Category: Indigenous Voice

Capping off the week with another New South Wales Liberal preselection tangle and three fresh poll results:

UPDATE (Resolve Strategic poll): Make that four, because it seems I missed the latest Resolve Strategic federal voting intention results from the Age/Herald, which are a stinker for the Coalition: Labor is up three to 42%, the Coalition down two to 28%, the Greens down one to 12% and One Nation up one to 6%. This puts Labor solidly north of 60% on two-party by my reckoning, and has caused an observable uptick for them on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, as seen on the sidebar. Peter Dutton’s personal ratings take a particularly striking turn for the worse, with a six point drop in his combined very good and good rating to 26% and a ten point spike on poor and very poor to 54%, the latter encompassing an eleven point increase in very poor to 34%. Anthony Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister is out from 51-22 to 55-21, and he’s up one on approval to 56% and down two on disapproval to 29%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1609.

• The Liberals have opened nominations for a preselection to fill the party’s vacant New South Wales Senate seat following the death of Jim Molan in January, which will be held in late May. Max Maddison of The Australian reports moderates are dividing between state party president Maria Kovacic and former Bega MP and unsuccessful Gilmore candidate Andrew Constance. In the former’s favour is a view that the position should go to a woman, with Salesforce executive director Gisele Kapterian rated another moderate option if conservative opposition to Kovacic looks decisive. Factional lines are blurred to the extent that Kovacic has support from the centre right, while Constance is supported by Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney, a conservative who was widely identified as the favourite for the position before he announced he would not run. Constance will reportedly establish an electorate office on the South Coast if successful as a springboard for another bid for Gilmore in 2025. A late potential contender is Katherine Deves, whose conservative positions on transgender issues made national headlines during her unsuccessful run for Warringah last year. However, Deves says she would stand aside if Warren Mundine, who along with Senator Jacinta Price has been the leading Aboriginal campaigner against the Indigenous Voice, responds to conservative entreaties to throw his hat into the ring.

• The Lowy Institute has published results from its third annual Being Chinese in Australia survey, conducted online from a sample of 1200 “Australian citizens, permanent residents or long-term visa holders who self-identified as having Chinese ancestry”, between September 27 to December 10. Among its findings were that 60% expressed confidence in Anthony Albanese to do the right thing in world affairs, compared with 29% for not much or none, while Peter Dutton respectively rated 25% and 56%. The sample was more favourable on this score towards Xi Jinping (42% confident, 47% not confident) and Vladimir Putin (29% and 58%) than the Australian public at large, and less favourable towards Joe Biden (34% and 55%) and Voldymyr Zelenskyy (32% and 51%). Asked the same question in relation to countries, the sample broke favourably by 75-25 for Australia, 61-40 for China, 54-46 for Taiwan, 53-47 for the United States and 51-49 for Japan.

Presumably reflecting the change of government, those rating Australia-China relations as a “critical threat to the vital interests of Australia in the next ten years” fell from 51% to 37%, while concern over military conflict between the United States and China was little changed at 36%. Only 15% professed themselves very concerned about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, compared with 69% for a similar question in another survey targeting the population at large. Twenty-seven per cent said AUKUS would make Australia more safe compared with 26% for less safe, and 52% and 7% respectively for the Australian population at large. Notable changes from last year’s results were an increase in agreement that “democracy is preferable to any other kind of government”, from 34% to 48%, and more favourable results on questions regarding whether Australia was a good place to live, or if respondents had personally been vilified because of their heritage. There was a drop in those saying Australian media reporting about China was too negative from 57% to 42%, with as many deeming if fair and balanced and 13% thinking it too positive.

• Roy Morgan has published results from an SMS survey conducted from 1181 respondents to Friday to Tuesday which found 46% saying they would vote yes to an Indigenous Voice with no at 39%, compared with 53% and 30% when it last conducted the exercise in December. The pollster’s weekly federal voting intention numbers have Labor’s two-party lead steady at 56-44, from primary votes of Labor 37%, Coalition 33% and Greens 12%.

The Age/Herald has results from Resolve Strategic on the Indigenous Voice (hopefully to be followed shortly by voting intention results) finding effectively no change since it last asked in late February and early March, with yes steady at 46%, no down one to 31% and undecided steady on 22% (the total falling short of 100% on this occasion due to rounding). Respondents were also given the question without an undecided option, with the sample breaking 58-42 in favour. The accompanying report says a “rolling track of surveys over the past two months, using a larger sample size to allow a state-by-state breakdown, shows a majority in favour of the Voice in each state as well as nationwide”. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1609.

