Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

Polls: RedBridge Group, Spectre Strategy, DemosAU Sydney and Melbourne marginals (open thread)

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”.

Going with the flow

Amid talk that One Nation might prove the Coalition’s salvation, an in-depthlook at how preferences might flow.

Talk of a potential boilover is increasingly focusing on the possibility of a radical change in preference flows, which loom ever larger in pollsters’ two-party preferred calculations as the major party vote inexorably declines. A piece in Inside Story from Peter Brent nicely summarised the conventional wisdom surrounding the matter: previous election flows are typically more reliable than respondent allocation, because some voters are guided by a how-to-vote card they don’t have when responding to an opinion poll. However, it is clear that the flow of preferences from One Nation to the Coalition have strengthened over time, and this is the basis of claims that pollsters’ two-party preferred results are selling the Coalition short.

The Financial Review reported yesterday that polling by JWS Research suggested it to have reached a game-changing 90% in a number of outer suburban seats that are normally safe for Labor, though this seems far too radical a change to be plausible and would in any case have been based off small samples. The was pursued in a column today talking up the Coalition’s chances in The Nightly by Andrew Carswell, a former press secretary to Scott Morrison, again with reference to polling from JWS Research.

Carswell makes the incorrect claim that the “vast majority of current polls … oddly determine preference flows based on 2022”: in fact, only RedBridge Group and DemosAU do so (and the former has included a respondent-allocated preferences result in its latest poll, as discussed in my other post). Roy Morgan, for one, uses respondent-allocated preferences for its headline figures, as well as providing a measure from the 2022 election. So, apparently, does Freshwater Strategy, which has been the strongest series for the Coalition for most of the term – though this has had a lot more to do with its reading of the primary vote than preference flows. Certainly it did so for its New South Wales election state polling, though beyond that I can find no hard information.

The chart below records the overall share of independent and minor party preferences to Labor implied by the respondent-allocated two-party results of Morgan and Freshwater. That data in the former case is voluminous enough to allow for a trend calculation – the latter just joins the dots. The apparent decline in Freshwater Strategy’s flow to Labor this year is tempered by the fact that had in fact been crediting Labor throughout 2024 with even stronger preference flows than in 2022 – nonetheless, most of its two-party numbers this year would likely have come in a point higher for Labor if 2022 preference flows had been applied. Roy Morgan’s flows to Labor have consistently been even stronger to Labor than in 2022 (note that it has nonetheless produced stronger two-party preferred results for Labor on its previous election preferences measure because of its elevated result for independents, 63.8% of which has been allocated to Labor).

YouGov has lately pursued a middle course, based on some manner of blend of the 2022 flows and respondent-allocated preferences from the vast surveys the company has conducted for its MRP surveys. Its most recent methodology statement explains it has been giving Labor 80% of Greens preferences (85.7%), 59% from independents (63.8%, with help from teals), 33% from One Nation (35.7%, as noted) and 49% from the rest (45.3%). As of early February, Newspoll has bumped up the share of One Nation preferences to Labor by an unspecified amount, partly inspired by their 73.8% flow to the LNP at the Queensland election in October, compared with 66.9% in that state at the 2022 federal election. The observed difference since would neatly be explained if the share had increased from 64.3% to 70%.

Interestingly, none of the talk relates to the possibility that a record-breaking 85.7% flow of Greens preferences to Labor might not be repeated three years after the Morrison government made way for a Labor regime that has regularly disappointed progressive sentiment in relation to environmental approvals and the war in Gaza. If YouGov has it right though, this factor will do far more damage to Labor’s two-party share than anything Hanson or Palmer voters have in store.

I haven’t troubled to accommodate any of this in BludgerTrack, which follows 2022 election flows straight down the line: 85.7% to Labor from the Greens, 35.7% from One Nation and 50.0% from the remainder. Despite this, I will share in the general surprise if Labor indeed does that well on preferences this time. What follows is an attempt to determine the two-party vote under various proposed scenarios. The first step was to produce a crude but plausible-looking breakdown of the 12.7% “others” by splitting the difference between the most recent results from YouGov and DemosAU, both of whom provide results for Trumpet of Patriots and independents.

