Category: Federal Politics 2022-2025

Newspoll has not reported according to the three-week schedule it usually observers, but the Financial Review fills the void with the monthly Freshwater Strategy poll. This records a tie on two-party preferred after a 51-49 result in favour of Labor last time, but it’s based on only the slightest changes on the primary vote, with Labor steady on 31%, the Coalition up one on 40% and the Greens down one on 13%. Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 38% and steady on disapproval at 45%, Peter Dutton is up two to 32% and down two to 41%, and Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister narrows from 47-38 to 45-39. The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday from a sample of 1055.

There being nothing else on in the world of polling this week, the weekly Roy Morgan gets a rare guernsey. After a tied result last time, Labor recovers a two-party preferred lead of 51-49, despite equalling their worst primary vote result for the term, down one-and-a-half to 30%. The Coalition is also down half a point, to 37.5%, with Labor’s two-party result benefiting from a one-and-a-half point rise in the Greens to 15.5%, their equal best result for the term, and a one point drop for One Nation to 3.5%. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1677.

My diagnosis of a quiet week for polling hadn’t reckoned on Newspoll’s quarterly breakdowns, brought to you by The Australian. The headline-grabber here is Western Australia: whereas the other mainland states record changes in two-party preferred no greater than one point either way, Labor has gone from leading 54-46 to trailing 51-49 in the State of Excitement, for a swing to the Coalition of 6% off the 2022 result. However, the sample would have been below 400, putting the margin of error north of 5%. Elsewhere, New South Wales has gone from 51-49 in favour of Labor to 50-50 (a Coalition swing of about 1.5%); Victoria is unchanged at 55-45 to Labor (also little changed from 2022); the Coalition’s lead in Queensland has narrowed from 54-46 to 53-47 (a 1% swing to Labor); and Labor’s lead in South Australia has narrowed from 55-45 to 54-46 (unchanged from 2022).

Two other movements stand out: Labor’s lead among the 18-to-34 cohort is in from 66-34 to 61-39, which reflects parallel five-point movements in both major parties’ primary vote share rather than anything to do with the Greens, who are in fact down a point and no longer lead the Coalition; and its lead among non-English speakers is in from 60-40 to 55-45. The gender gap has re-emerged, with an aberrant 53-47 lead to Labor among men last time making way for 50-50 this time, while Labor’s lead among women is out from 52-48 to 53-47.

These results are compiled from three Newspoll surveys conducted between January 31 and March 22, from an overall sample of 3691.

A lean period of polling awaits, given the interruption of Easter and the no doubt related fact that every single pollster in the business unloaded results last week. If you’re desperate, Nine Newspapers has further results from last week’s Resolve Strategic poll finding 56% support for “stronger laws to ban hate speech on the basis of religion and faith”, with 19% opposed; 74% in favour of criminal penalties for “doxxing”, with 4% opposed; and 57% saying there had been a rise in racism and religious intolerance “as a result of the Israel-Gaza conflit”, with 15% disagreeing.

Other news:

• Troy Dodds of the Western Weekender reports that Melissa McIntosh, the Liberal member for the marginal outer western Sydney seat of Lindsay, has secured preselection after the withdrawal of Penrith deputy mayor Mark Davies. The expectation that Davies would have the numbers in conservative-dominated local branches to topple McIntosh had been a source of consternation among the party leadership, with Paul Sakkal of the Sydney Morning Herald reporting earlier this month on “the prospect of a rare federal division intervention in the NSW branch” if the challenge went ahead. McIntosh was promoted from the shadow assistant ministry to outer shadow ministry status in a recent reshuffle.

• Tim Wilson won a Liberal preselection vote for Goldstein last week, setting up a rematch with teal independent Zoe Daniel, to whom he lost the seat he had held since 2016 in 2022. Wilson won the local party vote ahead of Colleen Harkin, research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, and Stephanie Hunt, lawyer and former staffer to Julie Bishop and Marise Payne. Paul Sakkal of The Age reports Wilson won a second round vote ahead of Harkin “by about 160-130”.

• Amelia Hamer, a former staffer to then Financial Services Minister Jane Hume who has more recently worked for financial technology start-up Airwallex, has won the Liberal preselection vote for the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, which teal independent Monique Ryan won from Josh Frydenberg in 2022. The Australian reports Hamer won the party vote by 233 to 59 ahead of Rochelle Pattison, director of an asset management and corporate finance firm and chair of Transgender Victoria.

