Month: February 2023

Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor in NSW

Indications from two pollsters of a tightening contest in New South Wales.

The Australian brings us Newspoll voting intention results for New South Wales showing Labor’s lead at 52-48, which is notably narrower than other state polling of the last few months. The last state voting intention poll from Newspoll, in September, had it at 54-46. The primary votes are Coalition 37% (up two), Labor 36% (down four) and Greens 12% (steady). Dominic Perrottet is up three on approval to 50% and steady on on disapproval at 41%, while Chris Minns is down one to 41% and up six to 33%. Perrottet’s lead as preferred premier has widened from 39-35 to 43-33. The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1014.

It so happens that a Roy Morgan poll this week also had it at 52-48, although this release continues the pollster’s odd habit of releasing its results long after the survey period, which in this case was in January. The primary votes were Coalition 35% (up one-and-a-half from December), Labor 32.5% (down one), Greens 9.5% (down two-and-a-half) and One Nation 6.5% (up two). The poll had a sample of 1147, with the precise survey dates not provided.

Stay tuned for my overdue state election guide, which will hopefully be along some time this week.

UPDATE (Freshwater Strategy): Now a Freshwater Strategy poll for the Financial Review has a slight narrowing in Labor’s two-party lead since its last poll in October, from 54-46 to 53-47. Both major parties are up two on the primary vote, Labor to 39% and the Coalition to 37%, with the Greens down one to 10% and independents steady on 5%. The poll records a striking turn in Dominic Perrottet’s on preferred premier, on which he now leads 46-34 after trailing 41-38 last time. There was apparently a further set of questions in which respondents were asked if they were considering voting for or could be persuaded to vote for the various political players in turn, which “showed the Liberals lifting 7 points, Labor steady and a stark collapse in support for Climate 200, which dropped 8 points to 31 per cent”. As usual, issue salience questions found the cost of living head and shoulders above other concerns. The poll was conducted Thursday to Saturday from a sample of 1247.

Polls: Resolve Strategic and Essential Research (open thread)

Two new polls find Labor still with a commanding lead, but with Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings coming off their earlier peak.

The Age/Herald brings the monthly Resolve Strategic poll of federal voting intention, which has Labor down two on the primary vote to 40%, the Coalition up two to 31%, the Greens down one to 10% and One Nation down one to 5%. No two-party preferred is reported, but this would pan out to around 58-42 based on preference flows from last year, in from around 60-40 last time. Anthony Albanese’s approval rating (very good plus good) is down four on last month to 56%, with disapproval (very poor plus poor) up five to 30%; Peter Dutton is up one to 29% and down one to 45%; and Anthony Albanese’s lead over Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister is 55-23, in from 55-20. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1604. Further results published today including a finding that 50% expect economic conditions to worsen over the coming year, compared with 18% for improvement and 24% for staying the same.

The fortnightly Essential Research poll, which does not exclude undecided from its voting intention numbers, has Labor at 33% and the Coalition at 30% on the primary vote, both unchanged on a fortnight ago. The Greens are down three from an anomalous peak last time to 14% and One Nation are steady on 6%, with undecided at 8%. The 2PP+ measure had Labor down four to 51%, the Coalition up two to 42% and undecided up three to 8%. As noted in the previous post, Anthony Albanese’s approval is down two on a month ago to 53%, and his disapproval is up three to 34%. The full report, featuring questions on economic issues and interest rate rises, is here.

The Victorian Liberal Party’s administrative committee has as expected endorsed barrister Roshena Campbell as its candidate for the April 1 Aston by-election. Paul Sakkal of The Age reports Campbell received 13 votes, with former state upper house MP Cathrine Burnett-Wake and oncologist Ranjana Srivastava on three each.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 41, Coalition 30, Greens 13 in Victoria

A Victorian state poll suggests Labor has gained further ground after its sweeping win in November.

The Age has the first Victorian state poll since the November 25 election, which shows Labor on 41% of the primary vote (36.7% at the election), the Coalition on 30% (34.5%) and the Greens on 13% (11.5%). No two-party preferred is provided, but this would pan out to at least 59-41 in favour of Labor based on preference flows in November. The poll also finds Daniel Andrews leading new Liberal leader John Pesutto by 50-26 as preferred premier. The poll was conducted from a sample of 825 “in late January and mid-February”, suggesting this follows the pollster’s usual practice of combining samples from two monthly polls to produce state voting results for Victoria and New South Wales in alternating months. This suggests the pollster should be good for a poll of federal voting intention very shortly.

