The Herald Sun reports a DemosAU/PremierNational poll of Victorian state voting intention has the Coalition’s two-party lead over Labor narrowing from 55-45 to 52-48, from primary votes of Labor 25% (up two), Coalition 30% (down two), One Nation 20% (down two) and Greens 14% (up one). Ben Carroll’s personal ratings are up two for positive to 23%, down two for neutral to 40% and steady on 37% for negative; Jess Wilson’s are down two on positive to 33%, up one on neutral to 42% and up one on negative to 25%; and Warren Pickering’s ratings have responded only moderately to the recent elevation to his public profile, up three on positive to 22%, down five on neutral to 38% and up two on negative to 40%. The poll was conducted September 10 to 20 from a sample of 1020. A full report featuring detailed breakdowns should be on the pollster’s website later today.
UPDATE (1/10): The Herald-Sun today has a Freshwater Strategy poll that gives the Coalition a 53-47 lead on two-party preferred, from primary votes of Labor 24%, Coalition 29%, One Nation 22% and Greens 14%. A three-way preferred premier question has Jess Wilson at 37%, Ben Carroll at 30% and Warren Pickering at 13%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Monday from a sample of 1030.
I am also pleased to announce that the Poll Bludger’s Victorian election guide is now online, with all the customary features: tables, charts, interactive maps and analysis of all 88 lower house seats and eight upper house regions, plus a general overview of the electoral terrain and state politics generally over the past parliamentary term.
No less exciting is a new addition to the BludgerTrack poll aggregate that aims to make sense of the new electoral terrain by projecting outcomes for all 88 seats, based on modelling and the latest reading of the poll aggregate. To cut a long story short, the model is based largely on the relationship between federal and state election results in South Australia, the only case study so far of how voting patterns have changed since One Nation’s apparent transformation from minor to major party, together with Indigenous Voice referendum results (a pointer to strength for One Nation), data on outright home ownership (a pointer to the Liberals) and whether the seat has a Coalition incumbent (which appeared to be a relevant factor in the seats where the Liberals held out against One Nation in South Australia). If this approach proves its worth, I may end up applying it to the federal context.
The seat projection currently suggests Labor will be copping it at both ends, losing exactly enough seats to the Coalition to give the latter a bare majority of 45 seats while also bearing almost the entire brunt of One Nation’s 15 seat haul, in contrast to South Australia where Labor’s primary vote was 37.5% as compared with BludgerTrack Victoria’s current estimate of 25.2%. The former includes what would undoubtedly be some surprise Liberal gains in Melbourne, including Albert Park, Eltham and not least the Premier’s seat of Niddrie, with the very considerable qualification that the model makes little allowance for candidates’ personal votes. One Nation is credited with a new empire extending from Melbourne’s outer north and west through the Ballarat seats to Ripon, along with scattered gains elsewhere. UPDATE: A correction/revision to the model has made its projection less rosy for the Coalition, who are now at only 38 seats.
Re Marh @10:16 PM.
A Dutton-led opposition was always going to oppose the Voice. To get it through would have required a united and coherent Yes case, which is a long way from what we got.
Thanks William.
If ALP preference ON above Nats and a fair number of voters actually followed it, the Nats would lose all their seats and the Coal would be denied a majority.
Not going to happen because blowback and probably would be followed much anyway
Jim Lsays:
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 at 8:48 pm
“Not sure if I’ve read this right. Correct me if I haven’t. ON didn’t win any Labor seats. They got close in a few outer suburban seats, but weren’t close in others. ON v Liberals, ON got a 4% higher primary vote than the Libs but still got one less seat and only equalled the Independent’s numbers. Didn’t think they’d preference well.”
That’s right, you didn’t read it right;
I specifically said one nation “nearly” won 14% of Labor’s seats.
That was the SA state election, where Labor won in a landslide in both primary votes and 2PP.
Unlike SA, Labor is not winning a landslide in Victoria.
