A record 542,143 voters cast their ballots on the first day of early voting on Tuesday, compared with 314,496 on the first day in 2022. Four thousand of those who voted yesterday and on Tuesday across 19 seats were surveyed as part of an “exit poll” conducted by the News Corp papers, an exercise I am a little dubious about, particularly when reported at seat level from samples of barely more than 200 each. The degree of care needed to produce properly illuminating results does not seem to have been taken: the swing figures reported at seat level do not take account of redistributions, and at national level the results are aggregated and compared to the party totals from 2022, without regard to the peculiarities of the targeted electorates.
Let’s be optimistic though and say that broadly representative voting centres were chosen, and that to the extent that they were not, the problem cancels out when results are aggregated across multiple electorates (and also that the earliest early voters are representative of the whole, which is impossible to say) (UPDATE: Adrian Beaumont points out that US experience says voters earlier in the period tend to be older, which may explain some of the weak results for the Greens). In the following analysis, I have gone to the effort of basing swing calculations off redistribution-adjusted results from 2022 at pre-poll voting centres only:
• The three Greens-held Brisbane seats of Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith were all targeted, with average results of Greens 33.7%, up 2.4%; Labor 31.8%, up 5.2%; and LNP 32.8%, down 2.9%.
• Average results in the New South Wales seats of Werriwa, Gilmore, Paterson and Bennelong were Labor 43.1%, up 4.3%; Liberal 37.2%, down 2.5%; and Greens 4.8%, down 2.8%. I have excluded the part of North Sydney that was transferred to Bennelong from my baseline calculation here, due to the complication there of teal independent Kylea Tink.
• Average results in the Victorian seats of Corangamite, Chisholm, Bruce and McEwen were Labor 42.1%, up 3.4%; Coalition 40.1%, up 4.6%; and Greens 8.6%, down 3.5%.
• Boothby and Sturt averaged Labor 44.5%, up 13.3%; Liberal 44.3%, down 0.3%; and Greens 9.0%, down 4.5%.
• In the two seats with competitive teals, Goldstein and Bradfield, there was an average Liberal vote of 43.5%, up 0.6%, and an average teal vote of 32.5%, up 2.3%. In this case I did not include areas added to Goldstein in the redistribution for the baseline, as they did not have a teal candidate in 2022.
Other seats covered by the exercise were Leichhardt, McPherson, Lyons and Solomon.
There is another item of polling in the shape of a second Ipsos poll for the Daily Mail, which provides leadership ratings but not voting intention. Anthony Albanese is up three on approval since last week to 38% and steady on disapproval at 39%. The report says only that Peter Dutton has a net rating of minus 20, unchanged on last week when he recorded 27% approval and 47% disapproval. Albanese leads 46-32 as preferred prime minister, out from 44-30. The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday from a sample of 2000.
Seems as though former Greens voters are going over to vote for Labor if the above Exit Polls unrepresentative sample are to be believed. And the Liberals seem to have lost about 2.5%. Which has gone where? Will it come back to them via preferences from PHON or the Strumpets?
(Interestingly, stereotypically hayseed Nationals voters are reportedly more on board with the science than Liberal voters.) (From the previous thread)
A lot of Nationals voters are farmers who believe in Climate Change but who vote for the Nats for other reasons.
Increasingly, Liberal voters are tied to the Mining Industry and have accommodated themselves to the view that Climate Change isn’t real, or they just make a living out of the stuff that creates Climate Change and vote accordingly for their self-interest in keeping their job. Then there are the capitalists who will always vote Liberal because they know that the Liberals will always provide an environment that enables them to make more money.
What is concerning to me though is the 2% of Greens voters who DON’T believe in Climate Change!
Also from the previous thread:
King OMalley @ #625 Thursday, April 24th, 2025 – 12:06 am
Dear PollBludgers,
I finally completed v1 of my election forecasting model. I wrote quite a detailed article introducing it with an initial report. But I was reluctant to publish it here in the comments because of the length. So William suggested I publish it elsewhere and link to it in the comment.
So without further adieu, here it is: https://socialchangemedia.net.au/blog/2025-federal-election-forecast-model
Hope you find it of interest and criticisms or suggestions are welcome.
As the estimated 2PP values change over the remainder of the campaign, I’ll endeavour to update the forecasts.
