First up, two other things to note. There is another new post below this one exploring the minutiae of pollsters’ preference flows, a subject of great relevance to much of what is discussed below. The other is the Poll Bludger’s pre-election donation drive. On with the show:
• RedBridge Group has a national poll that gives the Coalition its poorest result yet, recording both major parties at 34% of the primary vote – up one in Labor’s case and down two for the Coalition ” with the Greens steady on 12% and One Nation up a point to 8%. This includes a timely two-party preferred result based on respondent-allocated preferences, in addition to the usual one based on 2022 election flows (a matter explored in very great depth in the aforementioned other post), both of which come in at 53-47 in favour of Labor. This is despite 73% out of the 7% One Nation vote (with a duly very small sample) going to the Coalition, compared with 64.3% in 2022. The report notes that that this improvement in isolation would have added 0.8% to the Coalition’s two-party result. Small-sample state breakdowns have Labor leading 52-48 in New South Wales and 56-44 in Victoria, and trailing 57-43 in Queensland. The accompanying report features voluminous further detail on factors influencing vote choice. The poll was conducted Thursday to Tuesday from a sample of 1011.
• A new outfit called Spectre Strategy, whose managing director Morgan James was until recently with Freshwater Strategy, has a federal poll with results well in line with the general consensus: Labor has a two-party lead of 53-47 based on respondent-allocated preferences, from primary votes of Labor 31%, Coalition 34%, Greens 15% and One Nation 10%. Anthony Albanese is credited with a 47-35 lead over Peter Dutton on preferred prime minister. Among other things, the full report contains breakdowns for the four largest states along with useful (albeit small sample) age-by-gender result, one finding being that the Greens are twice as strong among young women as men. The poll was conducted Saturday to Wednesday from a sample of 2000.
• DemosAU has two polls offering combined results of selected marginal seats in Melbourne and Sydney (and has a large sample national poll on the way), the former of which puts meat on the bones of suggestions One Nation is surging in seats such as those covered, namely Bruce, Dunkley and Hawke. Labor is down 7.2% on the primary vote to 32%, of which the Liberals yield only a one-point gain to 31%, while One Nation is up 5.6% to 10%. The Greens are up 3.2% to 13%, and Trumpet of Patriots manages only 2%, down 4.5% on the United Australia Party result. Labor holds a two-party lead of 53-47 based on 2022 election flows: if the Liberals really are doing as well out of One Nation as some have suggested, that may reduce to 51-49. The poll was conducted April 13 to 22 from a sample of 924.
• The DemosAU Sydney marginal seats poll covers Parramatta, Reid and Werriwa and is much better for Labor, who are credited with a two-party lead of 56-44, a swing in their favour of 1.3%. Both major parties are well down on the primary vote, Labor to 36% (down 4.3%) and Liberal to 28% (down 7.4%), mostly accounted for by 11% for independents (there are four independent candidates across the three seats, none particularly high profile, compared with only one last time), with the Greens on 10% (up 1.4%). All three seats are highly multicultural and duly weak for One Nation. The poll was conducted April 13 to 27 from a sample of 905.
• Andrew Tillett of the Financial Review offers an overview based on the views of “multiple campaign strategists and frontbenchers from Labor, the Coalition and the Greens”. Most of the assessments offered are conventional wisdom, though Labor appears hopeful about Griffith and Bonner along with more fancied Brisbane; a Liberal source goes so far as to say they “think we will win Werriwa”; Labor is rated a better chance of retaining Chisholm than was earlier thought; both sides expect Labor to hold Tangney, and give Labor a “slight edge” in Lyons; and Liberals are pessimistic about Bradfield, though “early anxiety over independents in Wannon and Forrest had faded”. A Liberal source did not concur with a view related by “senior Labor and Liberal sources” in The Advertiser that Sturt was “increasingly likely to fall to Labor”. The West Australian reports a Liberal source saying Curtin is 51-49, without revealing in whose favour.
• A survey of 2000 respondents aged 18 to 29, conducted by RedBridge Group and Monash University for the Y Australia, features various qualitative and quantitative findings together with voting intention findings of Labor 33%, Greens 32% and Liberal 23%. Half the sample was drawn nationally and the other half from “30 Commonwealth electoral divisions with large concentrations of young voters”.
Re Bushfire Bill @9:29.
… America has become the Forbidden Planet and Trump is its “Monster from the Id”
Interesting analogy. MAGA / Trump as America’s dark underside.
I couldn’t figure out what the picture was until the last line of your post, but it seemed vaguely familiar.