Primary 2022 YouGov Newspoll Maximal
ALP 32.8% 52.7% 52.0% 52.2% 50.1%
L-NP 34.3% 47.3% 48.0% 47.8% 49.9%
GRN 12.4%
ON 7.8%
UAP 3.0%
IND 5.1%
OTH 4.7%

The 2022 result is self-explanatory; YouGov uses the numbers from that pollster detailed above; Newspoll presumes I’m right about One Nation preferences splitting 70-30 and otherwise being unchanged from 2022; and “Maximal” indulges the claims being made from the JWS Research polling by inflating One Nation’s flow to the Coalition to 80% (from 65.2% in 2019 and 64.3% in 2022) and Trumpet of Patriots to 75% (from 65.1% for the United Australia Party in 2019 and 61.8% in 2022).

Donation drive

In a spirit of striking while the iron is hot, a special federal election edition of the Poll Bludger’s normally bi-monthly donation drive, to which you can contribute through the “become a supporter” buttons that appear at the top of the site and the bottom of each post. These posts double as an occasion to promote my site’s wares, such as the fact that I’ve made good on my objective of publishing a federal politics post for each day of the campaign, only a few of which were limited to rote dissemination of polling numbers. Obviously there’s no danger of me dropping the ball on that score on the few days that remain.

The biggest looming attraction though is the live results feature on election night, now based on a three-candidate model that hopefully had the bugs ironed out of it when it had a run at the Western Australian election in March. This will prove especially useful in Macnamara, the Greens seats in Brisbane and possibly one or two other places I can’t presently foresee. To this will be added the brand new bell and/or whistle of a a map results display, of which you can get a very clear sense based on this test run from the 2022 election, recording how it saw the situation at around 8:30pm on the night (note that the page architecture is set up for the current election, so the map has Bullwinkel but not North Sydney and the table reflects this election rather than the last).

The map will colour in as results are reported to reflect who the system deems to be ahead or to have won, respectively indicated with a lighter or darker shade. Scroll over an electorate on the map and you’ll a window with a two-party pie chart and other essentials of the result. Click and the results page for the seat will be revealed, featuring progress totals, projections, probability estimates, a table recording votes and swings for each booth and, if you click on the button at the bottom, a booth results display map.

Resolve Strategic: 53-47 to Labor (open thread)

Another poll showing Labor with an election-winning lead, as the Coalition stakes its hopes on improved preference flows.

Nine Newspapers has the final Resolve Strategic poll for the campaign, which credits Labor with a two-party lead of 53-47, in from 53.5-46.5 at the last poll two weeks ago. The primary votes are Labor 31% (steady), Coalition 35% (up one), Greens 14% (up one) and One Nation 7% (up one). As invariably occurs after the closure of nominations, when the response options reflect the ballot paper rather than generic categories, there has been a substantial drop for independents, down four to 8%. Anthony Albanese is up one on both approval and disapproval, to 46% and 44%, while Peter Dutton is down one to 33% and up four to 57%. The gap on preferred prime minister is unchanged, Albanese’s lead shifting from 46-30 to 47-31. The poll also found 30% holding that Donald Trump made them less likely to vote Coalition compared with 15% for more likely, compared with 21% apiece for Labor. It was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 2010 “using a combination of online and telephone polling of a representative sample of the broader voting public” — I believe the telephone component adds around 400 to its normal online sample of around 1600.

Elsewhere, the Financial Review leads today with a report that JWS Research seat polling shows right-wing minor party voters favouring the Coalition on preferences in far greater degree than usual, specifically by 90% in Whitlam and Werriwa and 85% in the rather different milieu of Ryan. Such numbers help explain the Coalition’s bullishness about “a certain demographic of seats — outer suburban, mortgage-belt electorates with blue-collar workforces, substantial commute times, high cost-of-living sensitivities, and, in some cases, high crime rates”, most notably Whitlam and Gorton, where the Liberals claim their polling recently had them slightly ahead. Right-wing minor parties are said to be “collectively polling above 10%” in such seats, a none too radical claim – at the last election, One Nation and the United Australia Party polled between 12.3% and 14.9% between them in Bruce, Holt, Gorton, Hawke, Whitlam and Werriwa.

