Resolve Strategic: Labor 42, Coalition 30, Greens 10 in Victoria

Resolve Strategic’s second Victorian state poll since the November election finds Labor with as resounding a lead as the first.

The Age has a Resolve Strategic poll on state voting intention in Victoria, which was conducted the Wednesday to Monday before last in conjunction with its recent federal poll from a full sample of 1609, and not by combining sub-samples from two monthly national polls as has been done in the past. This makes it timely enough to catch the impact of the Moira Deeming controversy for the Liberals, but not last week’s adverse IBAC report for Labor.

As it stands, the poll credits Labor with a resounding lead over the Coalition of 42% to 30% on the primary vote (compared with 41% and 30% at the previous poll in February), with the Greens on 10% (down three), independents on 12% (down one) and others on 5% (up one). This compares with results at the November election of Labor 36.7%, Coalition 34.5% and Greens 11.5%, and would pan out to nearly 60-40 on two-party preferred. Daniel Andrews records a lead of 49-28 as preferred premier, in from 50-26 in February.

An effort was made to gauge opinion on the Moira Deeming issue, but only after respondents were provided with a lengthy explanatory preamble* that is unavoidably open to criticism. Thirty-four per cent of respondents were uncommitted, leaving 23% saying she should have been expelled from parliament compared with 20% for “no action or less action”, while in the middle 9% said she should have been expelled from the Liberal Party but not parliament and 13% favoured what actually happened, namely her temporary suspension from the party.

* “Last week, a state Liberal MP, Moira Deeming, participated in a Let Women Speak rally in Melbourne at which far-right and neo-Nazi protestors separately appeared. The new Liberal leader, John Pesutto, attempted to have the MP expelled from the party, but in the end a compromise was reached where she was suspended for nine months. What would have been your preferred outcome?”

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.

39 comments on “Resolve Strategic: Labor 42, Coalition 30, Greens 10 in Victoria”

  1. My preferred outcome is for her to be completely expelled from parliament and for her to fade to irrelevance because some of her views have no place in Australian politics.

    Labor should move a motion to expel her. It might struggle in the upper house however.

  2. Blog Intro
    This makes it timely enough to catch the impact of the Moira Deeming controversy for the Liberals, but not last week’s adverse IBAC report for Labor.
    _____________________
    Adverse is an understatement. It’s the corruption that will get them in the end.
    They are currently fighting tooth and nail in the courts to keep the IBAC report into thier dealings with the UFU secret for as long as possible.
    Charged to the Victorian taxpayer of course.

  3. Taylormade says:
    Tuesday, April 25, 2023 at 6:42 am
    Blog Intro
    This makes it timely enough to catch the impact of the Moira Deeming controversy for the Liberals, but not last week’s adverse IBAC report for Labor.
    _____________________
    Adverse is an understatement. It’s the corruption that will get them in the end.
    They are currently fighting tooth and nail in the courts to keep the IBAC report into thier dealings with the UFU secret for as long as possible.
    Charged to the Victorian taxpayer of course.

    ——————————————–
    LOL Taylormade

  4. As the Hoodoo Gurus sang, “Like Wow, Wipeout”.
    This polling would suggest that many of the ALP voters, who abandoned their heartland are coming back home – after the media war which was raised against Dan Andrews and Vic Labor during the latter half of 2022.
    However, If the polling is indicative of the whole Victorian Electorate, then the LNP is in dire straits.
    Applied evenly across the pendulum, if an election was called today, the LNP would lose up to 20 seats in the Parliament – holding 14 seats with a margin below 5% and 8 seats with a margin below 10%.

  5. The Age must be so disappointed. The Murdoch press has bigger problem.

    It won’t be the Liberals trying to make mountains out of mole hills as Tarlormade is trying to do that will bring Victoria Labor undone. If they allow it to happen, it will be a collapse in the construction industry.

  6. Macca RB says:
    Tuesday, April 25, 2023 at 6:59 am

    >the LNP would lose up to 20 seats in the Parliament – holding 14 seats with a margin below 5% and 8 seats with a margin below 10%.

