Newspoll: 54.5-45.5 to Labor in Victoria

Newspoll finds no sign of any campaign narrowing for Labor in its Victorian election eve poll.

The Australian reports the Victorian election eve Newspoll has Labor leading 54.5-45.5, little changed from its 54-46 result three weeks ago, but less commanding than its 57.3-42.7 result at the 2018 election. The primary votes are Labor 38% (up one, compared with 42.9% in 2018), Coalition 35% (down two, compared with 35.2%) and Greens 12% (down one, compared with 10.7%). Daniel Andrews is down five on approval to 46% and up four on disapproval to 48%, while Matthew Guy has “gone from a net approval rating of -20 three weeks ago to -25”, with exact numbers not provided. Andrews’ lead as preferred premier has narrowed from 52-33 to 51-35. The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1226.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

325 comments on “Newspoll: 54.5-45.5 to Labor in Victoria”

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  1. “Empty vessels make the most noise”

    And thus get the most attention in the media

    Rather than the 97% who did get vaccinated

    And the greater than 99% who did not protest against people’s health

  2. Trent
    I have appreciated your insightful comments here over the last couple of weeks. It was obvious from your first post that you had a good feel for the situation and knew what you were talking about. This Newspoll has now proven that you were absolutely right.

  3. Ah, but the media have got their, until now, elusive negative netstat to say that people found Andrews “divisive” after all. So the media should still be happy with something from their narrative sticking.

  4. Bystander says:
    Friday, November 25, 2022 at 10:11 pm

    Trent
    I have appreciated your insightful comments here over the last couple of weeks. It was obvious from your first post that you had a good feel for the situation and knew what you were talking about. This Newspoll has now proven that you were absolutely right.
    —————————————
    A few of us have been saying similar things about how this election was shaping up and a 3% swing against the government would be similar to the swing against Kennett in 96.

  5. I was at Labor 54-55, Coalition 26-27, Others 7-8 early last week – the unknown being Hawthorn. On these numbers, I’m thinking Labor low 50s, Coalition high 20s – low 30s, Others 7-10.

  6. If that’s the actual 2PP result tomorrow night it will be very similar to the 2006 election outcome following the Brackslide of 2002, but most likely with a significantly larger crossbench.

  7. Just wondering, to what extent do parties poll their own seats during election campaigns? And how often? I’m judging maybe they sample a ‘basket of seats’ of their own to determine how they are travelling etc – or is it too expensive to poll seats on a regular basis during a campaign.

  8. Tell us again, media, how Andrews is the hated one of the leaders.

    -2 vs – 25 net approval rating heh.

    I learned from the Shorten experience not to discount numbers like that.

  9. The hatred towards Dan Andrews is something that puzzles me, but I am in Sydney so I guess I don’t understand the mentality of some Victorians.
    The media coverage has been so one sided and hostile, it is verging on the pathological.
    Newspoll would seem to suggest a reduced Labor majority, hardly a hung parliament. Maybe it is a case of the Andrews haters making a lot of noise while the quieter majority are the 54% of Victorians who are voting Labor

  10. Interesting to see that YouGov seem to have switched to respondent-allocated preferences to calculate the TPP vote for this poll. Not necessarily anything sinister in that: a lot of the Others around this time weren’t around in 2018. But interesting nonetheless. The estimable Mr Bonham gets 55.6-44.4 by 2018 preference flows but points out that he doesn’t know what that 15 for Others is comprised of.

  11. Bystander says:
    Friday, November 25, 2022 at 10:22 pm

    Fair comment MB. Trent wasn’t the only one. But he was the one that impressed me the most.
    —————–
    Trent does a good job of analyzing the electoral landscape.

  12. News.com.au version unpaywalled

    Newspoll: Daniel Andrews on course for slim majority ahead of Victorian state election

    Daniel Andrews looks set to scrape a third term as premier of Victoria, the Newspoll on the eve of the state election shows.

    So change in narrative – just like after the federal election – how badly Labor have done to get a ‘slim’ majority, conveniently ignoring that that majority is against ‘all comers’ and the Coalition are nowhere near government.