Bringing this back again fyi. 🙂
Surprise, surprise.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/24/most-australians-would-be-concerned-about-nuclear-power-station-built-nearby-survey-shows
Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy claims have been conspicuously absent from his election campaign. Now a leading energy analyst calculates the cost at more than $4.3 trillion, way above the Coalition’s touted $331B. Kim Wingerei reports for Michael West Media.
https://michaelwest.com.au/new-report-peter-duttons-nuclear-power-plan-to-cost-4-3-trillion/
“The Coalition has promised a two-and-a-half-year consultation process, but some Nationals constituents have said their concerns are already being ignored and some community groups have expressed anger that they will not be able to veto plants in their area. The new survey suggests concern about nuclear power plants being built nearby is widespread.”
Like I said last week, the way the Coalition have approached nuclear power is a case study in how not to do it.
They immediately got the local communities offside, and once trust is lost, it is very difficult to regain.
Absolute rank amateurs.
Beyond all of my objections to nuclear – waste , cost and the sheer bloody mindedness of ignoring renewable sources for ideological reasons my main concern is that its unachievable. Many projects in countries with actual expertise have proven to be sisyphean exercises with intense local opposition, cost overruns, construction delays of epic proportions yet Peter Dutton says it is “eazy peezy” to construct seven such reactors in double quick time and right wing media hardly questions this heroic assessment. It is Disneyland stuff especially considering the coalition was unable to achieve anything of substance in its last nine year bid. Maybe the plan should be rebadged as do nothing once again and blame Labor for the blackouts with help of pro LNP media.
Make sure you read William’s extensive caveats above about this ‘exit poll’, but here is the aggregation table..
The much touted surge in non-majors may have been wishcasting on these numbers
My experience with farmers and climate change is that there’s a strong generational split, with those under 50 very accepting of climate change and the need to adapt to it, older farmers much less so. (I imagine it may be different in southern WA where rainfall decline has been going on for longer).
What were the results in Solomon?
Sprocket. I take it these figures don’t involve comparison with prepoll averages from 2022 which from memory somewhat favoured coalition cf election day votes. But maybe less so cf election day and postal?
On the exit poll seat numbers (caveats aside)
Likely ALP gains
Sturt
Leichhardt
Griffith
Likely LNP gains
Corangamite
Spence
The 2022 comparison column appears to be the final tally, not the equivalent first 2 days
An exclusive exit poll of nearly 4000 Australians who cast their ballot in the last two days shows a 4.6 per cent primary swing to Labor compared to the 2022 election – with the party on track to hold on to most of its marginal seats while making gains in Queensland.
Bradfield is shaping up nicely on the exit poll
Liberal 40.5
Teal 26.0
ALP 23.5
GRN 9.0
Final comment from the exit poll, they have this scrolling table for all the 19 seats.
You can only see a snapshot of a few of the seats like this…
#weatheronPB
Monochrome grey sky,
and the steady snare of rain,
on our metal roof.
Soothing, in a way.
Meanwhile in the United Nations the USA and China were at war overnight about tariffs.
No sign of tariffs changing.All good.
Gorton in play says someone today in AFR are they taking the wiss?
Nine days to go.
Disturbing … on so many levels …
https://michaelwest.com.au/labor-and-liberal-powerbrokers-join-to-attack-teals-and-greens/
Strange bedfellows? Or just peas in a pod? 🙁
The Dutton gambit, the shenanigans of misinformation, the duplicity of the media, the non existent costings, the maga virus, the environmental vandalism and the plethora of discrimination from the Liberals will be all back in the Liberal’s toy box in less than two weeks.
Don’t even slightly believe those exit poll figures.
I don’t think it would be all that surprising that the Greens wouldn’t do as well in the first few days of early voting, given it tends to be their weaker polling places generally. I’d imagine this could be replicated for non-teal “other” voters, as they may be less likely to have made up their minds until election day.
It does seem surprising that the ALP is >40pc, given early voting is usually a relative strength for the Coalition
One likely change is a fair proportion of potential ON voters changing to give coalition first preference.
If the coalition are now best buddies with ON why bother with a protest vote. Pretty bad move by Hanson I suspect to suggest ON are shifting to shoring up coalition.
The most important thing is that every polling “event” shows the Libs doing badly and Labor doing well.
Difficult to see the LNP coming back from that.
Well if nothing else those exit polls will set the cats amongst the pigeons at LNP campaign HQ. Expect an accentuation of disloyal behaviour from Tories post lost leadership group ( check body language behind Dutton at pressors) , false and desperate claims, appearances in safe seats to save entitled furniture and I expect Hitler in the bunker memes on social media.