A second result on the Indigenous Voice emerges from the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll, as reported in The Guardian, showing 60% in favour and 40% opposed. However, “hard no” was up three to 26% and “soft no” was down three to 14%, while hard yes was down one to 32% and soft yes was steady at 27%. Essential had hitherto been tracking traditional personal ratings only for Anthony Albanese (as distinct from a separate series in which respondents are invited to rate the leaders on a scale from zero to ten), but this time there are results for Peter Dutton, who records 36% approval and 44% disapproval. Anthony Albanese is down one on approval to 51% and up one on disapproval to 36%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1136 – other results, including voting intention, should be available later today.

UPDATE: Essential’s voting intention numbers have both Labor and the Coalition up a point on the primary vote, to 34% and 31% respectively, with the Greens and One Nation steady on 14% and 6%, from numbers which include a 4% undecided component, down one. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor down one to 52%, the Coalition up one to 43% and undecided down one to 4%. Also featured was a series of questions in which respondents were asked to rate Labor and the Coalition according to eight attributes, which produced an effective tie for “trying to divide the country” but was otherwise consistently more favourable for Labor than the Coalition.

James Massola of the Age/Herald reports that “expectations (are) growing that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison will quit politics”, probably between the May budget and the end of the year, entailing a by-election for his seat of Cook. Please let it be so, because a valley of death stretches before those of us in the election industry out to the second half of next year, to be followed by a flood encompassing the Northern Territory on August 24, the Australian Capital Territory on October 19, Queensland on October 26 and Western Australia on March 8 the following year (UPDATE: It’s noted that the Queensland local government elections next March, inclusive as they are of the unusually significant Brisbane City Council and lord mayoralty, should rate a mention). A normal federal election for the House of Representatives and half the Senate could happen in the second half of 2024 or the first of 2025, the alternative of a double dissolution being presumably unlikely.

Redistributions will offer some diversion in the interim, particularly after the Electoral Commissioner calculates how many House of Representatives seats each state is entitled to in the next parliament on June 27. This is likely to result in Western Australia gaining a seat and New South Wales and Victoria each losing one (respectively putting them at 16, 46 and 38), initiating redistribution processes that are likely to take around a year. There is also an outside chance that Queensland will gain a thirty-first seat. The Northern Territory will also have a redistribution on grounds of it having been seven years since one was last conducted, although this will involve either a minimal tweak to the boundary between Solomon and Lingiari or no change at all. At state level, a redistribution process was recently initiated in Western Australia and should conclude near the end of the year. The other state that conducts a redistribution every term, South Australia, gives its boundaries commission wide latitude on when it gets the ball rolling, but past experience suggests it’s likely to be near the end of the year.

However, the main electoral event of the foreseeable future is undoubtedly the Indigenous Voice referendum, which is likely to be held between October and December. Kevin Bonham has a post on polling for referendum in which he standardises the various results, which differ markedly in terms of their questions and response structures, and divines a fall in support from around 65% in the middle of last year to around 58% at present. For those of you with access to academic journals, there is also a paper by Murray Goot of Macquarie University in the Journal of Australian Studies entitled “Support in the Polls for an Indigenous Constitutional Voice: How Broad, How Strong, How Vulnerable?” In narrowing it down to credible polls with non-binary response options (i.e. those allowing for uncommitted responses of some kind, as distinct from forced response polls), Goot finds support has fallen from around 58% to 51% from the period of May to September to the period of October to January, while opposition had risen from 18% to 27%. The change was concentrated among Coalition supporters: whereas Labor and especially Greens supporters were consistently and strongly in favour, support among Coalition fell from around 45% to 36%.