    Prahran could be intresting as well.

    Last election was

    Green 15360
    LNP 13057
    Labor 10826

    A swing from LNP to Labor puts Labor into 2nd and then the LNP prfrences could give Labor enough votes to win.

  7. This is no good for a fully-functioning democracy. Governments need to be held to account. Self-absorbed rabbles cannot do that effectively.

  8. If the LNP was to really crash to 14 seats, the Nats vote would probably hold up, so the it would be the Liberals who would be virtually wiped out. That would make it like WA, where the Nats leader ends up as leader of the opposition.
    The Liberals are just woeful, toxic and completely unelectable. So Labor seems to be extremely popular, but that would be a mistake. Dan’s approval rating is only 49% which is not great and there is a growing feeling that have the government has become arrogant, lazy and out of touch. That being said the government would easily be re-elected tomorrow.

  9. Boerwar @ 8.43am
    From my position in NSW, I believe that Victoria has a fully functioning democracy.
    If it is the will of the Victorian electorate to elect and re-elect a government (of any political colour) in a landslide – that to me, is a functioning democracy.
    If the then government is perceived by the electorate to be failing, I am certain that the majority of voters will exercise their democratic right to toss them out.

  10. Catprog @ 8.24am.
    I deliberately left out extrapolating Green electorates in my analysis.
    Richmond and Prahran could be in play.

  11. Personally Boer I can bear the Vic Libs being a total rabble with enormous fortitude. The religious right needs to have their influence wiped out.

    Unlike NSW there is no sign of Eddie Obeid type corruption in the Andrews government and boy howdy are there people constantly hunting for any. There’s no lack of scrutiny, and at regular intervals there are disgruntled sacked people in the government to blow whistles on anything, as a side effect of how Andrews works.

  12. What is probably turning voters off the Victorian Lib/nats is that they would have followed the same path as the Federal and NSW lib/nats

  13. Daniel @ #2 Tuesday, April 25th, 2023 – 5:30 am

    My preferred outcome is for her to be completely expelled from parliament and for her to fade to irrelevance because some of her views have no place in Australian politics.

    Labor should move a motion to expel her. It might struggle in the upper house however.

    I disagree. That would be an attack on democracy.

  14. I wouldn’t go so far as to say Ms Deeming should be expelled from the Victorian Parliament but the Liberal party will continue to go backwards for as long as they associate themselves with these fringe religious kooks who seem completely detached from the broader communities they are meant to represent. Labor will just continue winning by default so long as they at least do the bare minimum.

    I think John Pesutto gets this but is clearly facing an uphill battle convincing his own party. The Liberal party is really at a crossroads moment here, it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand that if you look and act like a fringe party you’re going to get fringe results. I don’t see much hope of them being able to settle this problem anytime soon, what the lay membership of the Liberal party wants=electoral suicide, it may take further WA style wipeouts before they do anything at which point it’s probably too late.

  15. B.S. Fairman @ #9 Tuesday, April 25th, 2023 – 8:49 am

    If the LNP was to really crash to 14 seats, the Nats vote would probably hold up, so the it would be the Liberals who would be virtually wiped out. That would make it like WA, where the Nats leader ends up as leader of the opposition.
    The Liberals are just woeful, toxic and completely unelectable. So Labor seems to be extremely popular, but that would be a mistake. Dan’s approval rating is only 49% which is not great and there is a growing feeling that have the government has become arrogant, lazy and out of touch. That being said the government would easily be re-elected tomorrow.

    ” arrogant, lazy and out of touch ”

    I disagree. The Andrews Govt has been one of the busiest Govt’s I can remember with legislation and social programs that deal with everyday life eg. level crossing removals, new schools and hospitals, treaty with FN’s people, 227 recommendations from family violence RC, and much more.

  16. The Vic libs have been, as Rodney Cavelier used to say, taken over lock, stock and dividend stream by right wing religious looney nut jobs. Moira Deeming is just one of them. She is actually representative of their party. That is why she was number one on their ticket. She is them. They are her. The majority of the electorate have worked that out. When the majority of liberal voters work that out (they haven’t yet!) the Vic libs will be in the same predicament as the WA libs.