Preference flows are another matter: across the six seats just mentioned, Labor received 45.0% of preferences from One Nation 41.7% from United Australia. Labor would lose around 3% from their margins if that were to drop to 20%, assuming a stable One Nation and United Australia vote. It may certainly be the case that factors are at play here specific to outer suburban demography, and One Nation preferences have certainly become stronger for the Coalition over time. However, the notion of a sudden seismic movement is discouraged by the findings of YouGov, which has been registering respondent-allocated preference flows as part of its massive MRP surveys and using them to project two-party preferred results from its regular national polling. On this basis, One Nation votes are being split 67-33 in the Coalition’s favour – only modestly wider than the 64.3-35.7 recorded at the 2022 election.

Today’s instalment of Chart of the Day is an update of last week’s effort tracking the volume of early voting in comparison with 2022. Impressive daily numbers have fuelled reportage of an historic upsurge, but this partly reflects the limitation of opportunities resulting from Easter Monday and Anzac Day. The third of these charts puts things in proper perspective by recording cumulative early voting as a share of enrolment, which stood at 19.2% as of the close of Monday, compared with 17.9% at the same point in 2022.

Polls: Essential Research, DemosAU, Roy Morgan (open thread)

Three new polls crediting Labor with a two-party lead of either 52-48 or 53-47, plus a look at the Northern Territory wild card seat of Lingiari.

Three new national voting intention results, plus a poll of marginal LNP seats in Brisbane:

• The Guardian reports Essential Research has chanced its hand at a conventional two-party reading, as distinct from its 2PP+ measure inclusive of an undecided component (which on this occasion comes in at Labor 49.6%, Coalition 45.6%). In common with Newspoll and DemosAU (see below), it credits Labor with a 52-48 lead. Primary vote results also seemingly dispense with the usual undecided component, putting Labor at 32%, the Coalition at 34%, the Greens at 13% and One Nation at 10%. Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings are unchanged on a fortnight ago at 44% approval and 47% disapproval, while Peter Dutton is steady at 39% and up three to 51%. The poll had a larger than usual sample of 2163, and was presumably conducted Wednesday to Sunday. More to follow when the full report is published later today.

• DemosAU published two polls yesterday, one being a national voting intention result remarkable for its high non-major party vote: Labor 29%, down 3.6% from the 2022 election and four points from the last national DemosAU poll in early February; Coalition 31%, down 4.7% and six points; Greens 14%, up 1.8% and two points; and One Nation on 9%, up 4.0% and two points; 3% for Trumpet of Patriots; and 7% for independents. This leaves two-party preferred heavily dependent on the correctness of preference flows, which in this case were allocated according to the result in 2022, an approach most pollsters have judged to be too favourable to Labor. This pans out to a 52-48 Labor lead, though based on the primary votes it can’t have been far off 53-47 – applying YouGov’s more conservative preference formula still produces 52-48. The DemosAU release also includes a more favourable 54-46 result for Labor using only the first pass at the voting intention question, which pollsters routinely follow with a prompt in which undecided voters are asked which way they are leaning, rarely publishing results for the first question in isolation of it. The poll also found Anthony Albanese leading Peter Dutton 43-34 on preferred prime minister. It was conducted last Tuesday and Wednesday from a sample of 1073.

• The second DemosAU poll presents an aggregated result for the Brisbane marginals of Bonner, Dickson, Forde, Longman and Petrie. Consistent with the current Queensland trend reading of BludgerTrack, this records little change on 2022 in two-party terms, the LNP’s lead of 53-47 comparing with 53.4-46.6 across the five seats in 2022. The collective major party decline is in this case more modest, with Labor on 27%, down from 30.2% in 2022; LNP 40%, down from 41.0%; Greens 13%, up from 11.6%; and One Nation 7%, up from 6.5%. The poll was conducted April 18 to 23 from a sample of 1053.

• After a series of Labor blowouts over the past month or two, the weekly Roy Morgan poll records a moderation to a two-party lead of 53-47 on the headline respondent-allocated preferences measure, in from 55.5-44.5 last week. The primary votes are Labor 34% (down half), Coalition 34.5% (up half), Greens 13% (down one-and-a-half) and One Nation 7.5% (up one-and-a-half). Labor’s lead on preference flows from the 2022 election was 54-46, in from 55.5-44.5 The accompanying release says the survey found “the Coalition performing better among those who had already voted”, though the sample here would have been barely 200. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1524.

