Time for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly donation drive, and its attendant promotion of the site’s activities. A minor festival of democracy unfolds over the coming weeks: Saturday sees the Nepean state by-election in Victoria, together with elections for two of the seats in Tasmania’s 15-seat Legislative Council; the race-that-stops-the-nation event of the Farrer by-election will follow on Saturday week; and a third by-election, for the Queensland state seat of Stafford, on May 16. Links to guides for each of the three by-elections can be found in the sidebar, and as always the site will be running its live results and projections feature on election night and beyond. This is a fairly major undertaking on my part, as by-elections are useful dry runs for general elections.
Other recent projects have included a reupholstering of the Victorian state BludgerTrack, after the polling industry suddenly and unanimously went from not reporting One Nation up to the end of last year to having them at upwards of 20%. As can be seen from the primary vote trend, January marks the point where the One Nation-free series comes to an end and a new trend measure inclusive of One Nation begins. The trend measures for the new series are a whole lot more volatile than they should be at present, but this should resolve itself as more data becomes available.
The federal BludgerTrack is in good shape, for which it can probably thank One Nation: its surge seems to have been a boon to the opinion polling industry, which has produced a reliable supply of multiple polls a week that are often quite generous in the breakdowns provided. The trend measures for the smaller states especially can get a bit dubious when polling is in short supply, but they are currently looking quite robust. Note that as well as providing trend measures, BludgerTrack comes with a polling data archive in which you can peruse the various pollsters’ federal voting intention results broken down by state, gender, age cohort, income bracket and more. Particularly instructive are the breakdowns by vote at the 2025 election, which provides a detailed picture of where One Nation’s vote is coming from.
For these and other reasons, you may feel it worth making a contribution to the upkeep of this site, which is entirely reliant on reader donations. These can be made through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the page and the bottom of each blog post.
