve Strategic’s case (out from 36-27 last time) and 43-30 in DemosAU’s. DemosAU found 60% holding that the state was headed in the wrong direction, compared with 25% for the right direction.

• As reported in the Courier-Mail on Monday, RedBridge Group has the first Queensland state poll since the October election, recording the new Liberal National Party government with a lead of 56.5-43.5, from primary votes are LNP 44%, Labor 27%, Greens 12% and One Nation 10%. The result at the election in October was 53.8-46.2 in favour of the LNP from primary votes of LNP 41.5%, Labor 32.6%, Greens 9.9% and One Nation 8.0%. David Crisafulli is rated favourably by 46%, neutrally by 25% and negatively by 17%, while Steven Miles is at 26%, 22% and 39%. The poll was conducted March 17 to 25 from a sample of 1507.

In other Queensland news, the first signs of progress on a state redistribution that must be held at some point this year, with the Courier-Mail reporting Attorney-General Deb Frecklington has floated three names for the redistribution commission: two uncontroversial, the other John Sosso, who has held senior public service positions under various conservative governments, presently serving under Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie as director-general of the Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning.

Canadian election and US special elections

Poll movement to the Liberals continues in Canada, putting them well over a majority of seats. Also covered: two US federal special elections in safe Republican seats.

Live Commentary

4:36pm Crawford wins by 55.1-44.9 in the Wisconsin state supreme court election with nearly all votes counted. That’s an 11-point swing to the left from the Trump margin in Wisconsin in 2024. The left retains its 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin state supreme court.

12:29pm With 13% reporting in Wisconsin, the left-wing Crawford leads the right-wing Schimel by 51-49 for the supreme court election. I’ll be going out shortly.

11:52am Near-final results are 56.7-42.7 to the Rep in Fl-6, a 14.0-pt margin, and 57.0-42.2 to the Rep in Fl-1, a 14.8-pt margin.

11:28am With 89% counted in Fl-1, the Rep leads by 55.4-43.8. The Reps will win both Fl-1 and Fl-6 by about 13 points, down from Trump’s 37-point margin in 2024 in Fl-1 and 30 points in Fl-6. So big swings to the Dems, but not enough to seriously threaten the Rep holds of these seats. Reps extend their House seat lead to 220-213.

11:13am With all counties in Fl-1 reporting their early votes, the Rep leads by 49.8-49.4, and this lead will grow when election day votes come in.

11:07am The Dem takes a likely very brief 51-48 lead after a populous county’s early vote reported.

11:03am In Florida’s first, the Rep starts out with a 53-46 lead with 10% in. These are early votes, and the Reps did much better on election day.

10:47am Trump will announce new tariffs at 7am AEDT Thursday, so they won’t be imposed today.

10:30am With 72% counted including votes from all counties in this district, the Rep leads by 53.7-45.6, and will win by at least a double digit margin.

10:14am With 49% counted, the Rep takes the lead by 50.6-48.6, and is very likely to win once all votes are counted.

10:03am With 24% reporting in Fl 6, the Dem leads by 53-45. But these are just early votes, and don’t yet account for the Rep election day surge.

9:53am New York Times results are here. While Reps performed weaker than expected in early voting, they’ve had a massive surge on election day in the Florida specials that should get their candidates home easily. This is just party registration data, not votes for candidates.

9:45am Wednesday The addition of polls released Monday has pushed the Liberals up to a 43.2-37.4 vote lead over the Conservatives in the CBC Poll Tracker and a 203-116 seat lead.

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.

The Canadian federal election will be held on April 28, with first past the post used to elect the 343 MPs; 172 seats are required for a majority. The CBC Poll Tracker was updated Monday, and it gives the governing centre-left Liberals 42.0% of the vote (up 4.5 since my previous Canadian article on March 24), the Conservatives 37.5% (up 0.4), the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) 9.1% (down 2.5), the separatist left-wing Quebec Bloc (BQ) 5.5% (down 0.9) (24.6% in Quebec), the Greens 2.8% (down 1.0) and the far-right People’s 2.2% (steady).

Seat point estimates are 197 Liberals (up 23 since my March 24 article), 123 Conservatives (down 11), 19 BQ (down seven), three NDP (down four) and one Green (down one). The Tracker now gives the Liberals an 80% chance of a majority if the election were held now, up from 50% previously. The consolidation of the left-wing vote behind the Liberals is hurting the smaller left-wing parties. The NDP won 25 of the then 338 seats at the 2021 election, but could be wiped out at this election.