    The libs are yet to hit rock bottom.

    Victorian democracy is performing well. It’s the libs that aren’t.

    Tim Wilson, hahaha.

  17. Anyone else remember this whine-tastic contribution from Trent Zimmerman before the last election: Please vote Liberal or we’ll become even more unelectable:
    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/think-again-about-that-teal-protest-vote-you-risk-stripping-the-liberals-of-progressive-mps-who-change-the-nation-20220512-p5ako3.html

    It took Labor at least two decades to get over the Split – with all the purge and counter-purge: commos, groupers, the lot. Can’t say that history records Menzies being full of the milk of human accommodation around Labor’s need to reform.
    Sympathy = zero.

    Why should we let the Libs off the hook – if they want to be competitive that’s up to them to fix. Not anyone else, and they should not get some free pass out of some nebulous “good for democracy” nonsense. What’s actually bad for democracy is having a major party hijacked by narrow, sectional, reactionary entryists. And having dug themselves into that, only the Libs can dig themselves out. Having that mad crew actually in charge…. well that legitimately IS bad for democracy (see SfM and Brother Stewie and the whole rancid crew).

    So I say – f*** ’em. Let them get on with their own internal fixes – and let’s not forget this is a consequence of twenty years of deliberate split the nation, culture war bullsh*t that started with Little Johnny. If that approach still worked then sure as sh** the Libs wouldn’t be worried about how morally bankrupt it all was.

  18. Apart from extreme circumstances, I’m not at all comfortable with the idea of expelling members of parliament, regardless of the crazy or hateful views they may hold. Deeming won her seat fair and square and if the voters don’t like what she’s saying then it’s up to them to vote her out next time. Nor do I have even the slightest sympathy for the Liberals having to deal with this albatross around their necks – they preselected her, they can wear the consequences.

  19. Geetroit:

    Well bloody said.

    These things have a way of sorting themselves out. If the Liberals continue alienating moderate voters with their journey into crazytown, then some other centre-right movement is eventually going to fill the void. It’s not Labor’s responsibility to save the Liberals from themselves.

  20. A bit late, but thanks to MABWM for the post at 12:37am last night in the main thread for explaining the situation in Victorian politics from 2007-23. That cleared a lot of things up.

  21. I think another thing that Victorian Labor has done right in the long term is that it’s looked after the regional cities fairly well for the most part. In the 20th century, most seats in Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo were marginal to Liberal leaning, but these days almost all of them are safe Labor (Bendigo East, Bendigo West, Eureka, Wendouree, Geelong, Lara, Bellarine and South Barwon), the only marginal one being Ripon, although that’s because it’s a big rural seat that’s finely balanced between outer Ballarat suburbs, the cities of Ararat and Maryborough, and all the rural areas in between.

    The only regional seats that Labor no longer hold today that they won/held in 1999 are Morwell (mostly due to the mining/power industry changes), Narracan (mostly due to boundary changes) and Seymour (split between Eildon and Euroa)

  22. BS Fairman says :
    The Liberals are just woeful, toxic and completely unelectable. So Labor seems to be extremely popular, but that would be a mistake. Dan’s approval rating is only 49% which is not great and there is a growing feeling that have the government has become arrogant, lazy and out of touch. That being said the government would easily be re-elected tomorrow.
    ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
    98.6 says :
    Not only would (Dan’s VIC) government be easily re-elected tomorrow but they will be easily re-elected in November 2026.
    And I’m thinking Dan will be there to lead them to victory, if he so chooses.

  23. Macca RB says:
    Tuesday, April 25, 2023 at 8:58 am
    Boerwar @ 8.43am
    From my position in NSW, I believe that Victoria has a fully functioning democracy.
    If it is the will of the Victorian electorate to elect and re-elect a government (of any political colour) in a landslide – that to me, is a functioning democracy.
    If the then government is perceived by the electorate to be failing, I am certain that the majority of voters will exercise their democratic right to toss them out.
    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
    98.6 says :
    They say the voters always get it right.
    They got it right last November and I’m sure they will get it right in November 2026.