Today’s instalment of Chart of the Day looks at the under-examined seat of Lingiari, which covers the Northern Territory outside of Darwin. Labor has held the seat since the territory was first split into two electorates in 2001, but the margin fell below 1% on two occasions — including in 2022, when it recorded a 4.5% swing against the trend. The purpose of the exercise is to illustrate that there is little telling what might happen in a potentially decisive seat that Labor holds on a post-redistribution margin of 1.6%. Specifically, the charts show the two-party preferred results going back two decades for the “remote mobile” booths, which are largely though not entirely concerned with servicing the territory’s Indigenous communities.

Two elections stand out in recording a near-halving in the absolute number of Labor votes: 2010, which presumably related to the Rudd-Gillard government’s perpetuation of the Howard government’s sweeping “intervention” policy in remote communities, and 2022, which Anthony Albanese attributed to the Morrison government having “ripped resources out of the Electoral Commission” in a “deliberate policy of the former government to restrict people voting in the territory”. Labor was also hampered by the retirement of Warren Snowdon, whose career as a federal parliamentarian went back to 1987. Snowdon’s Country Liberal opponent at his last election in 2019 was Jacinta Price, who gained a 2.7% swing and entered the Senate in 2022.

Whatever the veracity of Albanese’s claim, the drop in the Labor vote from 12,318 to 7,100 broadly coincided with a cut in Labor’s final winning margin from 5,292 votes to 866. One of the feature of the result among many was a drop in the total formal vote from 48,434 to 45,812, and in the turnout rate from 72.85% to 66.83%. This was less than half the average formal vote across the country’s 151 lower house seats, as Northern Territory enrolment numbers are already substantially below the norm due to a population barely enough to entitle it to a second seat, and turnout in the electorate is low at the best of times. The situation only slightly improved at the 2023 Indigenous Voice referendum, at which the remote mobile booths recorded 12,204 formal votes (73.3% of which were for yes) compared with 10,223 in 2022 and 16,114 in 2019.

Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor (open thread)

With less than a week to go, Newspoll continues to credit Labor with a modest lead.

The Australian reports Newspoll finds very little change on last week, with Labor continuing to lead 52-48 on two-party preferred and the primary vote remaining at 34% for Labor and 35% for the Coalition. The Greens are down a point to 11% and One Nation is up one to 8%. The only detail offered on leaders’ ratings at this stage is that Anthony Albanese’s net approval is unchanged at minus 9 while Peter Dutton is down two to minus 24.  Albanese led Dutton by 51-35 as better PM (52-36 previously). The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1254.

UPDATE: Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings are unchanged at 43% approval and 52% disapproval, while Peter Dutton is steady on 35% approval and up two on disapproval to 59%. Albanese’s lead on preferred prime minister shifts from 52-36 to 51-35. The poll also finds 39% holding Labor deserving of re-election, up five since February, with 48% favouring the alternative option of “it’s time to give someone else a go”, down five. Thirty-eight per cent rate themselves “confident the Coalition is ready to govern”, down seven, with 62% not confident, up seven.

Charts of the Day: today we take a three-part look at the gender gap with one chart showing a trend of male-minus-female Labor two-party preferred (converted from the primary vote using my own preference estimates) going back to early 2020, as measured by Essential Research (the most data-rich source available on this point); and two showing how Newspoll’s quarterly breakdowns have tracked net approval for Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton among men and women going back to the start of the term. The first of these suggests an existing gap of around three points blew out to upwards of seven in early 2021, before settling in at around five points thereafter. Albanese’s ratings are notable for their lack of a gender gap, outside of the reliable tendency of women to rate themselves uncommitted in higher numbers. In contrast to Scott Morrison towards the end of his reign, there was no consistent gap for Peter Dutton in the first half of the term, but one emerged in 2024 (ranging from two to six points), and it’s widened since the start of the year (seven points in the January-to-March aggregation, ten in last week’s aggregation of polling since the budget).

Election minus six days: regional seat polling, tactical manoeuvres and age breakdowns (open thread)

More bad published polling for the Coalition, and more reports the Coalition’s own polling shows something different.

The fourth and final leaders’ debate will be broadcast on the Seven Network from 8pm this evening, to be moderated by political editor Mark Riley. We can also presumably expect a Newspoll result from The Australian late this afternoon or early this evening, that having been the case on every other Sunday of the campaign, unless it’s been decided to handle things differently in the final week.