This has been a stunning comeback for the Liberals, who were 24 points behind the Conservatives in the Tracker in early January, with the Conservatives winning well over 200 seats. Mark Carney’s replacement of Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and PM has lifted the Liberals, but I believe Donald Trump is most responsible for the Liberals’ revival. There are still four weeks until the election, so the polls could still turn back in the Conservatives’ favour. But the Liberals are currently ahead.

Trump is set to impose more tariffs at 3pm AEDT Wednesday, and these tariffs could further assist the Liberals in Canada and Labor in Australia. In Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Trump’s net approval is -2.5, slightly down from -2.1 in my previous article.

US federal special elections

Polls close for US federal House special elections (by-elections in Australia) at 10am AEDT Wednesday in Florida’s sixth and 11am in Florida’s first. Florida counts its votes fast. Both seats are safe Republican, with Trump beating Kamala Harris by 30 points in the sixth and 37 in the first according to this spreadsheet of 2024 presidential results by Congressional District. Two polls in the sixth average out to a near-tie between the Democratic and Republican candidates; these polls are difficult to believe.

Republicans hold a 218-213 House majority, so winning these two seats will make it 220-213. Two Democratic members have died recently; they held Arizona’s seventh (Harris by 22) and Texas’ 18th (Harris by 40). The special in Arizona won’t occur until September, while the Texan special has not yet been scheduled. Trump had nominated Elise Stefanik, Republican member for New York’s 21st (Trump by 21), to be his UN ambassador, but he withdrew this nomination on Thursday as Republicans were worried about this seat.

G. Elliott Morris, who used to run FiveThirtyEight before it was axed, said that 14 state special elections have been held so far this year. On average, Democrats are performing ten points better than the Trump vs Harris presidential margin in those same districts.

The swing to Democrats in in line with what occurred in state special elections in 2017, the first year of Trump’s first term. Morris said this does not necessarily reflect a swing in the general electorate towards Democrats, but just that Democrats do well with high-engagement voters, who are most likely to vote in low-turnout specials.

As well as the specials, there will be a Wisconsin state supreme court election, with polls closing at 12pm AEDT Wednesday. While court elections in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, Schimel is the right-wing candidate, and is being heavily backed by Elon Musk. Crawford is the left-wing candidate, and the left currently has a 4-3 court majority, with this seat a left defence. Republican-aligned polls have Crawford ahead. Wisconsin voted for Trump by 0.9 points. I will be out on Wednesday afternoon.

Budget polling avalanche: phase two (open thread)

Essential Research and Roy Morgan enter the fray with voting intention numbers, while further numbers from Resolve Strategic calibrate growing alarm about the Trump administration.

Following on from the Sunday night polling avalanche, the two pollsters that usually report at this time: the weekly Roy Morgan and the fortnightly Essential Research. Courtesy of The Guardian, Essential Research has Labor up a point to 30%, the Coalition down one to 34% and the Greens steady on 12%, with undecided at 5%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor poking its nose in front, up one to 48% with the Coalition steady at 47% and the remainder undecided, without fundamentally upsetting a fine balance that has prevailed in this series for nearly a year.

A semi-regular question on leadership attributes records improvements for Anthony Albanese since February, sustantially so for “out of touch with ordinary people” (down six to 57%), and marginally for decisiveness (up one to 44%) and trustworthiness (up two to 44%). Peter Dutton is up two on out-of-touch to 57%, down three on decisive to 53%, and down one on trustworthy to 41%. In defiance of broadly improving signs for the government, the regular question on national mood finds only 32% rating the country as headed in the right direction, down three on a fortnight ago, with the contrary view up four to 52%. The sample for the poll was 1100 – field work dates and other results will have to wait for the publication of the full report later today.

Roy Morgan’s weekly federal poll series maintains its recent run of strong results for Labor, who lead 53-47 on the headline respondent-allocated two-party measure and 53.5-46.5 based on 2022 election preference flows. The primary votes are Labor 32% (down half), Coalition 35% (down half), Greens 13% (up half) and One Nation 5.5% (up one-and-a-half). The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1377.