Ah, the old simply put.
Here is the simply put: if you wage electoral warfare against the parents of 2.8 million school children you are going to lose votes.
On Liberal leadership and succession, won’t the Qld dominated LNP caucus numbers all but guarantee the next Liberal leader will not be a moderate?
The forecast election results will only increase the number of Liberal MPs who will lose their seats. If Labor takes seats in SA and WA the dominance of the Qld LNP faction will increase. So the next leader will be another WA or Qld far right candidate.
Andrew Hastie, enter, stage far right.
I take it yougov didn’t poll Bass?
I’m sticking to my prediction that Bass will flip.
On the Catholic school system – In Victoria, most are run via an education office for each of the four dioceses – Melbourne, Sale, Ballarat, Sandhurst (Bendigo). However, there are many which are run via Religious Orders who fall outside of those offices. It is highly unlikely that all the dioceses would behave in the same way either.
MI – BW, copied my homework.
I didnt put a 2PP, but as it seems the sheep thing to do (and I do like sheep), 51.95-48.05
Yougov is going to need to be re-interpretted, eg they have the following;
Braddon
Projected likely winner: Labor
Two party preferred vote: Coalition (57%) over Labor (43%)
with 1.1% swing to Labor
Kevin Bonham on YouGov seat prediction (from the Grauniad)
“Independent polling analyst Kevin Bonham has given us a bit more context on that latest polling from YouGov, predicting that Labor is on track for an even larger majority.
Bonham says there’s a caveat in seat by seat polling, writing on BlueSky:
They are models based off small samples from each seat that are then interlocked using the assumption that a seat will behave similarly to other similar seats. Even if the overall picture is right individual seats can be way off.”
But these numbers stand out
YouGov MRP ALP 31.4 L-NP 31.1 Grn 12.6 ON 9.1 IND 8.1 other 7.6
2PP 52.9 to ALP by YouGov modified prefs (I get 53.9 by 2022 prefs)
ALP + LNP = 62.5
Just wow
AS of Yesterday 6.091 Million have votes by either pre-poll, mobile or postal votes which is 33.65% of registered voters
Socrates @ #101 Thursday, May 1st, 2025 – 9:09 am
They gotta find someone who is better at dog whistling. They’ve become so (deliberately?) lazy with it. Hastie seems capable of it. Dutton dog-whistles with a dog-screaming resting face.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #72 Thursday, May 1st, 2025 – 9:07 am
However, apropos our ‘considered’ assessments, Dan is a rock star candidate and I wouldn’t be surprised if Hunter doesn’t go to preferences.
Kevin Bonham
@kevinbonham.bsky.social
#Redbridge final national poll
ALP 34 L-NP 34 Green 12 ON 8 others 12
2PP 53-47 to ALP
(My last-election estimate for these primaries as published is similar, 53.2)
Kevin Bonham
@kevinbonham.bsky.social
James Campbell again ludicrously in the tank for Labor not winning outright suggesting this poll would be “a small chance
could govern in his own right.” If Labor wins 53-47 they will probably increase their majority (my model has +4 seats median)
“YouGov MRP ALP 31.4 L-NP 31.1 Grn 12.6 ON 9.1 IND 8.1 other 7.6
2PP 52.9 to ALP by YouGov modified prefs (I get 53.9 by 2022 prefs)
ALP + LNP = 62.5
Just wow”
It is going to be comical if on election night Labor looks like getting into the 80s as predicted by the Yougov MRP, and the muppets still want to focus on and frame the summed lower primary votes
as “daaar da voters are rejecting da major parties”
Last time I remember the ABC hosts grilling Tanya P as if Labor were losing
It is just absurd
Yeah. Someone should write an essay about this. Here is mine.
This is what happens in an adversarial political system when one side goes populist/feral/wrecker/uber divisive and one half of the media go propaganda unit for them and the other half are incapable of holding power to account without stupid entertainment style gotchas.
Sure, that isnt the only reason. And sure, the ALP have many many faults (they arent getting my No1 this time). But they are sound, responsible, fairish, and try to consider all Australians in their work. Yes, they still self serve, they lie, they are two faced. Political parties have always been thus.
Having said that, I dont see a problem in the two (three?) parties only getting 63% of the primaries.
