DemosAU has published a Victorian poll encompassing both state and federal voting intention, the former of which has the Coalition leading 51-49 on two-party preferred from primary votes of Labor 26%, Coalition 38% and Greens 15%. The accompanying report features fine-grained geographic and demographic breakdowns of the results. The poll also finds Brad Battin leading Jacinta Allan 37-32 on preferred premier; 57% in favour and 19% opposed to Labor’s work-from-home policy; and only 25% considering the state is headed in the right direction, compared with 58% for wrong direction.
The federal voting intention question has Labor leading 55-45, compared with 56.4-43.6 in the state at the May federal election. The primary votes are Labor 32% (down about two points on the election result), Coalition 29% (down about three), the Greens 13% (down half) and One Nation almost doubling to 12%. The poll was conducted September 2 to 9 from a sample of 1327.
Further Victorian state news:
• Two Labor MPs who have been in parliament since 2018 announced this week they would not seek re-election: Steve McGhie, member for the troublesome outer western Melbourne seat of Melton since 2018, and Jackson Taylor, who narrowly gained the eastern suburbs seat of Bayswater in 2018 and was handily re-elected in 2022. There has been no indication as to who might succeed them as Labor candidates, but Rachel Eddie of The Age reports Moorabool councillor Jarrod Bingham, who polled 5.8% as an independent in 2022, may run for the Liberals.
• The Age’s CBD column noted this week that Liberal MLC Nick McGowan has taken to styling himself as “your local MP in Ringwood” on emails to supporters, all but confirming speculation he will run for preselection in the lower house seat of that name. The seat was retained for Labor in 2022 on a 7.5% margin by Will Fowles, who has sat as an independent since being evicted from the parliamentary party in August 2023. Fowles has indicated he may follow the opposite course from McGowan in running for the Legislative Council.
• The Greens have announced public school teacher Campbell Gome will again be the party’s candidate in Northcote, where he fell 184 votes short in 2022.
Thanks KB. I thought it was a bit higher. kirsdarke mentioned some figures a couple of weeks ago referencing 1998, but I couldn’t find his original post nor the figure he quoted.
I’ve just read your blogspot. I was going to ask you what is driving this surge but I see you’ve provided an explanation. That is:
* poor shape of the Coalition
* moderate leader &
* anti immigration protests
I’ll also add that it looks like in this DemosAU respondents were given a choice of Labor, Coalition, Greens, ON or undifferentiated others, and that is sure to drive up the ON vote.
Fair enough.
With DemosAU…
I saw that “59% primary for the Greens amongst 18-24 year old’s”.
I thought this was “error 404” on my screen!
Among female 18-24 year olds, of which they would have surveyed maybe about 50.
I am wary of a key based assessment.. just a gut feeling
Onp will not poll double figures in Vic despite people’s hopes
No worries WB.
Surely your’s and KB’s eyeballs must have fallen out of their sockets when you saw that figure?
I thought they could’ve applied a rim weighting or similar, but to publish “59”. Gosh.
Weighting is relevant to aggregated results, not to the breakdowns from which they are constituted. If you publish breakdowns as finely granulated as these, which in this country rarely happens, you may get the odd result like that one. Ten sets of age x gender breakdowns are provided: you are wrong to make a big deal out of the one of them that looks wrong while paying no mind to the other nine. It may well be that that one wayward result caused the Greens to come in a point or two too high, but polling is often like that.
OK. Yes, I probably have “rabbitted on” about that 59% figure.
It stood out, but I’ll let it go. The rest of the poll had similar numbers to the August Resolve Vic poll.
Mick Quinlivansays:
Sunday, September 28, 2025 at 7:49 pm
“I am wary of a key based assessment.. just a gut feeling”
If it bothers some posters that much, I suggest they ignore them until the final key update.
There’s a reason why Newspoll only publish detailed demographic breakdowns as quarterly aggregates – the sample sizes are far too small otherwise for meaningful results.
@Landlord: “Rob
One Nation is no Reform Party, Le Pen Party or AFD, and the issues and voting systems in Europe are very different to Australia. ”
Indeed.
We are fortunate that the headliner of our main right wing rabblerouser party was just in the right place at the right time and is fundamentally fairly lazy, not a good leader at all. and just happy to keep getting them cheques, and that the billionaire attempting to take over the patch in the past two election cycles is so fundamentally unlikeable that he couldn’t even buy the cookers away from Pauline in sufficient numbers.
But the possibility always exists of a better rabble rouser arising like a toadstool from the leafmold of the mob, so no taking shit for granted.
Highest unemployment of all the states has Victoria for the past 18 months straight the longest period since records began in 1978.
Woke leftie failures in charge of Victoria run by unions.
@pied piper Actually, as of the latest figures right now Victoria has lower unemployment than SA and equal with Qld, and is 0.1% higher than the national average (ie almost nothing). That’s the headline rate, while just as important or probably more: the employment to population ratio and the participation rate, Victoria is 2nd highest of the states on both metrics.
Oops!
It lasted for 17 months then still a record !
The Labor primary vacillating 22-32% across recent polling is interesting. I’m having a little bit of difficulty believing that it could be explained much by actual events, and it’s difficult to have much of a gauge of the electoral mood beyond the subjective.