Nine Newspapers also has further results from yesterday’s Resolve Strategic poll showing 60% now believe Donald Trump’s election win has been bad for Australia, up from 40% immediately after his election in November, with only 15% rating it good, down from 29%. Numerous further questions point to a weakening of confidence in the alliance: 34% agreed that Australia should pause or withdraw from the nuclear submarines deal, with 25% disagreeing; 42% agreed Australia should rethink plans to host US nuclear submarines at Australian basis, with 24% disagreeing; 50% said Australia should avoid taking sides in a conflict between the US and China, with 18% disagreeing; 46% felt Australia should retaliate against US tariffs, with 18% disagreeing. Only 35% were clear that China (on 31%) and Russia (on 4%) posed the greater threat to Australia: 17% rated the United States the bigger threat, and 38% opted for “all equally”.

Budget polling avalanche: phase one (open thread)

Newspoll, Resolve Strategic and a massive YouGov MRP exercise strengthen the impression of an improving position for Labor going into the campaign.

Two big bits of polling news with presumably more to follow before the day is out (likely including Resolve Strategic from Nine Newspapers and Freshwater Strategy from the Financial Review). The Australian has treated us earlier than usual to the post-budget Newspoll, which credits Labor with a two-party lead of 51-49, a reversal of the last three results and the first Labor lead since July. The primary votes are Labor 33% (up one), Coalition 37% (down two), Greens 12% (steady) and One Nation 6% (down one). Anthony Albanese is up two points on approval to 43% and down one on disapproval to 52%. Exact numbers are not provided for Peter Dutton, but we are told his net rating is minus 18, down from minus 14 (UPDATE: down two on approval to 37% and up two on disapproval to 55%), and that Albanese now holds a lead of 11 points on preferred prime minister, out from nine points (UPDATE: from 47-38 to 49-38). Despite Labor’s improved position, responses to the budget are not positive: 16% expect it will leave them better off and 35% worse off; 22% rate it good for the economy and 32% bad; but 38% felt the Coalition would have done better compared with 47% who felt otherwise. The poll was conducted Thursday to Saturday from a sample of 1249.

YouGov gets the ball rolling on the campaign with its second massive multi-level regression and post-stratification polling exercise, following an earlier effort from late January and early February. This one was conducted from February 27 to March 26 from a sample of no less than 38,629, providing it with a depth of data allowing for estimated results for all 150 seats, based on assumptions that a seat’s voting behaviour can be at least party predicted by its demography.

In common with the general tenor of recent polling, it finds an improvement in Labor’s position: its median seat prediction now has Labor on 75 seats, compared with 66 in the previous MRP and 76 at the 2022 election; the Coalition on 60, compared with with 73 and 58; the Greens on two, compared with one and four; and 13 others (Bob Katter and Rebekha Sharkie plus sundry independents). The projection suggests, with greater or lesser confidence, that the Liberals will gain Bennelong, Gilmore, Werriwa, Robertson and Lyons from Labor (together with Labor’s by-election gain of Aston), but lose Deakin; that Labor will gain Brisbane and Griffith from the Greens (though not Ryan); and that teal independents will gain Cowper and Wannon, together with the return of all non-Greens cross-benchers (with the usual caveat that the record of such exercises traditionally do less well at predicting independent and minor party results). No longer projected as likely Labor losses are Bullwinkel, Tangney, Boothby, Chisholm, Hunter, Shortland, Paterson, Macquarie, McEwen and Eden-Monaro.

Outside of a second high reading for One Nation, its national voting intention numbers are well in line with the tenor of recent polling in having Labor on 29.8% (up 0.7% from the February MRP), the Coalition on 35.5% (down 1.9%), the Greens on 13.2% (up 0.5%), One Nation 9.3% (down 0.2%), independents on 8.3% and others on 3.9%, with a two-party preferred estimate of 50.2-49.8 in favour of Labor (51.1-48.9 to the Coalition last time).

UPDATE (Resolve Strategic): Barely had I hit “publish” on this post before Nine Newspapers followed suit with the Resolve Strategic poll, conducted Wednesday to Sunday from an unusually large sample of 3237. After a distinctly poor result for Labor a month ago, when they trailed 55-45 on a two-party preferred measure using respondent-allocated preferences, this one records a two-party tie from primary votes of Labor 29% (up four), Coalition 37% (down two), Greens 13% (steady) and One Nation 7% (down two). The report notes a two-party preferred measure using preferences from 2022 would have Labor ahead 51-49. The changes on leaders’ ratings are particularly dramatic: Anthony Albanese’s combined good and very good rating is up five to 39%, while poor and very poor is down seven to 49%; Peter Dutton is respectively down eight to 37% and up seven to 47%; and Dutton’s 39-35 lead as preferred prime minister becomes an Albanese lead 42-33.