• The Australian Community Media newspaper group has published YouGov polling of ten regional seats from an overall sample of 3000. With due caution for the small individual sample sizes and error margins of around 5.5%, the results are as follows:

L-NP ALP GRN ON IND OTH
Ballarat 23.8% 38.5% 17.7% 9.8% 6.1% 4.1%
Braddon 30.6% 33.2% 9.7% 4.6% 15.7% 6.2%
Calare 25.1% 8.2% 5.1% 13.9% 38.9% 8.8%
Dickson 40.3% 24.2% 7.6% 5.4% 16.5% 6.0%
Eden-Monaro 26.0% 42.2% 10.9% 7.0% 10.6% 3.3%
Gilmore 33.5% 36.2% 11.1% 6.0% 8.5% 4.7%
Hunter 14.6% 35.8% 8.8% 25.3% 0.5% 15.0%
Lyons 27.8% 33.4% 13.0% 4.4% 9.3% 12.1%
Paterson 25.9% 30.9% 11.5% 14.2% 15.9% 1.6%
Wannon 33.2% 12.2% 5.2% 6.9% 35.7% 6.8%
AVERAGE 28.1% 29.5% 10.1% 9.8% 15.8% 6.9%
Swing -10.0% -2.2% +0.8% +4.8%

Which is obviously none too encouraging for the Coalition, suggesting the loss of Calare and Wannon to independents and Braddon to Labor, and failure in the crucial Labor marginals of Gilmore and Lyons. The results for Labor-held Hunter suggest One Nation are at least competitive (I haven’t troubled to record Trumpet of Patriots’ numbers, but it may be noted that their candidate for the seat, Prime Minister-presumptive Suellen Wrightson, was on all of 0.5%), and Labor’s primary vote in Paterson is low enough to be of concern for them.

• Paul Sakkal of the Nine Newspapers reports that differing viewpoints within the Labor and Coalition camps about the state of play could be “partly explained by the more optimistic polling coming from Dutton’s pollster, Mike Turner of Freshwater Strategy, which contrasts with the data from Labor pollster Campbell White, who also runs Newspoll”. This is reflected in the published polling of their respective outfits: Freshwater Strategy’s poll last week for the Financial Review had a tie on two-party preferred and the Coalition leading Labor 39% to 32% on the primary vote, while Newspoll had Labor leading 52-48 and the Coalition’s primary vote lead at 35% to 34%. So while the Coalition has been talking up its chances in Whitlam and Gorton, on respective Labor margins of 8.4% and 10.0%, Labor is “preparing to start spending on ads in Liberal-held seats such as Deakin and Menzies”.

• Paul Sakkal’s report further relates that Peter Dutton will spend much of the last week of the campaign on “a blitz of teal-held inner-city seats he has shunned to date”, with the Coalition believing “Curtin, Goldstein, Kooyong and Mackellar are tough but winnable seats, in that order”. On Friday, Sakkal’s colleague David Crowe related that Dutton had been avoiding such seats “for good reason”: “Liberals admit that he will drag down the vote for a Liberal candidate in a teal seat if he turns up at a polling station”.

• Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times cites unspecified “sources” saying former state Nationals leader Mia Davies is running third in the new Perth fringe seat of Bullwinkel, leaving Liberal candidate Matt Moran the favourite, although Labor sources consider their candidate Trish Cook has a “healthy chance”.

• The Poll Bludger’s Charts of the Day (I’ll at least try and make this a regular feature) make an effort to determine if there has been any particular pattern to voting intention by age cohort over the past three years, though I’m not sure how illuminating they are. For three pollsters that have provided such breakdowns with any kind of regularity, these record the difference between each cohort’s voting intention and the overall results, so as to highlight change in relative rather than absolute terms. Only Essential Research’s data was voluminous enough to make trend calculations worthwhile. Unfortunately, anything vaguely interesting for one pollster was uncorroborated or even contradicted by the others. Perhaps I’ll have more luck when I get around to doing gender. I did observe last week that the more interesting story here – namely a cavernous gender gap among young people – would require age-by-gender data, of which very little exists.

Election minus one week: marginal seats poll, various other polling, early voting trends (open thread)

A regular marginal seats poll remains firm in finding a substantial lead for Labor, though counter-narratives point to an uneven swing and pockets of Coalition opportunity.