How can Pickering lead One Nation if he can’t even win the seat he’s contesting (Pakenham).
Many thanks to those with kind words to offer about my election guide and seats projection. And a reminder for any of you who are particularly impressed that donations are gratefully received through the “Become a Supporter” button at the top of the page.
If the numbers show that an ALP majority, or even minority, is off the table, do we need to discuss if a Coalition majority is preferrable to a minority where they will be reliant on ON (or a Coalition-ON Coalition)?
Ben Carroll is clearly far better than Jacinta Allen when it comes to the presentation side of it or the media game(for want of a better term). If only they’d had the brains to make him Premier 6 months earlier than they did.
Federal factors won’t help Victorian Labor in the run up to November.
I won’t be surprised either if One Nation only win 2 or 3 lower house seats in regional Victoria.
I think a minority with ON would actually be better in the long run. It would be chaotic / constantly at risk of collapse and potentially damage both. For ON in particular people would finally see what they would try to do in government and I suspect it would be a wake up call for many.
Democracy Sausagesays:
Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 8:17 am
“Ben Carroll is clearly far better than Jacinta Allen when it comes to the presentation side of it or the media game(for want of a better term). If only they’d had the brains to make him Premier 6 months earlier than they did.
Federal factors won’t help Victorian Labor in the run up to November.
I won’t be surprised either if One Nation only win 2 or 3 lower house seats in regional Victoria.”
Yeah, reading off a script would really help fight off the populists/s
It’ll be really funny if you’re right and one nation only wins 17% of its projected gains.
If ALP brings up the primary vote to 27-28 ON will start to get locked out of seats. Currently they are projecting 10-15 gains but it all collapses to <5 with a few more PV gains to Labor. That's clearly the first aim and to me it seems Ben Carroll and Vic ALP are doing exactly things that will help in those seats.
Obviously there is a fattening up the pig on market day vibes to it all but it is what it is.
Ben needs to get better at public speaking though and needs it fast. I think he is warming up but we are on the 4th quarter already.
Libs and Jess Wilson didn't have much cut through lately but they don't need to. ON on the ground seems invisible but algorithm is doing the work for them.
While conceding that I have no idea how the election results will fall may I drew attention to the AFL Grand Final and “Wharfie Time”.
Like Fremantle many LNP and One Nation leaning commentators have rung the bells for the right wing victory. Will Labor kick 4 goals in 4 minutes and bring in the 4 peat ? Who knows ?
A week in politics is a long time, two months. is a lifetime.
Long time PB reader, first time commenter.
Ben Carroll has been disappointing as a media performer (he has trouble putting coherent sentences together – probably just nerves), but he’s not as toxic as Jacinta.
Despite all the talk about how good Jess Wilson is, I think she’s underperformed – she should be miles ahead as Preferred Premier. The Libs keeping the clown show from rearing it’s head since Moira left is helping but she’s not capitalising. There’s still two months for them to screw it up.
Once the election campaign starts, I do think Labor can get the PV up to 28%. I think the Greens will be winning many more lower house seats than the last election (where they came close in many) – put them down for 6. I think minority Coalition government is the most likely outcome (even though, based on the shocking performance of Labor, it should be a Coalition landslide).
My gut-feel is that William’s projection is:
– giving Labor too much hope of holding on to seats in the eastern suburbs;
– giving One Nation too many seats in the northern and western suburbs; and
– not accounting at all for the possibility of One Nation wiping the floor with the Nationals in rural areas.
@Gorks, I think the reason why Jess Wilson and Victoria Coalition hasn’t built any new momentum recently is since she (and Victorian Coalition as a whole) runs vile and negative campaigns against Labor (borrowed from far-right grifter and often colludes with them) so her momentum might just be from a massive echo chamber of people who really hated Jacinta Allan while not being a ONP Core supporter but beyond that, it might not work well on more soft opposition/moderate/apathetic people who might see this as annoying and a big ego. I also see once you see more of Jess Wilson and her election promises, she is not really moderate and rather closer to the IPA and Right-wing Grifter than a Teal (virtually repeating history like Turnbull and Baillieu all over again).