@Jonesy,
The compulsive need to greatly exaggerate the problems down here is likely the main reason conservatives continue to struggle.
It’s always interesting seeing the internal migration figures showing that more people leave Queensland than Victoria, with Melbourne is consistently preferred over Sydney. The economic data similarly refuses to show that the state is on the brink of collapse. The conservative narrative around the state is just directly transposing Fox News talking points about LA and New York and getting mad that no one other than rusted-on conservatives is buying into it.
Battin’s strategy this time appears to be: do exactly the same thing we’ve done the past 4 elections and hope that it works this time. No plan on energy, no plan on housing affordability, no plan on cost-of-living, no plan on transport. They’re gambling entirely on crime rates rising or that the economy takes a sudden turn for the worse. At best they’re setting themselves up for a repeat of 2010-14.
Well said.
“At best they’re setting themselves up for a repeat of 2010-14.”
And to remind the slow learners at the back, this means a 1-seat majority with a clown show of spivs and miscreants who are likely to forfeit that seat, either (as happened) the 1 seater becoming an independent, and/or a loss of confidence or supply and the need for an election.
Failyou and Naptime exhausted inordinate amounts of political capital on Shaw, trying to keep that majority, while Labor under Andrews as oppo kept their nerve, released sensible policies and expunged the memories of incompetence under late Bracks/Brumby, such as the pathetic transport minister Kosky.
It wasn’t even the need for several dominos to fall, as they did at the end of Kennett’s government. Just 1.
Corleone,
I think it’s worse this time. There just seems to be a complete retreat from acknowledging that problems we face do require long-term thinking that will occur over the span of multiple governments. There are easily many areas of consensus between Labor, the Coalition and the Greens but the incentives to take all-or-nothing approaches to politics seem to be too great, which creates greater uncertainty and inflates the cost of any government action.
@pied piper
My point is it’s no longer current so it’s kind of meaningless now. Also, as I said, it’s just the headline rate, the other data has always been much better for Victoria in that 17 month period. Look, maybe if Vic had the highest unemployment for that period and it was at 11% I’d agree. But the entire time it’s been between 4.1 and 4.7%, which is historically amazingly low.
@Bugler
Good points, the conservative media’s portrayal of Victoria is ridiculous and self defeating. You’re right, it’s like the California / NY narrative in the US. Even on crime, which granted is the weakest point (and I’m not denying crime is too high right now), crime rates are around where they were at the end of 2016 (1% higher to be exact), and still lower than Queensland. But believe me, the amount of coverage of it is a lot more than 1% higher than 2016 would indicate.
Jonesy,
The Libs and the Herald Sun certainly had plenty to say about crime being out-of-control then, too. Didn’t work for them at the 2018 election, but the noise from Turnbull and Dutton during that period about “African gangs” etc wasn’t said to be heard by Victorians. It’s a real mystery why they can’t get any traction here.
I’m a bit more bullish on Victorian Labor’s chances at this point.
Allan is not popular, but the state Liberals continue to be so breathtakingly dysfunctional that Battin only takes the lead when – as has been the case in the last month or so – he’s largely managed to shut up the wackier members of his party.
But as soon as Deeming and friends get back in the headlines for a news cycle or two, Labor gets in front again. I had almost written Labor off until Deeming’s insane response to the Pesutto loan saw them pull back ahead the last time.
And there’s absolutely no prospect of Battin – who doesn’t have all that much control over his caucus at the best of times – being able to actually get the wackier elements to shut up amidst the focus of an election campaign.
Rebecca,
I think the more conservative/reactionary elements believe that a Coalition win is inevitable and therefore they need to campaign for control of the party.
Buglersays:
Sunday, October 5, 2025 at 12:34 pm
Rebecca,
I think the more conservative/reactionary elements believe that a Coalition win is inevitable and therefore they need to campaign for control of the party.
++++++++++++
And they believe against the evidence. I’m not saying Labor is a certainty, it’s sort of the opposite but same with the Dems and Trump. Trump can’t win because:
-criminal
-corrupt
-immoral
-liar
-foreign puppet
-disgusting
-rude
-failure
-insane
and yet he keeps winning. Thinking he doesn’t means you inhabit a social orbit where you just don’t get the information feed that causes his majority to overlook all the above. I have a somewhat conservative group of friends who want state Labor gone…but at least they believe there is little chance with the Battin/Deeming/Prosciutto show.
Jacinta Allan had a presser today for the completion of Town Hall station in the Metro Tunnel, reiterated that the tunnel would open this year, a year ahead of schedule, and had a dig (pun intended) at the Coalition for calling the tunnel a hoax that wouldn’t be built.
I’m pretty confident that this will put the dagger into the Coalition’s chances. The completion of the initial level crossing removal works erased the Coalition’s “skyrail” scare and created the Danslide. These projects are something people can see, ride upon, and most importantly benefit from to the tune of masses of saved time on their commutes, and that is the kind of thing that not only wins votes but makes people into evangelists, because it is life and lifestyle changing for hundreds of thousands of people, including the families etc benefitting indirectly.