    Say in direct contrast to Coalition in 2010 Victorian election who really did win a slim majority 45 seats to 43 Labor seats

  13. From the prior thread

    There is an email contact address appended to the “journalists” who contribute what they contribute

    What I would suggest is that, instead of reacting on sites such as this, you email the likes of Le Grand et al giving your response to the contribution directly

    What you will get is an abusive, name calling response even calling out your parentage

    Which is another win for you and you emailing your response directly to these “journalists”

    These “journalists”, from their ivory towers, do not appreciate receiving a response to their “contributions”

    It is all a one way street to them

    So go to it people – and have some fun at their expense

    NB; the likes of Smuthearse are too gutless to append their email address

    Hence the echo chamber they live in

    And just to add, Andrews is hated with a vengeance by the less than 30% of voters who are rusted on Liberals, as are all other Labor Leaders

  14. There’s been a real mismatch in the media coverage between being only able to name half a dozen Liberal pick ups and their claim the government was facing a big backlash but a word of caution is that a 3% swing is a big swing in Victorian elections.

  15. K Bonham says 55.6-44.4 on last election preferences. Newspoll have done respondent preferences.

    People may recall that at the Federal election Morgan made the opposite switch (respondent to last election), bringing their final poll closer to the pack – correctly as it turned out – without any cogent excuse, and most likely because they thought it was going to get closer to the result (correctly).

    Now, last election preferences is usually the way to go as it was at the Federal, but you can imagine that Newspoll might have got nervy about that and have made the Morgan move to herd a bit closer to Resolve…

    I’m just saying, I pinned my colours to the mast a while ago, and I’m thinking here still all the upside risk this time is on a polling error underestimating Andrews again. Resolve’s primaries strongly suggested to me they had oversampled politically engaged cookers. I don’t think Newspoll have done that, but I think they’re guilty of not trusting their own methodology as much as they ought to have.

  16. Slim majority?
    As Lester Piggott may or may not have said after one of his narrow Derby wins, it doesn’t matter how far.
    It looks like the Liberal vote has barely increased in four years, if at all.
    Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.

  17. In the long term, the size of a Labor majority, should it eventuate, will be less important than the number of seats won by independents, especially of the Teal variety. A big night for the Teals, especially if they take seats from the Liberals, will consolidate the trend from the federal election, and make it clear that the Teals are likely to be an enduring force, not just a flash in the pan.

    I can hardly believe the stupidity of the Liberals in seeking to portray the Teals as a party. In effect, that does the Teals’ marketing for them. They are in the great position of having an increasingly clear identity – in some ways clearer now than that of the Liberals – without the baggage which comes with being an organised party. There are overtones of the Tea Party in the USA, which was never a party, but was rather a relatively well-defined social movement.

    The best outcome for the Teals would be a result like the federal one: a majority ALP government not dependent on Teal votes for its survival. That will save them from the odium which fell upon the independents who supported the Gillard government, while providing a good opportunity to consolidate the Teal brand.

    If that happens, the Liberal Party will, in effect have split. But it will be a grassroots split, unlike the Labor splits over the years, which started when elected representatives left the party.

  18. Mexicanbeemer,

    I’ve also noticed that any commentary on the usual tropes that are trotted out as faithful indicators of a loss were completely ignored.

    Little mention of the state of the economy, because it’s nowhere near bad enough to ensure a loss, on the polling, because it never quite met up with their claims, with Andrews repeatedly shown to be popular and hold a high approval rating – certainly far better than any leader that lost anytime recently.

    Most wildly, for a media that have complained of a dearth of ideas for decades, now policy itself wasn’t as important as some convoluted claim that he is “arrogant”. I don’t really know how else to describe Andrews policy pushes as anything short of “visionary”, but the media and the Age in particular would rather entomb us in some kind of Baillieu-esque nightmare of paying for lots of reports and consulting lots of people to… do nothing.

  19. “Why won’t the Victorian people think the way we want them to think!!!” – Murdoch rags. They deserve the loss even more than Matthew Guy does. Their vitriolic, pathetic & embarrassing feral campaign against Daniel Andrews doesn’t deserve any victory or validation. They need to be sent yet another message (Just like they were at the federal election) that Victorians won’t buy into their bias hatred of Labor. I wan’t them to see that their 24/7 attacks are ineffective & meaningless.