The Revisionistsays:
Thursday, May 1, 2025 at 9:57 am
“YouGov MRP ALP 31.4 L-NP 31.1 Grn 12.6 ON 9.1 IND 8.1 other 7.6
2PP 52.9 to ALP by YouGov modified prefs (I get 53.9 by 2022 prefs)
ALP + LNP = 62.5
Just wow”
It is going to be comical if on election night Labor looks like getting into the 80s as predicted by the Yougov MRP, and the muppets still want to focus on and frame the summed lower primary votes
as “daaar da voters are rejecting da major parties”
Last time I remember the ABC hosts grilling Tanya P as if Labor were losing
It is just absurd
—————————
It’s a tricky election because i normally overestimate labor’s seat count but this time feels very different.
Revisionist, absurd is calling it anything other than a ‘loveless landslide’ (and yes, I know the UK has a daft FPTP system, but check out the polling getting worse still since Starmer’s rout)
How do the Taswegians feel about the AFL stadium being an issue on voters’ minds this election?
I think it’s more the electorate has become more aware of their power and what the system affords them.
Given we have a preferential system, I’ve been a little surprised this hasn’t happened to the majors a bit sooner.
Yeah, I’ve only #1’d a non-major twice since I started voting in 2001… (both were Green – and very much a protest vote) but I do get why if there are parties/candidates who align more, why not fling them a #1, as long as your vote doesn’t elect the other lot?
Someone with authority in The Greens needs to educate the Pop Greens like Hard Being Green, 25 in 25 and sustainable snail (who mysteriously disappeared when challenged on this) that failing to give a preference to Labor has the potential to make it harder for progressives in the Senate.
The issue is most relevant for industrial legislation where David Pocock, Lambie etc have opposed better workers/union protection legislation.
It is always relatively close for last Senate position. Both Labor and Greens purists who think it is a good idea to refuse to give a preference to the other group run the risk of assisting a Coalition, One Nation or other candidate (Babet anyone) get a Senate seat at the expense of a left/progressive candidate.
Re the low major party vote, IMHO the analysis tends to assume that voters are idiots. Plenty of people, myself included, will take advantage of the preferential system to ‘send a message’ before casting their ‘real’ vote which was always going to go to one of the majors. A decent chunk of those saying they will vote for a non-major are probably just keen to use their vote effectively to influence the direction of the country, rather than totally disaffected with the majors.
Some of the yougov numbers don’t make sense. Trent has done some analysis of Macnamara that suggests the liberals will get a 4% primary vote swing in Macnamara but Yougov has liberals down 10% in Kooyong but Ryan only up 3%. It’s crazy to think a seat covering St Kilda goes in the opposite direction to a seat covering Toorak.
So James Paterson (rightly) describes as abhorrent Neos posing as Liberal supporters mockingly dressed as orthodox Jews while handing out fake anti-Semitic HTVs in Victoria, while also doing a preference deal with a Party led by a woman who openly mocked Muslims by wearing a burqa into the Senate.
And apparently that’s perfectly consistent and fine.
Hopefully they’re all tossed in the bin come Saturday.
My predictions of Labor seat gains – Brisbane, Griffith, Sturt.
I’d love for Dutton to lose Dickson, but I doubt it’s a reality, nor do I think Labor’s going to win Bonner either.
Fowler might be a chance, then again I suspect Dai Le has probably built up enough support over the past 3 years to hold on there, and she’ll get all the Liberal and One Nation preferences, alas Tu Le should have been preselected 3 years ago instead of Kristina from Scotland Island.
If it’s a really good night for Labor, a few other seats like Deakin or Menzies might come into the equation, Banks too possibly.
@MB – yeah, there are def some skewiff projections in there – but that happens with MRP.
Mexicanbeemer, I suspect they have mangled their data.
The counter-reactionary assembly in the Parliament will be roughly 2:1 against the crypto-fascists, theocrats, eco-wreckers, racists, misogynists and ideologues that constitute the LNP. 2:1 or better.
66% – wow.
The heavy lifting here will be done by Labor, as has been the case for well over a century. Various schisms, splitters and other electoral parasites will add ballast to Labor’s superiority in the House. The only good thing that can be said of them is they are not always automatically Reactionary.
Early in this thread someone posed the question as to whether the Hansonites could find enough volunteers to staff every polling booth.
I doubt it. The Nats are said to be moving into WA and at the state election they were thin on the ground as well, none of them were local. Actually, after typing that I realised that unlike previous elections, none of the Libs were local either.
The Liberals have been paying some of their booth workers for ages. On the quiet, the ALP is finding it to be more difficult to find volunteers as well.
Falling volunteer numbers is an international problem. It is impacting charities, sports, emergency services, environmental groups, and every other organisation that relies on volunteers everywhere, and as time goes by it will get worse.