Are Labor cooked? Probably, but the unprecedented nature of this contest (not calling SA a precedent given the very different state of play there) does make it seemingly very hard to call. You can see the bottom falling out of One Nation, but can also see them holding ground in the polls or even gaining even more- I can see them winning 2 seats or 20- surely at least the former number.
It’s worth checking out The Swing Is On and the calculator there- you can get a projection of a seat count that would provide for a Labor minority government with even a fairly small bump in the Labor primary coupled with the Coalition staying where they are and a slight drop off in ON support; for example Labor 27.0% Coalition 29.0% Greens 13.5% One Nation 20.0% Other, Left‑leaning 5.6% Other, Right‑leaning 4.6% Other, Unaligned 0.3% produces Labor 42, Coalition 37, Green 7, One Nation 2.
For what it’s worth I think the Labor vote might hold up better than expected in the eastern suburbs, though the killer could be if they get a big whack in Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo seats and the outer ‘burbs.
I am a tad confused…. a whole lot of seats seemed to have bounced around since yesterday, some like Prahran are quite understandable but others are not. William, can you explain that
Jess Wilson isn’t building any momentum as she’s completely unrelatable for the average voter.
The longer the voters hear her talk, the more they realise she’s straight out of the private school bubble, never got past being school debating captain, and has no idea what’s happening further east than about Middlesborough Rd.
At least with Hanson, the outer suburban working class voter can pretend that she’s one of them.
Expat
There is a clear social difference between Jess type conservatives and ON type conservatives, and that is not a bad thing for the Liberal Party if they come to terms with it, since Howard, they have tried walking a fine line between their Jess Wilson wing and Pauline wing but they haven’t got much in common besides hating the Labor Party.
Not Dan or Jacintasays:
Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 10:20 am
Long time PB reader, first time commenter.
Ben Carroll has been disappointing as a media performer (he has trouble putting coherent sentences together – probably just nerves), but he’s not as toxic as Jacinta.
********************
Genuinely interested – what do you regard as ‘toxic’ about Jacinta. I figured her a massive failure, but not ‘toxic’.
It turns out my “Coalition incumbent” variable wasn’t firing. Correcting this has indeed made quite a bit of difference, most notably to the Coalition tally, which is now only at 38. And the changes are in the direction of what I was expecting to see going on — Pakenham is now being called for One Nation, Albert Park for Labor.
A selective interpretation of Victorian polls across Ben Carroll’s social media today with misleading statements such as “CONFIRMED: Liberals need One Nation to form government in Victoria” and “Polling says Victoria is on track for a Liberal-One Nation government”.
Overall, polls were leaning this way in June and July, though even then they were mixed. However, since August, only Roy Morgan suggests a “confirmed” Coalition minority, with Resolve leaning that way. Whereas DemosAU, Freshwater and Redbridge are suggesting a Coalition majority to varying extents.
In addition, it’s still another two months to go and anything could happen with primaries like this! A lot will depend on whether the Coalition can make the top two in enough seats. If Labor and One Nation can improve their primaries relative to the Coalition, Labor could cling on by knocking the Coalition out of the top two and winning on preferences against One Nation in enough seats. Whereas if the Coalition can strengthen their lead against their opponents, a Coalition majority would be more likely than it is now.
Not Dan or Jacinta
Welcome.
If we had not had the ON surge and they were still around 5% in Victoria it would be interesting to see how things would be travelling. I suspect the Coalition would be much better placed for an outright majority – maybe 50 seats.
As it is I am in the camp that doesn’t believe ON will win 15-20 seats. I think the Coalition will win 38-46 – a narrow majority or just falling short.
I was talking to a Liberal person the other day who says lots of them are terrified of ON – but I just can’t see ON beating the Liberals across SE Melbourne seats.