• Former state government minister Andrew Constance has again won Liberal preselection for Gilmore, where he narrowly failed in a bid to unseat Labor’s Fiona Phillips in 2022. Constance won a party vote by 80 to 69 over Paul Ell, lawyer, Shoalhaven councillor and long-standing hopeful for the seat who was persuaded to stand aside in favour of Constance in 2022.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports that Margaret Forrest, a commercial and criminal law barrister, has been preselected as the Liberal National Party candidate for the Brisbane seat of Ryan, which the party lost to Elizabeth Watson-Brown of the Greens in 2022.

• Rowan Ramsey, who has held the regional South Australian seat of Grey for the Liberals since 2007, has announced he will retire at the next election.

• Tammy Tyrell, who won a second Senate seat for the Jacqui Lambie Network at the 2022 election, quit the party last week. Tyrell issued a statement saying the move was made on Lambie’s suggestion, saying it had “become clear to me that I no longer have the confidence” of the party.

• I have a page up for the Cook federal by-election, to be held on April 13.

A bumper week for federal polling, in which every player in the game has had their hand in, concludes with the three-weekly federal poll from YouGov. It finds Labor leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, in from 52-48 last time, from primary votes of Labor 32% (steady), Coalition 38% (up one), Greens 13% (down two) and One Nation 7% (up one). Anthony Albanese is down three on approval to 41% and up two on disapproval to 52%, Peter Dutton is down one to 38% and steady on 49%, and Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister narrows from 48-34 to 46-34. The poll was conducted Friday to Wednesday from a sample of 1513.

Three new federal voting intention polls have dropped in short order, including the monthly Resolve Strategic poll for Nine Newspapers, which seems to have lost most of the Labor lean that distinguished it from other pollsters before the start of the year. Both major parties are down two points on the primary vote from the February result, putting Labor at 32% and the Coalition at 35%, with the Greens up two to 13% and One Nation down one to 5%. Anthony Albanese’s combined very good and good rating is down three to 38%, with his combined poor and very poor up two to 49%, while Peter Dutton is respectively steady at 36% and down one to 44%. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister shifting out from 39-32 to 40-30. In the absence of a two-party preferred measure from Resolve Strategic, my own favoured method of calculating one from flows at the 2022 election (which lumps together independents and all parties other than the majors, the Greens, One Nation and the United Australia Party into a single category) gets a result of about 52.8-47.2 in Labor’s favour, compared with a bit over 52-48 last time. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Sunday from a sample of 1610.

The Guardian reports the fortnightly Essential Research has what is by some distance Labor’s worst result on voting intention this term, with the Coalition opening a lead of 50% to 44% on the pollster’s 2PP+ measure, the balance being undecided. This compares with a Labor lead of 48% to 47% last time and a reversed result the time before, the latter being the only previous occasion when the Coalition led this term. We will have to wait upon the release of the full report later today for the primary votes. Despite this, The Guardian report relates little change on a monthly leadership on which respondents rate the leaders on a scale of one to ten, with 32% (down one) giving Anthony Albanese a rating of seven to ten and 35% (steady) a rating of zero to three. Peter Dutton had 31% at the top of the range, down one, and 34% at the bottom, up one.

UPDATE: The primary votes are Labor 29% (down three), Coalition 36% (up one), Greens 11% (steady) and One Nation 7% (down one), with undecided up one to 6%.

Further questions relate to campaign finance reform and the state of Australian democracy, recording a drop from 46% to 32% in satisfaction with the latter since immediately after the 2022 election and dissatisfaction up from 18% to 31%. There was strong support for truth-in-advertising laws (73%), real-time reporting of donations (64%) and donations caps (61%), though the related proposal of greater public funding found only 29% support with 35% opposed.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll is also less than stellar for Labor, recording a tie on two-party preferred after they led 51.5-48.5 result last time. However, this is more to do with a weaker flow of respondent-allocated preferences than changes on the primary vote, on which Labor is steady at 31.5%, the Coalition up one to 38%, the Greens up one-and-a-half to 14% and One Nation down one to 4.5%. My own measure of a result based on 2022 election preferences has Labor leading 51.5-48.5, which is little different from last time.

We also have from The Australian further results from the latest Newspoll showing 51% support for fixed four-year parliamentary terms with 37% opposed.