The solution as far as voting is concerned might be to encourage more postals and early voting at fewer booths.
How do the Taswegians feel about the AFL stadium being an issue on voters’ minds this election?
Sadly, I doubt it is
Albanese jumped the gun and threw money at it (and seemed completely unperturbed that not a single Labor member state or federal was prepared to be on camera while he did so) Since then state Labor has jumped on board the Rockliff train (on this and many other issues) – when they could easily be picking up seats in the north at least
I believe every voter should take voting seriously and be responsible for their vote. You cant get everything you want in a political party. You cant even get close. Voting based on niche (still important) matters and ignoring the overall picture can erode the process.
Normally, niche matters are progressed from within the major parties through discussion, argument, representation etc. That happened in the ALP with environmental concerns. That then got trashed (imho) by Albanese who decided not to invest the political capital in it because being antagonistic with the Greens had political advantage. Yes, the Greens didnt help – it is also in their interests to be divisive. Therein lies the other problem with minor parties.
The only way to properly express a proper protest is to vote in a way that leads to the other party gaining power. And that is the problem in Australian politics at the moment. The other party are utterly unacceptable to me (and should be to most voters) and shouldnt be trusted to form government in its current LNP guise. That annoys me more than anything the ALP or the Greens have done.
Does Fatima Payman have a presence in WA this election?
I received Trumpet V6 SMS this morning, and still getting ads on YouTube etc. Annoying!
The election “blackout” only applies to broadcast (TV and radio) advertising, unfortunately.
Those Yougov predictions for Teal seats are amazing – 7% swing to Monique Ryan in Kooyong. And a massive 16% swing to the Teals in Bradfield. I find some of that hard to believe.
However, I can well believe that Alex Dyson can defeat dopey Dan Tehan in Wannon.
Thanks for that, Reason 4. 🙂
Yet another Dutton backflip!
This morning Dutton has announced that his government will not be moving to “restore…common sense” to the national curriculum as earlier promised. Dutton previously claimed students were being indoctrinated by activist educators in our institutions.
In his budget reply address just a month ago Dutton vowed that “a Dutton Coalition government will restore a curriculum that teaches the core fundamentals in our classrooms”.
In March he promised to rewrite the curriculum to cultivate “critical thinking, responsible citizenship and common sense”.
This morning that is all out the window. The nuclear fantasy next?
Jaeger @ #130 Thursday, May 1st, 2025 – 10:22 am
Well at least the monologues from Suellen Wrightson are gone from the TV.
“and still getting ads on YouTube etc. Annoying!”
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Brave Browser. It’s life changing.
Democracy Sausage says:
Thursday, May 1, 2025 at 10:17 am
In WA Moore is winnable. As is Canning. QLD….will it start to swing? Victoria….will it hold?
ALP 82
LNP 47
Greens 4
Independent 15
Other 2
2PP 52.5/47.5
The Revisionist
“It is going to be comical if on election night Labor looks like getting into the 80s as predicted by the Yougov MRP, and the muppets still want to focus on and frame the summed lower primary votes
as “daaar da voters are rejecting da major parties”
—————————————————————
+1 in a period with many three cornered contests and widespread evidence of tactical voting between Labor, Greens and Teal looking at PV in isolation is absurd.
EGW
At this point another Dutton backflip only confirms that he knows he is losing and is desperate.
Some of yougov’s predictions look unlikely to me, but if that’s the reality on election night, I’ll get on the beers big time.
Socrates @ #102 Thursday, May 1st, 2025 – 9:39 am
Or they could do us all a favour and self implode.
This recent one (Demos?) has a combined 61% for the fossils.
Kevin Bonham
@kevinbonham.bsky.social
· 2m
New DemosAU national poll for Gazette News
ALP 29 L-NP 32 GRN 12 ON 9 IND 7 TOP 3 FF 2 LTN 1 LC 1 AJP 1 others 3
2PP 51-49 to ALP
(my est 51.8 by 2022 prefs)
Apr 27-29
This ABC article is difficult to absorb. The colour-coded spreads are more vison-challenging than anything Bridget McKenzie could dream up. However, toward the bottom of the story is an interactive thingy that lets you see the HTVs for every candidate for every electorate in the country.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-01/how-to-vote-cards-in-your-electorates/105217758
@Mexicanbeemer, I just had a look at that YouGov MRP for Macnamara and what really doesn’t make sense at all is the minor party vote.
It has – 5.1% Other, 5.0% One Nation, 4.7% IND.