We are also told that 28% felt last week’s budget would be good for them financially; that Treasurer Jim Chalmers recorded a net approval rating of plus six, while Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor was on minus six; and that Dutton was favoured over Albanese as best to handle Donald Trump by 31% to 20%, though that may have been a loaded compliment for some respondents. Hopefully more detail on these questions will be along later.

UPDATE 2 (Freshwater Strategy): Now the Financial Review brings us the Freshwater Strategy poll, which has the Coalition with an unchanged two-party lead of 51-49, from primary votes of Labor 32% (up one), Coalition 39% (steady) and Greens 12% (down two). The pollster has also conducted an analysis based on the result suggesting 70 seats for Labor, 67 for the Coalition and a cross bench of 13. In contrast to the other polls, it finds Peter Dutton improving on preferred prime minister, on which he now trails 46-45, in from 46-42 last time. We are also told both leaders have net approval ratings of minus 11, compared with minus 10 for Albanese and minus 11 for Dutton last time – the precise approval and disapproval ratings should be along later (UPDATE: Albanese is up one on both approval and disapproval, to 38% and 48%, while Dutton is up two to 37% and one to 47%). Twenty-one per cent felt the budget would make them better off, compared with 27% for worse off. The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday from a sample of 1059.

UPDATE 3 (BludgerTrack): All of which pushes Labor into a 50.3-49.7 lead on the BludgerTrack two-party trend, breaking a 50.0-50.0 tie before the latest batch of polls were added – albeit that I am continuing to apply preference flows from the 2022 election, which pollsters have lately been tweaking to reflect a view that they are unlikely to flow as strongly to Labor this time. A particularly striking feature of the update is a downturn in Peter Dutton’s net approval trend, which has fallen below Anthony Albanese’s for the first time since the middle of last year.

Party intelligence and late preselections (open thread)

An assembly of reportage on where the parties believe they stand, plus some late mail on preselection.

An avalanche of federal polling should start rumbling early this evening, as every significant player unloads with helpfully timed polls that would have been conducted in any cause to gauge reaction to the budget. Until then, today’s post offers some snippets of party intelligence to filter through the media, plus some candidate news of varying degrees of freshness.

James Campbell of the Herald Sun reports Liberal sources saying polling has them “in the hunt” in the north-western Melbourne seat of Gorton, where Brendan O’Connor is taking a 10.0% Labor margin into retirement, but seemingly behind in the West Gippsland seat of Monash, where Liberal-turned-independent member Russell Broadbent “is polling well enough to retain the seat with Labor and independent preferences”.

• Linda Silmalis’s The Source column in the Daily Telegraph relates a Liberal source saying their polling “could be better” in Bradfield, where Gisele Kapterian hopes to succeed the retiring Paul Fletcher in the face of a challenge from teal independent Nicolette Boele.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks round-up of Queensland political news reports data on Labor’s campaigning operation indicates it is putting its most determined efforts into Leichhardt (5179 phone calls and 1549 door-knocks last week), Blair (4533 and 1400) and Brisbane (4483 and 1406). A Labor source is quoted saying the party’s numbers have improved in Blair after early showing them to be in “real danger”, with Anthony Albanese’s intervention to protect the preselection of incumbent Shayne Neumann likely to make the difference.

Much of what follows came as news to me while I was updating the federal election guide:

• A number of former parliamentarians are making comeback attempts under new guises in the Senate. Having cycled through the United Australia Party and One Nation after his breach with the Liberal Party, former Hughes MP Craig Kelly is running for the Libertarian Party in New South Wales, at the head of a joint ticket in alliance with the vaccine-skeptic HEART party and ex-Liberal National Party Senator Gerard Rennick’s new People First party. The Legalise Cannabis candidate in Victoria is Fiona Patten, who founded the Australian Sex Party in 2009 and its successor Reason Australia in 2018, representing both in the state upper house region from 2014 to 2022. Bernie Finn, the former radio broadcaster who served on-and-off as a Liberal in state parliament from 1992 to 2022, and unsuccessfully contested the 2022 election with the Democratic Labour Party, is Family First’s lead Victorian Senate candidate. Another former Liberal parliamentarian running for Family First is Elizabeth Kikkert in the Australian Capital Territory.