Freshwater Strategy poll in the Herald Sun has the Coalition leading 53-47: ALP 24, L-NP 29, ON 22, GRN 14. No link currently available.
It’s hard to see the LNP getting to a majority off a primary vote under 30 so the tweaked model suggesting 38 seats sounds more accurate
They’d need One Nation support to get over the line, will they accept it? And at what price if they do?
In saying that, with Labor on 24 and the Greens on 14 they have no chance. This combined number needs to get over 40 and closer to 45 is my guess
It’s going to be a fascinating campaign, will Pickering be invited to join the debates? It’ll probably be good for everyone else if he is
@HBG
Pickering will be invited to join the debates as will Sandell.
We now have 4 parties polling at 14% or above.
Pickering will be exposed as a Morin but he is campaigning on feels so that won’t be an issue for his followers, who just want to impose their own misery on others.
The irony is we still live in heaven on Earth! People need a little perspective. They are not getting that from sensationalist media.
“Pickering will be exposed as a Morin but he is campaigning on feels so that won’t be an issue for his followers, who just want to impose their own misery on others.”
I want to believe that this contingent of followers is more in the order of 10% rather than 20%.
I’m also anticipating that the campaign will reveal a ton of skeletons with the ON candidates
Thanks for sharing the latest Freshwater. No real movement here with both majors down a point on primaries.
Hard Being Green – I’d interpret the latest Freshwater as leaning towards a Coalition majority given the relative primaries. The Coalition was on 39 seats in much weaker relative positions in the old Redbridge and YouGov MRPs.
Article in the Herald Sun
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/james-campbell-while-the-polls-suggest-a-twopartypreferred-landslide-of-5347-the-reality-is-no-one-can-be-quite-sure-how-the-cards-will-fall/news-story/3addc7ff757d3cb15d61eda1643ac11e
@Corleone re your genuine interest:
I think any objective and informed observer would describe Jacinta as toxic. In fact, toxic may be generous…radioactive is probably more accurate.
As a PB commenter on a VIC thread, you surely know that she had a disapproval rating of +70%. That’s radioactive…plutonium grade!
You may not know about the comments that every single post on social media about her attracted: they were brutal. Truly nasty stuff. Carroll’s posts routinely attract negative comments, but no where near the level of vitriol she got.
And one piece of reported intel: Labor MPs literally said “they hate her” when they talked about trying to speak to constituents. They now report people are at least open to having a conversation.
Convinced?
Oops should have added that the article I linked above is from James Campbell analysing latest poll
Not Dan or Jacintasays:
Thursday, October 1, 2026 at 12:48 pm
@Corleone re your genuine interest:
I think any objective and informed observer would describe Jacinta as toxic. In fact, toxic may be generous…radioactive is probably more accurate.
As a PB commenter on a VIC thread, you surely know that she had a disapproval rating of +70%. That’s radioactive…plutonium grade!
****************
I got all that, what I was asking was WHY? I had her down as a failure – had an agenda and a basic goal of trying to do Labor policies AND get re-elected, and she failed.
The question is what did the punters hate about HER?
I have lived through Bolte, Hamer, Thompson, Cain, Kirner, Kennett, Bracks, Brumby, Baillieu, Napthine, Andrews and then Allan and would have had he somewhere in the middle of that group if I had to rank them.
She was a bit of an also-ran, not good enough to be genuinely liked, but neither bad enough to be hated. So that is what I am asking.
Labor upper house candidates to be decided one month before state election as major losses loom
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-01/victoria-labor-upper-house-ticket-mp/107215764
“While the party currently has two MPs in all regions except one, Labor expects almost all its candidates in the number two position on their ballots will be turfed out at the election.
:::
In this scenario, Labor’s representation in the upper house would be reduced to just nine MPs.
Factional groupings have been thrashing out deals to protect and prioritise MPs in losing positions, dragging out the process and frustrating MPs unsure of their candidacy.
Senior ministers Ingrid Stitt and Enver Erdogan both currently hold the second position in their regions.