Another wave of the RedBridge Group-Accent Research tracking poll of 20 marginal seats for the News Corp papers is unchanged in recording a Labor two-party lead of 54.5-45.5 and primary votes of Labor 35% and Coalition 34%, with the Greens up a point to 14%. As the seat’s in question collectively went 51-49 to Labor in 2022, this points to a 3.5% Labor swing that makes it difficult to concur with the assessment of James Campbell of News Corp that it “points to a likely minority Labor government dependent on independents”. However, the poll does point to a widening in the Coalition’s already established advantage on firmness of voting intention, with 74% of Coalition professing solid voting intention, up seven points on last week, while Labor was unchanged in 59%, in defiance of a natural tendency for support to firm as the time approaches (or in some cases, after votes have already been cast). Presumably on the basis of state breakdowns that don’t appear in the report, Kos Samaras of RedBridge relates that “the most dramatic shift is unfolding in Victoria”. The poll was conducted April 15 to 22 from a sample of 1000.

Also:

• Linda Silmalis of News Corp reports “industry-commissioned polling” by KJC Research goes against the grain in finding the Liberals ahead not only in the normally conservative Labor-held Perth seat of Tangney (“49-45 on a two-party preferred basis, with 7% unsure”), but also in the Labor-held Queensland seat of Blair (46-41 with 13% unsure), with the Greens favoured in Richmond (39-34 with 27% unsure). Labor had the advantage in Hunter, leading 45-41 with 14% unsure. The polls were conducted on Thursday from sample of 600 in each seat. KJC Research’s record is limited but by no means poor: only in Chisholm did it drop the ball when it polled nine seats two months out from the 2022 election.

• Paul Sakkal of Nine Newspapers says glimmers of hope for the Coalition include “unusually strong levels of support in very safe Labor seats such as Gorton and Whitlam” and “a significant rise in support for One Nation, which recently amended its voting tickets to give more support to Dutton”, said to be coming through in internal as well as public polling (though the point about how-to-vote cards is unpersuasive, since they invariably had the Coalition ahead of Labor to begin with).

• The Australian reports the regular SECNewgate Mood of the Nation survey records Labor opening up a blowout lead of 42% to 24% as best party to manage the cost of living, following tight results in the November September, November and February surveys. Anthony Albanese led Peter Dutton as the better leader to handle all seventeen issue areas canvassed, ranging from 36% to 34% on crime to 56% to 20% on welfare and social security.

• Alexi Demetriadi of The Australian reports the pro-Palestine Muslim Votes Matter organisation has “volunteers already descending on pre-polling stations at its target seats across the country” — those named being Werriwa, Tangney and Rankin — to disseminate how-to-vote cards that put the Liberals ahead of Labor. The organisation is not to be confused with The Muslim Vote, which is supporting independent candidates Ahmed Ouf in Blaxland and Ziad Basyouny in Watson, whose how-to-vote cards favour Labor.

• A Roy Morgan SMS survey in which respondents were asked without prompting to name their most and least trusted politicians produced a top five most trusted of David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, David Crisafulli, Chris Minns and Roger Cook. This marks a contrast with federal Labor’s dominance in a similar exercise before the 2022 election, from which the top five were Penny Wong, Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek, Mark McGowan and Jacqui Lambie. Leading the table on distrust were Peter Dutton, Clive Palmer, Donald Trump and Anthony Albanese, the 2022 leaders being Clive Palmer, Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Barnaby Joyce. The survey was conducted a while ago, from March 28 to April 2, from a sample of 1014.

• I took part in a podcast interview with Martin Drum of Notre Dame University on Thursday about the nature of modern campaigning and my general view of the situation for local news website Fremantle Shipping News.

• The single day early voting record set on Tuesday was broken on Wednesday and again on Thursday, prompting commentary such as an observation from Paul Sakkal of Nine Newspapers that the problem of the Coalition’s belated policy announcements was “more acute because early voting has soared since the last election”. However, the interruptions of Easter Monday and Anzac Day this week means this may not be quite as it seems. The three charts below record the numbers of votes cast in the first week of early voting both at the current election and in 2022 and 2025, showing how many more votes have been cast on each day individually this time around; cumulatively, showing the difference to be quite a bit more modest when the entirety of the weeks are compared (1,647,158 then, 1,787,211 now); and the latter as a percentage of the electoral roll, at which the current 9.9% is actually lower than the 10.7% from 2022. It remains to be seen if the daily rate or the weekly rate offers a better guide to what the numbers are likely to be next week.

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