  20. And there you have it! Nothing has changed. Antony Green will call it for Chairman Dan at 7.37.

    The libs and their acolytes (preppers, cookers, UAP, freedumb, homophobes first and climate change deniers) are gunna go awf!

    The press must hang their head in shame. They have forgotten their role. They are here to report. Editorials and opinions neeD to be clearly marked as such, not trotted out as news reporting.

    Surely they learned their lesson with Morrison.

    Newspoll have understated the vote.

    As a greens voter / volunteer, let me assure you, we don’t get the balance of power this election. That’s in 2026.

    Where was this arrogance allegation about Morrison, the multiple minister?

  21. Newspoll had Labor on 53.5 on the eve of the 2018, underestimating the 2pp vote by about 4 points. This means the Labor vote will be 58.5 tomorrow.

  22. The message this morning was that they (Liberals) are not detecting very much movement at all – but are hopeful of regaining a couple of the seats they lost 4 years ago

    But again on not much movement

    The concern is the loss of seats such as Kew, where they estimate they will need above 41.4% of the primary vote and the Independent less than 27.1% to stand a chance (and the Independent not finishing second)

    They are concerned

    Being “old guard” they are putting blame with Bastiaan, Sukkar, Kroger and Guy, lamenting a lack of talent and hankering for another Dick Hamer to recover their fortunes in their jewel in the crown

  23. I am surprised that no one registered “Teal” as a party name for GVT purposes, a significant number of the disengaged are likely to put a 1 there

  24. I just popped in because I thought Taylormade would have something to say about the newspoll result.

    Poor bloke, probably still getting over the critism of his idol Morrison by Justice Bell in the report of the multi-ministry affair.

  25. Daniel B @ 10.51pm

    “@Pedant, not sure if being in the minority would be what the Teals are looking for in case they want to do something like, I dunno, influence government policy?”

    Well, you can be influential even without holding the balance of power. But your modus operandi has to be a different one, based on listening to people, and coming up with reasoned arguments. Even if that doesn’t change particular policies in the short-run, my sense is that the Teals are seeking to do something different in the long run: to change the way in which politics has come to be approached in this country. The Teal phenomenon is as much as anything a revolt against the notion of the major parties as patronage networks for insiders. And it seems to be resonating with a lot of voters. (Menzies, incidentally, was emphatically of the view that people should have demonstrated their worth outside politics before seeking office. The Teals embody that ideal much more than some of the nonentities put up by the major parties.)

  26. somethinglikethat says:
    Friday, November 25, 2022 at 11:07 pm
    It appears that Sportsbet has suspended all bets for tomorrow.
    —————-++++++++++++++++++———-
    Not at all

  27. The Herald Sun continues pushing false narratives, with selective data.

    It doesn’t work. I’m not sure who reads it, but they certainly don’t pay any attention to it’s political “analysis” or opinion pieces.

    Goodbye again, Lobster Guy

  28. “Newspoll: 54.5-45.5 to Labor in Victoria”….

    Helo, heloooo… is any Hungparliamentist still around?…. No? Where have all you gone?

    Oh well, see you tomorrow…. 🙂

  29. Pedant 1036pm

    Also the Coalition preferencing the Greens may have seemed clever but it instead could come back to haunt them. Possibly gives the Greens more seats and then they start coming for Liberal city seats like the Federal Greens did in winning two off the Liberals in Brisbane.

    Lose a few rural seats to independents, and a few city seats to ‘Teals’ and a few to Greens and that is a formula for a very long stint in opposition – especially if none of those are likely to support you in minority.

    Kennett, like Campbell Newman in Queensland, seems to have really ‘poisoned the well’ for the Coalition.

  30. “Pedant says:
    Friday, November 25, 2022 at 10:36 pm
    In the long term, the size of a Labor majority, should it eventuate, will be less important than the number of seats won by independents, especially of the Teal variety.”

    I guess that the Teals are likely to do relatively well, at the expense of the Liberals…. But tomorrow night will be Labor/Andrews night!

  31. Newspoll also used respondent prefs in SA and in their recent NSW poll. They’re not herding – if they had been they would have gone down towards Resolve and Redbridge (nobody doing herding would care about where Morgan was.)

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