• Fremantle retailer Kate Hulett, who came within 424 votes of unseating state government minister Simone McGurk in the state seat of Fremantle three weeks ago, has announced she will now run in the federal seat of Fremantle.

Hunter will be contested for One Nation by Stuart Bonds, the mining mechanic and cattle farmer who polled 21.6% as the party’s candidate in 2019. Bonds returns to the party after a less successful run for the seat as an independent in 2022, when he polled 5.7%. The seat is also being targeted by the “prime ministerial candidate” of Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots, Suellen Wrightson.

• Queensland’s Liberal National Party eventually got around to choosing David Batt, state member for Bundaberg from 2017 to 2020, as its candidate for Hinkler, which has been left vacant since Keith Pitt’s retirement in January. The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports Batt won a late February preselection ballot by a final round margin of 72-43 over over Bree Watson, chief executive of Bundaberg Fruit and Vegetable Growers and unsuccessful candidate for Bundaberg last October.

May 3 miscellany: RedBridge poll, teal seat polls and the path ahead (open thread)

As the starter’s gun is fired, one pollster finds Labor with its nose in front, while another suggests a tough battle for the two Melbourne teals.

The ball is now officially rolling on a campaign for a May 3 election, with nominations to be declared in two weeks and a not-quite-two-week early voting period starting on Tuesday, April 22. The latter reflects the interruption of Easter, extending from April 18 to 21, with Anzac Day presenting a further interruption on April 25. Some attractions to make a visit to Poll Bludger part of your daily routine during the campaign period:

• I may regret saying this, but I will at least aspire to publish posts on a daily basis, which will either break news of major polls as soon as they report, or appear overnight to summarise developments of the previous day and the contents of the morning newspapers.

• The Poll Bludger election guide, which I’ve spent much of the past week bringing up to speed, offers an overview page reviewing the electoral terrain and summarising the seats to watch, and detailed interactive guides to all 150 lower house seats and eight state and territory Senate contests,

• The BludgerTrack poll aggregate tells you as much in one glance about the state of federal polling as any sensible person needs to know, and uniquely offers regularly updated trend measures at state level.

• Come the big day and the weeks to follow, the site will offer live results reporting that will wipe the floor with all comers, as an examination of its Western Australian state equivalent should readily attest. Innovative features include a model for calculating win probabilities three ways in complex contests and a new colour-coded results map feature along the lines of that recently added for the Western Australian results.

Show-don’t-tell time:

• A new poll from RedBridge Group, conducted March 13 to 24 from a sample of 2039, has Labor leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, unchanged from the previous poll of March 3 to 11. The primary votes are Labor 34% (up two), Coalition 38% (up one), Greens 11% (down one) and others 17% (down two). The Coalition continues to do better among those who profess themselves “solid” in their choice, leading 54-46 among that group. Twenty-nine per cent felt themselves able to name something the Albanese government had done that had made their lives better (electricity rebates being most cited), compared with 54% who couldn’t; 23% reported themselves more or less in favour of tariffs, with 35% more or less opposed; and 68% registered concern about Chinese naval vessels off the coast, with 24% less or not at all concerned. The addition of the voting intention numbers to BludgerTrack has lifted its reading of the Labor primary vote by a grand total of 0.1%, and left all other indicators unchanged.

• Thursday’s Herald Sun had JWS Research polling from the two teal-held seats in Melbourne, conducted “a fortnight ago” from samples of 800 each for Australian Energy Producers. The results have Zoe Daniel trailing Liberal challenger Tim Wilson 54-46 in Goldstein, compared with her 52.9-47.1 win in 2022, with Wilson on 44% of the primary vote (40.4% in 2022) to Daniel’s 24% (34.5%), Labor on 21% (a somewhat counter-intuitive improvement on their 11.0% in 2022) and the Greens on 5% (7.8% in 2022). Monique Ryan is credited with a 51-49 lead over Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer in Kooyong, likewise compared with a 52.9-47.1 win for Ryan in 2022, from primary votes of 40% for Hamer (42.7% for Josh Frydenberg at the 2022 election) and 32% for Ryan (40.3% in 2022), with Labor on 11% (6.9%) and the Greens on 9% (6.3%). Peter Dutton was credited was leads over Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister of 51-35 in Goldstein and 40-36 in Kooyong.