Essential Research poll and Aston by-election latest (open thread)

A slow decline in Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings continues, as a date of April 1 is set for the Aston by-election.

The Guardian has a report on the fortnightly Essential Research poll, from which I assume we will get voting intention numbers later today. The fact that The Age has a Resolve Strategic state poll from Victoria suggests a federal poll from that outfit should be with us shortly. For now, I can relate that the Essential poll has Anthony Albanese at 53% approval (down two on a month ago) and 34% disapproval (up three). The poll also finds 69% believe the Reserve Bank has overreacted with its interest rate increases, and 71% believe the federal government is largely or partly culpable, though it’s unclear if the question specified the current government. An even 29% believe Labor or the Coalition would do a better job managing interest rates, with 42% opting for no difference. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1044.

In other news, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Milton Dick, announced yesterday that the Aston by-election will be held on the inauspicious date of April 1, which is one week after the New South Wales state election (and two after the Arafura by-election in the Northern Territory). Labor has announced that it will again field its candidate from last year’s federal election, Mary Doyle, a finance worker and former organiser for the National Tertiary Education Union, who was the only candidate to nominate. The Age reports the Liberals are taking the preselection out of the hands of their unreliable rank-and-file, which presumably shortens the odds on barrister Roshena Campbell and lengthens them on Emanuele Cicchiello, deputy prinicipal of Lighthouse Christian College.

New South Wales election minus five weeks

Labor chooses a candidate for its safe seat of Cabramatta, as unanticipated vacancies emerge for the Liberals in the upper house and Labor in the seat of Monaro.

Three recent developments on the preselection and disendorsement front as the official campaign period comes into view:

• Canley Heights lawyer Tri Vo will be Labor’s candidate for Cabramatta, which will be vacated at the election with the retirement of Nick Lalich. Vo won a preselection vote on Saturday from a field that included Tu Le, whose earlier bid for the federal seat of Fowler was thwarted when the party’s national executive installed the ultimately unsuccessful Kristina Keneally. Alexi Demetriadi of the Daily Telegraph reports Vo won on the first round with 39 votes out of 61, against ten votes for Adrian Wong, staffer to former federal MP Chris Hayes, and six each for Le and Kate Hoang, state president of the Vietnamese Community in Australia.

• Liberal MLC Peter Poulos has been dropped from the party’s ticket after admitting to sharing nude images of party colleague Robyn Preston, who posed for Penthouse magazine in the 1980s. The incident occurred while Poulos was working as a political staffer before entering parliament in 2021. Michael Koziol of the Sydney Morning Herald reports the two leading to candidates to replace him on the ticket are incumbents who had hitherto been denied preselection: Melanie Gibbons, who lost the ballot for her existing seat of Holsworthy to Tina Ayyad, and Shayne Mallard, who was among those cast aside when the party addressed its gender equity issue by making room for three women to the ticket. Both share Poulos’s factional alignment with the moderates.

• Former NRL player Terry Campese announced his withdrawal as Labor’s candidate for Monaro on Friday, making unspecific complaints about media intrusiveness. This presumably referred to reports that he was “filmed at a raunchy sex-themed party dressed as a scantily clad police officer”, as reported by the Daily Telegraph.

US debt limit, UK local and NZ elections

Democrats’ failure to pass a debt limit increase before Congress changed could bite them. Labour way ahead in the UK and gains some ground in NZ after Jacinda Ardern’s resignation.

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 debt limit is a legislative limit on the total amount of debt the US government can incur. As the US keeps running deficits, the debt keeps rising. Congress could deal with this issue permanently by either removing the debt limit, or increasing it to an arbitrarily high number. But instead Congress has only raised the debt limit enough to give about one year’s grace before it needs to be raised again. The last time the debt limit was raised was in December 2021.

The US already hit the debit limit on January 19, but the Treasury is taking extraordinary measures to delay a default; these measures are expected to last until June. While the US has never defaulted, there have been previous debt limit crises in 2011 and 2013.

The key reason for the 2011 and 2013 crises was divided government; Democrat Barack Obama was president, but Republicans held the House of Representatives. This situation applies now, with President Joe Biden, but Republicans holding the House. Republicans have attempted to use the debt limit to demand spending cuts.