A deal hashed out in an attempt to spare Mr Erdogan has angered local members, who are petitioning the party to retain their existing MP.”
@Corleone
I refer you back to your original comment that she’s “a massive failure”. Doesn’t that answer the question? You asked me why I regard her as toxic: it’s based on the evidence I presented. I’m not particularly interested in debating what you or I think about her – the fact is she’s been adjudicated as demonstrably toxic by the public, which is what I was pointing to in my analysis. Of course, you’re free to share your opinion given your years of observation. I suspect you might have a view on it. CAPITALISING certain words isn’t going to suck me into a debate with you on the merits of it.
Jacinta wasn’t toxic. She just wasn’t a BLOKE*.
Labor women are automatically toxic on internet fora.
We are literally a bunch of cavemen. As a society we have lost our manners. I personally gave the bird to some One Nation campaigners despite being opposed to such shenanigans.
*I randomly capitalised that word for fun.
Welcome aboard Not Dan. We need some newbies!
Yep. Despite our progressive moniker. Victorians prove themselves to be a misogynist lot. Sigh…….
I have no difficulty with Shoebridge’s attacks on Netanyahu and on Israel.
But Shoebridge has largely or completely been silent on the genocidal vision statements, and efforts, by Iran, Heshbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.
He is pathetically one-sided when it comes to his ME judgements.
Shoebridge is also utterly pathetic when it comes to his vision for the ADF: this is to gut it completely.
His vision for getting rid of Labor and replacing it with the Greens will crater on that crass ideological stupidity alone.
Will the Hanson/Taylor government work systematically to reduce access to voting in Australia?
There have been various attempts by the Right in this general direction over time.
Hanson wants to increase the voting age to 21 for starters.
@Rocket Rocket
@Mabwm
Thanks for the welcome, I’ve been reading PB for years.
I would not be placing any faith in the polling being presented by media, the reason being the part media are attempting to play in any defeat of the government with their never ending attacks
Simply, the Liberal Party are on the nose Australia wide hence One Nation representing the right wing of politics – so why would Victoria be different?
And is that Campbell, a Liberal Party identity whose wife is a perennial chaser of seat in ANY parliament for the Liberal Party?
And beaten every time
Corleonesays:
Thursday, October 1, 2026 at 1:43 pm
I got all that, what I was asking was WHY? I had her down as a failure – had an agenda and a basic goal of trying to do Labor policies AND get re-elected, and she failed.
The question is what did the punters hate about HER.
_______________________
Lots of things.
She turned a blind eye to corruption which cost taxpayers billions.
The way she answered questions from journalists.
“Let me be very clear on this”
“I don’t accept the premise of your question”
She never had any real life experiences outside of politics. Uni, staffer, then a MP.
The Commonwealth Games debacle.
The lack of transparency. Easily the most secretive govt this State has ever seen.
She will go down as one of our worst.
Peter
Can ignore the media but the polling is independent.
In order to remain Premier, Ben Carroll must win Niddrie, but PB is projecting a Lib win.
I agree with Landlord. It’s healthy to be sceptical of the media, but I don’t understand the reason for not trusting the polls themselves. Some of the same pollsters, including DemosAU and YouGov, produced extraordinarily accurate pre-election polls in South Australia earlier this year.
In the seat projection, I’m curious about Albert Park only having a projected 5% swing to the Libs while neighbouring Prahran has a projected 14% swing to the Libs.
I know Prahran has a semi-incumbent (just over a third of a term) but I wouldn’t think the incumbency factor would be 9% and also, in an election where Labor are no doubt very “on the nose”, I would think a seat with a Labor incumbent would probably swing harder than a seat like Prahran where they will barely feature in the contest.
I’m guessing it might just be a result of the limitation that’s already been mentioned about the model not handling the 3CP well for Greens contests, as it only picks one of either ALP or GRN to match up against both LIB and ON, whereas in seats like Prahran & Albert Park, both ALP and GRN will almost certainly make the 3CP ahead of ON.