• The Australian National University’s Centre for Social Policy Research has results from the second wave of a series tracking changes in attitudes ahead of the election, the first having been conducted from October 14 to 25 from a sample of 3622, this latest having run to January 29 to February 12 with a sample of 3514, 2380 of whom also participated in the first wave. On this occasion there is no straightforward reading of voting intention, but it finds confidence in the federal government fell from 52.9% in its honeymoon period to 33.7% in the latest survey. Satisfaction with democracy “remains relatively stable at 66.2%”, and there has been a general decrease in sentiments associated with populism from August 2018 to January 2025, such as a drop from 67.9% to 61.3% in the share of respondents who felt “government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves”. Nonetheless, “life satisfaction” has been on a downward trend since pre-pandemic, which has resumed since 2023 after recovering from a slump while it was on, and the percentage reporting financial difficulty stabilised in the low thirties in 2024 after a steady ascent from late 2020.

• The Tasmanian government announced earlier this week that the periodic Legislative Council elections, which this year encompass the seats of Nelson and Pembroke, would be postponed from their usual date in the first week of May to May 24, to exclude the possibility of a clash with the federal election.

Federal polls: Morgan, DemosAU Victorian results, and more (open thread)

Another strong result for Labor from Roy Morgan, another finding of 51-49 to federal Labor in Victoria, plus seat polling for Brisbane and various teal targets.

Notwithstanding yesterday’s suggestion of a pre-budget lull, poll news continues to come in at an exhausting clip:

• The weekly Roy Morgan poll maintains the series’ recently acquired form of remarkably favourable polling for Labor, who lead 53-47 on respondent-allocated preferences (in from last week’s 54.5-45.5 blowout) and 54-46 on previous election preference flows (in from 54.5-45.5). The primary votes are Labor 33.5% (up one), Coalition 35.5% (up one-and-a-half), Greens 12.5% (down one) and One Nation 4% (down one). The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1683.

• DemosAU has a poll on both federal and state voting election from Victoria, the latter of which I’ll cover when I do a post on a Resolve Strategic poll result I’m expecting next week. In common with both the Newspoll and Freshwater Strategy breakdowns, the federal result shows Labor leading 51-49, in from 54.8-45.2 at the 2022 election. The primary votes are Labor 29%, Coalition 34%, Greens 15% and One Nation 8%, compared with respective results of 32.9%, 33.1%, 13.7% and 3.8% in 2022. The poll was conducted last Monday to Friday from a sample of 1006.

• The Courier-Mail reports a uComms poll of the seat of Brisbane by Liberals Against Nuclear has Trevor Evans of the LNP on 31.2%, Greens incumbent Stephen Bates on 24.2% and Labor candidate Madonna Jarrett on 23.2%, with some of the remainder likely allocated as undecided. The poll was conducted last Thursday from a sample of 1184. Another privately conducted poll of the seat published last week had the LNP at 36.4%, Labor on 29.5% and the Greens on 18.1%. Neither is encouraging for the LNP, with the Greens competitive on the first set of numbers but not the second.

• An article by Mike Seccombe in The Saturday Paper sketchily relates encouraging polling for teal independents by Climate 200, putting Nicolette Boele ahead of the Liberals 52-48 in the Sydney seat of Bradfield; Caz Heise 53-47 ahead over Nationals incumbent Pat Conaghan in the Mid North Coast New South Wales seat of Cowper, where Conaghan won 52.3-47.7 on Heise’s first attempt in 2022; and the Liberals leading only by 51-49 in both the South West Western Australian seat of Forrest and the Mornington Peninsula seat of Flinders, which are respectively being contested by Sue Chapman and Ben Smith. We are further told that the polls have the Nationals on 39% of the primary vote in Lyne, and the LNP on 43% and 42% in the seats of Fisher on the Sunshine Coast and McPherson on the Gold Coast. Respective sample sizes of 980, 867 and 1047 are provided for the Cowper, Lyne and Bradfield polls, with the latter conducted on February 3.

Page 1 of 576
1 2 576