Republicans only hold a 222-212 House majority, and it took 15 rounds of voting for Republican Kevin McCarthy to be elected House Speaker in early January. But right-wing Republicans extracted concessions from McCarthy, and the Speaker decides what comes to the floor. To keep the right happy, McCarthy is likely to deny a vote on any debt ceiling increase that does not include major spending cuts, and such cuts would be unacceptable to Democrats.

Democrats had unified control of the presidency, House and Senate until January 3 when the new House commenced. But they made no serious attempt to raise the debt limit, and avert a crisis until after the 2024 presidential election. If there is a default, the failure to raise the debt limit will come back to bite Democrats, the US generally and the world.

It currently appears unlikely that Biden will face a serious primary challenge for the Democratic nomination. Biden will be almost 82 by the November 2024 presidential election, and has had a disapproval rating over 50% in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate since October 2021.

UK Labour retains huge poll lead with local elections in May

Over 100 days since Rishi Sunak became British PM, Labour has about a 20-point lead over the Conservatives, with Labour in the high 40s, the Conservatives in the mid to high 20s, the Liberal Democrats at 7-10%, the Greens at 4-6% and the far-right Reform at 3-8%. On February 9, Labour easily retained West Lancashire at a by-election by 62.3% to 25.4% over the Conservatives (52.1-36.3 at the 2019 general election).

Local government elections will be held in England on May 4 and Northern Ireland on May 18. Most of the English seats up were last contested in 2019, at which Labour and the Conservatives tied on 28% each with 19% for the Lib Dems. If Labour wins these council elections by the crushing margin polls currently give them, there would be a huge number of Conservative losses, and Sunak would be under pressure, with the Conservatives perhaps moving back to former PM Boris Johnson. The next UK general election is not due until late 2024.

Nicola Sturgeon resigned as leader of the Scottish National Party on Wednesday. A weaker SNP would make it easier for Labour to win seats in Scotland, giving them a better chance to win an overall Commons majority if their current lead shrinks to single digits.

NZ Labour improves, but National + ACT still ahead

The New Zealand election is in October, with proportional representation used with a 5% threshold unless a party wins a single-member seat. Chris Hipkins replaced Jacinda Ardern as Labour leader and PM on January 22. Polls taken since this change have shown Labour narrowly ahead of National or tied, but the right-wing ACT is ahead of the Greens. So the combined vote for National and ACT is still ahead of that for Labour and Greens.

Recent election results

In the January 27-29 Czech presidential runoff, the pro-Western Pavel defeated the populist Babis by a 58.3-41.7 margin. At the February 12 Cypriot presidential runoff, the centre-left and nationalist candidate defeated the far-left candidate by a 52.0-48.0 margin after the conservative candidate was eliminated in the first round.

Miscellany: federal Liberal preselections and new Senate numbers (open thread)

Liberal contenders jockey to succeed the late Jim Molan in the Senate and contest the forthcoming by-election for the Melbourne seat of Aston.

We’re not likely to see anything on the polling front this week, but there is other electoral news to relate following recent parliamentary vacancies and party defections:

• The Sydney Morning Herald reports preselection nominees to fill the late Jim Molan’s New South Wales Liberal Senate vacancy are likely to include Andrew Constance, former state minister and unsuccessful candidate for Gilmore, and Fiona Scott, who held the lower house seat of Lindsay from 2013 to 2016, together with reported front-runner Dallas McInerney, chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW. Constance and Scott are associated with the moderation faction, while McInerney is a conservative. Mary-Lou Jarvis, lawyer and Woollahra councillor, has also written to senior party figures staking her claim as a qualified woman and the third candidate on the ticket at last year’s election, while also criticising the party’s apparent intention to leave the position vacant until after the state election on March 25.

• The Australian reports the Liberal hierarchy’s hopes of fielding a female candidate for the Aston by-election stand to be complicated by the entry into the field of Emanuele Cicchiello, who is rated a strong chance by sources close to eastern suburbs conservative powerbroker and Deakin MP Michael Sukkar. However, other unidentified sources, “including some with strong Right faction allegiances”, rubbished the notion. Cicchiello is deputy prinicipal of Lighthouse Christian College, a former mayor of Knox and contestant for the seat of Bruce in 2013 and numerous preselections since. All other noted contenders have been women with the exception of Andrew Asten, a former staffer to Alan Tudge, who has since ruled himself out. Anthony Galloway of the Age/Herald reports the matter could be determined by a plebisicite of local members, which have lately proved resistant to female candidates, if the by-election is set for a date that allows sufficient time.

• Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe’s resignation from the Greens last week marked the first change to party representation in parliament since the election, with the Senate numbers now at Coalition 32, Labor 26, Greens 11, One Nation two, Jacqui Lambie Network two, United Australia Party one and two independents, namely Thorpe and David Pocock. This leaves the government needing two extra votes when the Greens are on board and the Coalition are not, where formerly it needed only one. Thorpe was elected to a six-year term at the election last May, which will extend to the middle of 2028.

Aston by-election preliminaries

Following Alan Tudge’s retirement announcement yesterday, some early preselection talk and historical context for the looming federal by-election for Aston.

Yesterday’s announcement by former cabinet minister Alan Tudge of his resignation brings into view the first by-election of the Albanese government, for the highly marginal Melbourne seat of Aston. The date is yet to be determined, but will presumably be set later this month or early the next for a date in April or May. Tudge held on by 2.8% last year in the face of a 7.3% swing, part of a pattern of poor results for the Liberals in traditional areas of strength for the party in the city’s eastern suburbs that was repeated at the state election in November, together with a swing the other way in Labor strongholds in the west and north.

Aston has a place in by-election folklore as the seat that signposted the Howard government’s return to electoral health in April 2001, when Tudge’s predecessor Chris Pearce defended a 4.2% margin against a 3.7% swing. Labor held the seat for the first two terms after its creation in 1984, but it became progressively stronger for the Liberals after the Victorian landslip that cost Labor nine seats in the state in 1990. Pearce’s retirement in 2010 raised Labor hopes that the seat might provide a gain to balance expected losses in New South Wales and Queensland, but Tudge held out against a 3.3% swing by 1.8% and increased his margin at each of the next three elections.

My results page for the seat for the federal election can be viewed here, and features an interactive booth results map that opens if you click the “activate” button at the bottom of the page. As can be seen, Labor won most of the booths around Boronia in the electorate’s north-east, but not be enough to balance the Liberals’ dominance in Wantirna to the west and Rowville in the south.

Tudge’s announcement was inevitably met with a flurry of speculation as to who might run for the Liberals, with suggestions that Josh Frydenberg might use the seat as a vehicle for a comeback soon shot down. There has been no mention that I’m aware of as to who Labor might endorse, but The Australian reports the unsurprising news that senior Liberals want a “high-profile female candidate”, which they will presumably secure without recourse to a problematic rank-and-file preselection, which are rarely held for by-elections.

Samantha Maiden of news.com.au wrote on Twitter yesterday that the Liberal front-runner was Roshena Campbell, barrister, Melbourne councillor and wife of News Corp journalist James Campbell, but The Australian’s report names a number of other contenders: Cathrine Burnett-Wake, who served in the state’s Legislative Council last year but failed to win preselection for the November election; Sharn Coombes, a criminal barrister; Andrew Asten, a former staffer to Tudge; and Irene Ling, director of a property investment company.

Given the state of the polls, the by-election presents Labor with a seemingly golden opportunity to bag a handy seventy-eighth seat, and the Liberals with the corresponding danger of a morale-sapping loss. However, Antony Green offered some counterpoints to David Crowe of The Age, noting the Liberal vote was suppressed in the seat by the low profile kept by Tudge during the election campaign as a result of his ministerial difficulties and campaign resources being concentrated elsewhere. I would also add that history is against Labor to the extent that it has tended to have disappointing results in by-elections held the year after taking office:

• The Parramatta by-election of 22 September 1973 followed a bumpy opening year for the Whitlam government, so its failure to poach the seat was perhaps not a surprise. Nonetheless, the 7% swing to the Liberals was presumably in excess of expectations. The winning candidate was a young Philip Ruddock, later to move to the safer seats of Dundas and Berowra and to achieve a high profile as the Howard government’s Immigration Minister.

• Despite the stratospheric popularity of Bob Hawke during his first year as Prime Minister, Labor failed to make ground in any of the six by-elections held in that time, suffering a particularly disappointing failure in the marginal Brisbane seat of Moreton, where the Liberals were defending a margin of 1.6%.

• Labor was generally thought to have a shot in Gippsland when Peter McGuaran vacated it in the wake of the Howard government’s defeat, but a dominant position in opinion polls again failed to translate at a by-election, with Darren Chester retaining the seat for the Nationals with a surprisingly robust swing of 6.1%.

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