In Macnamara there are only 3 candidates other than ALP, LIB & GRN so that would imply a 5.1% Libertarian vote, 5% One Nation, and 4.7% for a cooker IND (ex-doctor who lost his license for sexual assault) who only got 2% with the donkey vote in 2022 but is last on the ballot this time.
Those numbers are complete rubbish, the ‘Other’ vote won’t be more than 6% between the 3 of them so you can pretty much add another 9% to the combined primary votes of ALP, LIB & GRN.
Onto why the Libs will probably get a bit of a swing in Macnamara, although nowhere near as much as I would have predicted 2 months ago, I did some analysis into how the Liberal primary vote in Ports/Macnamara has compared to the statewide Coalition primary going back to 2007 to get an idea of just how much of 2022’s swing was a candidate factor that might rebound.
For context, in 2022 the Libs’ first candidate pulled out pretty late, was replaced with a complete cooker, and the Liberals ran dead – didn’t even hand out HTVCs at St Kilda polling places.
Here’s my analysis:
Every election from 2007-19 except one (2016), the Liberal primary vote in Ports/Macnamara was between 1.2% & 1.8% lower than the statewide Coalition primary, averaging exactly -1.5% compared to the statewide result.
(In 2016 it was actually +0.1% but remember that was Turnbull and inner Melbourne got a swing to the Libs while everywhere else in the state swung away)
In 2022, the Liberal primary vote (29%) was -4.1% compared to the statewide Coalition primary (33.1%).
This implies that the candidate factor was probably responsible for adding roughly an extra 2.5% to the swing. This is also backed up by Kevin Bonham comparing that in Macnamara, the primary swing against them in the house was -9.7% compared to -7% in the senate.
This also makes the February seat poll commissioned by Advance make sense: the Coalition primary in Victoria was averaging around 39% early in the year and that poll had a 37.6% Liberal primary, which in that context, would confirm a return to around a -1.5% (+/- 0.3%) variance from the state result.
So, I would probably add a +2.5% swing to the Liberals in Macnamara, independent of any other national & state movement, now that they have a pretty decent candidate and have run an actual campaign. This is simply a correction to the local factors that were specific to 2022.
Since that Advance poll with a 37.6% primary though, the Coalition’s primary support in Victoria has completely collapsed in the past 2 months of polls. PB Tracker has it averaging 35.2%, while the 3 polls this week that have state breakdowns (Morgan, Resolve, Redbridge) have the Coalition primary at 33, 33 & 32 respectively in Victoria.
So applying a return to that -1.5% variance in Macnamara, I’d probably predict now that the Liberal swing in Macnamara will be anywhere between +2.5% (if the statewide result matches 2022) to around +4.5% (if there is a +2 swing statewide as the PB average indicates).
What’s most important about that, is that even with Labor’s open ticket, a Liberal primary sitting between 32-34% is not going to be enough to be competitive in a 2CP vs the Greens. I’d say 36% would be the minimum to get close to a 50/50 contest.
And you can bet that if on Saturday night, Labor is headed for a majority, David Speers and Sarah Ferguson will spend all the time talking about the Liberals. Imagine the mood over on Sky news, it’d be like a wake at a funeral.
Spencesays:
Thursday, May 1, 2025 at 10:10 am
……………….
It is always relatively close for last Senate position. Both Labor and Greens purists who think it is a good idea to refuse to give a preference to the other group run the risk of assisting a Coalition, One Nation or other candidate (Babet anyone) get a Senate seat at the expense of a left/progressive candidate.
=========================================================
That is only a risk if one places the said dark side candidate in front of the ALP candidate on their ballot.
I placed ALP candidates in the late 20s on my Senate ballot, still in front of the deplorables but with all the better options first. I have a very clear conscience.
I’m very happy to report to the bludgers that yesterday afternoon, while waiting vote at the local pre poll, I met the PM.
Fabulous. Made my day.
I don’t think that meeting throngs of people all at once is his favourite way to spend the day. But he’s doing it. Albo was pressed into a very confined space on a footpath, next to a busy road. He stopped to meet the voters: in the midst of a swarm of media people, a security team, his own staff, dozens of party volunteers from all sides and about 30 voters. He’s giving it everything. Bravo Albo.
Patrick Bateman I don’t think it is idiotic to consider that for many their first vote is ‘the real one’ (it is for me) and that after that the beauty of the Australian electoral system is you can rank the choice of evils all the way down in both houses – always the bonus of voting BTL in the Senate!
I’ve heard a rumour that the ABC is recalling Leigh Sales for the Saturday night roundup, just to prove they’re not hate media.