I mean in Prahran, the Libs having a 3CP in the 40s after ON are eliminated is totally expected; but the Libs having a 40% 3CP in addition to a 16% ON 3CP seems very unrealistic.
Most of that no doubt is in the Coalition incumbency variable at work. I could have made a judgement call that the Liberal member hasn’t been there long enough to be regarded as such, in which case the model would undoubtedly be favouring the Greens. Perhaps I should have, because its main purpose was to register how much better Liberal incumbents did in holding out against One Nation in South Australia, so you may think it doesn’t apply here. But ultimately my advice is to not ask too much of the model.
The full DemosAU poll report has finally turned up on their website.
https://demosau.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/DemosAU-Report-Victoria-Poll-September-2026.pdf
Couple of key points, I suppose:
Libs have consolidated their primary vote in a couple of usually strong Labor constituencies…
* Uni Educated – Libs 34, Labor 21
* Female vote – Libs 27 (actually down 10 points in a month, but still leading), Labor 25
* Inner metro – Libs 32, Labor 28
OTOH, the ALP vote seems to be holding up (somewhat) in regional Victoria, at 23%. Not the best result, but not falling off a cliff.
I’ll stick with my previous assessment that the Libs are on track for an outright majority.
My main reasoning is that the Libs really only need to finish in the final 2, and they’ll benefit from either ON or Labor votes at the 3PP distribution stage.
They’re going to rack up quite a lot of seats, albeit off an anaemic primary hovering around 29-30.
The other poll subject to this thread – Freshwater – hasn’t downloaded the full report to their site yet.
Thanks for the context William!
Yeah if the purpose of that LIB incumbency variable was mostly to indicate the impact on the ON vote – that is, how well the LIB incumbent does at holding off ON replacing them in a 2CP for example – then in inner seats like Prahran it’s not particularly relevant as ON won’t even make the 3CP, and all it probably does it make that 16% ON 3CP even less realistic and reinforce that the 3CP will be different to the model.
A 40% LIB 3CP is very realistic but not in conjunction with a 16% ON 3CP because it’s the ON vote that the LIB incumbency factor would be most likely to subdue.
I don’t quite know what the primary votes were behind that calculation but I’d say a more realistic 3CP there would be something like 44 LIB, 35 GRN and 21 ALP. But if the model had to have ON in the 3CP so ON’s distribution gets removed from those figures and ALP’s 21 gets distributed, it’d probably look something more like 39 LIB (noting they no longer have any ON preference flow), 50 GRN (getting most of the ALP, AJP & VS flow), 11 ON (very weak flow from ALP, AJP, VS).
I take your point too that the model is just a rough high level picture of seat estimates but there are going to be exceptions to that rule, those exceptions mostly being in seats where both ALP & GRN are certain to make the 3CP ahead of ON.
Thanks for the link Nadia, the Greens vote is really being dragged down by the 55+ cohort and I’m guessing 55+ males
Nadia – Thanks for sharing the full DemosAU report. The regional breakdown suggests a Coalition majority.
The Coalition are well ahead in outer metro with a 29% primary, with Labor and One Nation 6 points behind on 23% each. With these primaries, the Coalition should stay in the top two in the final count in many of the critical contests here.
Even in inner metro, the Coalition (32%) have a lead over Labor (28%), and now One Nation are ahead of the Greens here, which will not help Labor. This contrasts with the last Queensland election, where Labor performed strongly in inner Brisbane.
I still think it’s too early to call. However, of the recent polls, my reading is that DemosAU, Freshwater and Redbridge favour a Coalition majority, whereas Resolve and Roy Morgan favour a Coalition minority.
I’m expecting either the Coalition to strengthen their lead and win a majority comfortably or Labor to have a good campaign and just cling on to government.
Agree this will likely be all about whether the Coalition can get to the top two in enough seats. The regional breakdown in the September DemosAU suggests they can.