  24. It’s early days, but I do hope that in this term the government at the very least reforms Upper House voting to abolish group ticket voting.

    Even if the current system of 8 5-member regions might be inadequate, at least it could be reformed so the 5 MLC’s per region are elected in accordance to how many people voted for them and where they directed their preference, rather than who wins the Glenn Druery Preference Roulette.

  25. Has anyone thought about what Moira Deeming is thinking right now ?
    I would say she is thinking of quitting the Liberal Party because of the way she is being treated.
    Can she withstand the onslaught over the next several months with no guarantee that she will ever be fully forgiven for her perceived misdemeanours.
    Either way she is a gift to Labor that will keep on giving.

  26. @98.6

    I reckon Deeming would be pleased as punch currently. It would be most likely that the far-right of the Victorian Liberal party is telling her that she has their full support, and would be in line for swift promotions as long as she hangs in there for the inevitable leadership spill in which they dump Pesutto for someone like Battin.

    She’s already won her first battle in undermining Pesutto’s leadership. He was meant to be in charge of the party and he made it clear that he wanted her expelled, but he was overruled in that. Not many leaders can have their leadership survive after something like that.

  27. You’re welcome Kirsdarke. Indeed I’m going to post my 2007 – 2023 primer in this feed where it belongs.

    Obviously it carries my own personal bias (Green/Labor):

    Re Bracks stepping down: Victoria 2007 to 2023 in a nutshell.

    There was a terrible train crash in Northern Victoria (5/6/2007 – Kerang. Bracks visited the scene and was visibly shaken. Shortly thereafter he had some personal/family issues. His son was involved in an horrific car accident. It all came to him in a rush that his family needed him more than his State did, so he genuinely stepped down ‘for family reasons’. A truly decent act by a thoroughly decent man.

    That left Brumby, the ALP’s hard man, in charge. Victoria had previously decided they did not want Brumby as Premier and Big Ted seemed nice enough. (He was the last true moderate in the Vic Libs.) It seemed like a reasonable swap. So in 2010 just enough people in just the right seats swapped their votes.

    The net result was a tiring but competent government was given a small whack in 2010. The Libs came to power, literally falling over the line. No-one expected them to win, including themselves (in an eerie repeat of Bracks himself in 1999*.) In power they were meandering without an actual agenda and their entire governance period was destroyed by a wayward backbencher and a mindless coup. Once Baillieu was rolled Victoria was reminded of why we got rid of Kennett (hubris, lazy arrogance and a complete disregard for the little guy). Denis Napthine (A decent enough fellow who sells his wife’s honey at farmer’s markets) who we had already decided we did not want as Premier was mysteriously elevated in a bizarre nothing coup – so in due course he too was booted. That was 2014. Dan emerged as the victor with a narrow margin.

    Despite what the papers say, Victorians recognised good progressive government with an infrastructure program. So Dan land slid in 2018 and again slid one harder in 2022. This week’s Age poll has him nudging 60/40! An increase of 5% on the 2022 election in 6 short months. If you were to read the Murdoch rags (and to a lesser extent the Age) you would be led to believe there are lynch mobs patrolling the streets of Mulgrave looking for Dan. There aren’t. He’s tough but fair. He builds stuff. He cares. Granted -he’s a scary mofo when he gets cranky! He locked us down, but we blamed Scomo for that for not getting those vaccines. Most Victorians just said, it’s shit but the alternative would have been far worse. We are colder and wetter down here. We wanted Grandma to survive. We were prepared to make the sacrifice. It was not some cult of Dan, it was common sense and collective commitment. Dan levelled with us.

    The libs are a shambles in Victoria. They have been since 2014. They hang out with cookers, loons, nasty religious zealots and Moira Deeming. And then some nazis showed up. All the while being egged on by the daily Rupert and the SAD team.