Good morning all. Hugely self-selecting group. Not worth a pinch of the proverbial, IMO. But in my dreams!
LNP digging up decade old tweets by Ali France in Dickson, things must be grim.
https://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/labor-candidate-ali-frances-wild-antiisrael-tweets-calling-peter-dutton-a-monster/news-story/1e95d52f7f1249ae21220615458ff97a
SMH: “Health minister denies deal with Greens despite second ballot preference”
Geeze, the media is really struggling to conceptualized this newfangled concept of “compulsory preferential voting” huh?
Though in all seriousness, I’m not sure if it has been discussed much but the ballot papers seem to have been flooded with right wing lunatics.
Labor and Greens were the only two left-leaning options on mine, along side some no-name independent with no ground game and enough cookers parties to staff a cafe.
Dutton approval ratings are consistently worse than (-) 20% across various pollsters.
So it must be (-)20%
Did a opposition leader ever become PM with that kind of ratings?
Another picture perfect day with no rain in sight.
Fingers crossed tmrw Anzac Day may finally bring us some rain…..
Early days, I noted with Newspoll aggregate update, that AEF’s regular now has seats as Greens 4, Labor 76, others ~12, Liberals/ Nationals 57 …
RFK jnr has ramped up his misinformation relating to autism.
It is disgraceful……and damn harmful
”
C@tmommasays:
Thursday, April 24, 2025 at 6:09 am
(Interestingly, stereotypically hayseed Nationals voters are reportedly more on board with the science than Liberal voters.) (From the previous thread)
A lot of Nationals voters are farmers who believe in Climate Change but who vote for the Nats for other reasons.
Increasingly, Liberal voters are tied to the Mining Industry and have accommodated themselves to the view that Climate Change isn’t real, or they just make a living out of the stuff that creates Climate Change and vote accordingly for their self-interest in keeping their job. Then there are the capitalists who will always vote Liberal because they know that the Liberals will always provide an environment that enables them to make more money.
What is concerning to me though is the 2% of Greens voters who DON’T believe in Climate Change!
”
I expected more than 2% Green voters to be climate change sceptic.
Why?
Because quite a few of them are Communists.
An excellent discussion on The Bulwark
https://youtu.be/uxoijQfFg8I?si=N1UEU_PTrnlRaplw
Having the 3 Greens seats in Qld greatly skews the Greens votes for the 20 seats.
Greens would be 7-8% in other 17 seats.
It would be interesting to see a demographic breakdown of those voting in the first 2 days, my guess it would skew older i.e. the Greens weakest demographic
As evidence I posit the number of people posting here who have voted already
Thanks William, that must have been a lot of work for such questionable data. The best I’d say about it is it doesn’t support any kind of “actually the Libs are winning all along” kind of theory.
Nearly all the farmers I know personally (a) once completely believed that climate science was a crock of city slicker leftie shit and (b) now believe that changing climate patterns are a problem because it is already affecting them and their farming communities significantly. They still do not necessarily connect changing climate with CO2 emissions but reckon there might be something in that after all. They mostly believe there is bugger all they can do about CO2 emissions. They are also mostly taking advantage of things like solar panel subsidies. They are anti wind farms.
They also all believe that the Greens are coming after them in one way or another which is entirely rational because Trot hatred for the kulaks is in their blood.
If they depend on labour to make their farms work they prefer anything but Labor.
If they don’t depend on labour to make their farms work they prefer anything but Labor.
They nearly all tend to strong individuals/libertarian views.
They ALL hate the existing levels of regulation.
They ALL want to pay much less tax.
The ALL believe that the nation is, one way or another, riding on their backs.
All that said, the pattern of mass aggregation of farms by corporates is in full spate.
The family farm is disappearing.
Most rural labourers will be backpackers and Pacific Islanders on labour schemes. The next level up will be contractors and subbies. Australian kids will no longer grow up on farms.
You would be tempted to say that this is evidence of rational people voting early…
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000703851637
Ezra Klein has an excellent podcast. This one brings up some truly frightening issues.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price saying wearing the MAGA hat was a joke (didnt explain the joke).
I guess she has been told to make excuses by the Liberals campaign-central, its unlikely to effect her as she is a senator.
The week delay in explaining ‘the joke’ is telling, taken with Dutton backflip yesterday, they have now accepted defeat and desperately trying to minimise harm.