    Baillieu took the last shred of LNP decency with him when he left parliament.

    Narrowly losing the 2010 state election was the best thing that ever happened to the Vic ALP. It gave them the necessary reset. (A lot like the ALP losing in SA in 2018.)

    -Losing the 2019 Federal election (Sorry Bill) was the best thing that has happened to the Federal ALP but that is a tale for another day.

  28. Moira Deeming will be an independent very shortly I suspect. She was Bernie Finn’s replacement on the top of the Liberal ticket for Western Metro at the 2022 State election.

    The goons who run that division of the Libs will replace with another equally obnoxious Alt-Right Conservative “Christian”.

    I’m pretty sure Jesus (had he actually existed, and was on the roll) would not countenance a vote for those who run for office in his name.

  29. The rural areas close to Geelong .Bendigo..Ballarat and nearby Melbourne are also trending towards the alp. Polwarth may well be in range at the next state election. The Morwell seat is the only exception to this. But the bottom line is the liberals are not seen as electable

  30. mj wrote: “the Liberal party will continue to go backwards for as long as they associate themselves with these fringe religious kooks who seem completely detached from the broader communities they are meant to represent.”

    the vic libs don’t just ‘associate themselves with’ the nutters – there has been a concerted effort by mormons, pentecostals, cookersand ‘ex’-neo-nazis to take over branches and the party, as well as the more traditional born-to-rule elite school boyz former IPA spokesturds and ministerial advisors. John Pesutto is one of a few moderates left, but like turnbull was, is hamstrung by the nasty and nutters, who take each rejection by the electorate as a message that they need to move further to the lunar right. It’s hard to see them regaining control for a very long time – even the murdoch media and Ninenews can’t sway the majority of voters, and thanks to Dutton thinking the queensland hanson vote is what he needs to win, it is getting to the point when the majority of those under the age of 50, and nearly all under the age of 30 will never consider voting liberal ever again. They have lost generations of voters.

  31. Much like the Liberal Party in Victoria, Moira Deeming is an irrelevance. You don’t need a preamble for that.

    Howls of “corruption” and “dictator” from the usual suspects. But most Victorians know that those opposite have nothing to offer.

    Keep rolling out Howard. Abbott, Dutton and Morrison further reminders of what the most progressive state in Australia doesn’t want.

    4th term inevitable.

  32. The last election saw Labor lose votes but gain seats (which tells us a lot about our electoral system).

    There’s a chance the opposite could happen next time, with Labor regaining votes in the already-safe western suburbs but losing some in Melbourne’s east.

    But there’s a long, long way to go. We shouldn’t get too carried away by opinion polls this early in the cycle.

  33. @Eight ES – the amazing thin about Victoria is the polls did not budge during the four years of the 2018 to 2022 parliament. They hovered at 54/5 ALP the whole time.

    What has happened now is they have moved – but 5% towards Labor and 5% away from the Libs. Time will tell if that shift sticks. Either way it is not a ringing endorsement for Moira Deeming’s liberals.

  34. Reposting the map I recolored of what the election would look like on an estimated uniform swing on the numbers.

    And even if the swing is less against the Nationals so that they keep Mildura, Shepparton and Morwell against the Independents/Labor, that’d be even more embarrassing for the Liberals, because then the Nationals would then be dominant in the Coalition instead of them. At least in the Lower House.

  35. Mick Quinlivan says:
    Wednesday, April 26, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    The map here is close to what I predicted for 2022…. maybe one election too early?
    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
    Time and tide, wait for no man !

  36. If Pessuto is described by media and others as “a moderate”, there is the problem

    Much the same with Pyne

    So is the IPA “moderate” or are those from the IPA just “moderate” compared to the remainder of those associated with the “Liberal” Party?

    And, if “moderate”, describe moderate how and where?

    Instead of just a throw away description for public consumption

    This is where media fails – and I would suggest that the public has awoken to media bias and the reasons for that bias

    Education means there are more inquiring minds these days (and why the Liberals attack education)

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