@bizzcan, my policy is always green first, lefty/centrist parties second, ALP third, then Libs, and then the RWNJs. There are 9 candidates in my electorate, and yet the filthy braindead moron standing for the libs, will be 5th. There are 4 absolute cookers on the ticket.
There are just so many extreme right wing fringe dwelling haters splitting the angry vote on the right. Dog help us all.
Boerwar. Most farmers I run into are not climate sceptics. Certainly younger ones are very keen to get up to speed with climate adoption. Most have solar.
Many are not happy with wind farms based on visual impacts, including the much larger visual scars on in hillier sites in SA mid North resulting from the much bigger height and size of latest wind towers.
Mabwm
Indeed.
It makes you wonder why there has been such a concerted effort by certain posters to extol the virtue of not voting for a major party.
World News & Politics Patrol:
RFK Jr. Shocked At ‘Tsunami Of Anger’ Over Autism Comments: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rfk-autism-tsunami-of-anger_n_6808e017e4b0deaad527661c
Terrified Trump Flees Tariffs War After CEOs’ ‘Empty Shelves’ Warning: https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-dramatically-changed-his-tune-after-ceos-delivered-a-terrifying-warning/
Lawrence O’Donnell Reveals Moment Trump Became A ‘Humiliated Clown’ On Live TV: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawrence-odonnell-trump-humiliated-clown_n_68088e81e4b0deaad5271d1d
Hegseth orders makeup studio installed at Pentagon: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hegseth-orders-makeup-studio-installed-pentagon/
Retiring ‘with dignity’: Younger Democrats heap praise on Durbin for stepping aside: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/23/dick-durbin-retirement-age-generational-change-00306671
California Man Ordered to Leave the U.S. ‘Immediately’ Despite Providing Birth Certificate: ‘I’m Not Trying to Be One of the Government’s Mistakes’: https://www.latintimes.com/california-man-ordered-leave-us-immediately-despite-providing-birth-certificate-im-not-581422
Dozen states sue Trump in bid to block new tariffs: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/23/states-sue-trump-in-bid-to-block-new-tariffs.html
4-year-old migrant girl, other kids go to court in NYC with no lawyer: ‘The cruelty is apparent’: https://gothamist.com/news/4-year-old-migrant-girl-other-kids-go-to-court-in-nyc-with-no-lawyer-the-cruelty-is-apparent
‘This is a very dangerous moment’ — Zelensky warns against US withdrawal from peace effort: https://kyivindependent.com/this-is-a-very-dangerous-moment-zelensky-on-potential-us-withdrawal-from-peace-talks/
China said “our doors are wide open” for talks after President Donald Trump softened his tone on the unfolding trade war between the world’s two largest economies: https://www.newsweek.com/china-responds-trump-trade-softening-tone-2062930
China invites European countries to form united front against Trump tariffs: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3307568/china-invites-european-countries-form-united-front-against-trump-tariffs
France: Europe will demand respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity in any peace deal: https://www.yahoo.com/news/france-europe-demand-respect-ukraines-140058028.html
Trump’s “final offer” for peace requires Ukraine to accept Russian occupation: https://www.axios.com/2025/04/22/trump-russia-ukraine-peace-plan-crimea-donbas
The good news with multiple rwn groups is that most of them will not get public funding because of splitting votes.
This will be interesting to watch
——
12 states sue Trump in the U.S. Court of International Trade to block his massive tariffs, accusing him of illegally imposing tax hikes on Americans and violating the Constitution.
This one deserves its own post, a nice infographic from the ABC on the change in numbers voting for “others” or more accurately, not voting for the majors
#25in25
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-24/election-data-rise-independents-major-party-drift/105144918
100 percent
——————-
It was never about minerals, it was never about peace, it was never about Zelensky’s wardrobe, and it was never about taxpayer money spent on weapons and ammunition. It was always about realigning with Russia, whatever the cost.
Lynchpin, I’d been hunting around for a new left leaning podcast since last year. I tried a few but they all ended up rant fests. I found Ezra Klein a few weeks ago and it’s been my new go to podcast for US and world issues.
King O’Malley, thanks for a very interesting read!
I’m a bit sceptical about the News exit polls too. While I’d like to see Max C-M moving on, I think it’s a bit unlikely. It’ll definitely depend on how preferences flow. He has a strong personal following in the electorate now from his personal efforts. Disclaimer: My son votes there and has nice things to say about him.