Forced response questions consistently found between 60% and 65% in favour regardless of question wording, while non-binary polls (i.e. allowing for various kind of uncommitted response) have almost invariably had at over 50%. Goot notes that forced response polls have found respondents breaking between for and against in similar proportion to the rest, which “confounds the idea that, when push comes to shove, ‘undecided’ voters will necessarily vote no”. However, he also notes that questions in non-binary polls that have produced active majorities in favour have either mentioned an Indigenous Voice or the Uluru Statement from the Heart, or “rehearsed the Prime Minister’s proposal to amend the Constitution”. One that conspicuously did not do any of these things was a Dynata poll for the Institute of Public Affairs, which got a positive result of just 28% by priming respondents with a leading question and then emphasised that the proposal would involve “laws for every Australian”. JWS Research got only 43% in favour and 23% against, but its response structure was faulted by Goot for including a “need more information” option, which ruled the 20% who chose it out of contention one way or the other.

Essential Research’s fortnightly voting intention numbers, which include a 5% undecided component, have both Labor and the Coalition down a point on the primary vote, to 33% and 30% respectively, with the Greens steady on 14%, One Nation up one to 6% and the United Australia Party steady on 2%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor up one to 53%, the Coalition down one to 42% and undecided steady on 5%. The poll includes has Anthony Albanese’s monthly personal ratings, on which he is down a point on approval to 52% and up one on disapproval to 35%.

Other findings from this fortnight’s survey include strong majority support for six proposed federal government measures to deal with the cost of living, ranging from 77% for electricity and gas price caps to 57% for changing industrial relations laws to make it easier for workers to negotiate pay rises. Fifty-four per cent now rate themselves as financially struggling or worse, up five since March, with 46% rating themselves comfortable or secure, down five. Asked how much impact federal government policies had on the cost of living, 31% chose a lot, 40% a little, 18% not that much and 5% hardly anything.

On climate change, 39% now rate that the government is not doing enough, down four from October and the lowest result this question has yielded going back to 2016, with doing enough up a point to 33% and doing too much up three to 16%. Fifty-one per cent support a national authority to manage the transition to renewable energy with 20% opposed, and 50% support government assessment of greenhouse gas emissions when considering new projects with 20% opposed, but only 34% support ending future coal and gas extraction projects with 35% opposed. Asked whether parliamentary approval should be required for a decision to go to war, the sample split 90-10 in favour of yes. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1133.

Also out yesterday was the latest Roy Morgan result, which had Labor’s two-party lead in from 57-43 to 54.5-45.5 from primary votes of Labor 34.5%, Coalition 34.5% and Greens 13%.

UPDATE: Also out this morning from The Australian is results from Newspoll on the Indigenous voice, which finds 54% in favour and 38% opposed, breaking down to 55-36 in New South Wales, 56-35 in Victoria, 49-43 in Queensland, 51-41 in Western Australia, 60-33 in South Australia and 55-39 in Tasmania. The results are aggregated from three polls conducted since the start of February, but sub-sample sizes are as low as 334 in the case of Tasmania, increasing to 1414 in the case of New South Wales.

The West Australian had a poll on Tuesday from Painted Dog Research that put the exact question to be featured on the ballot paper at the Indigenous voice referendum found a 60-40 of its WA-only respondent base coming down in favour, with sharp distinctions by age (71-29 in favour among 18-to-34, 63-37 in favour among 35-to-54 and 53-47 against among 55-plus) and gender (69-31 for yes among women compared with 51-49 among men). The poll was conducted over the weekend from a sample of 1052,

The only other poll news unrelated to Aston that I have to hang a new open thread off is the regular Roy Morgan result, which has Labor’s two-party lead at 57-43 from primary votes of Labor 35.5%, Coalition 32% and Greens 13%. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday, so may have picked up static from the New South Wales election, with an unreported sample size.

Two new federal opinion poll results today:

• The long-awaited set of voting intention numbers from Resolve Strategic finds Labor down a point on last month to 39%, the Coalition down one to 30%, the Greens up three to 13% and One Nation steady on 5%. The Coalition gets a particularly bad set of numbers from Queensland, where they are down 11 points to 24% with Labor steady on 39%. No two-party preferred is provided, but I make it at close to 60-40 in favour of Labor. Anthony Albanese is down one on approval to 55% and up one on disapproval to 31%, while Peter Dutton is up three to 32% and down one to 44%. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister is in from 55-23 to 51-22. The poll was conducted Sunday to Thursday from a sample of 1600.

• The fortnightly voting intention numbers from Essential Research, which include a 5% undecided component, have Labor up two to 34%, the Coalition down one to 31%, the Greens up two to 14% and One Nation down two to 5%. Labor’s lead on the pollster’s 2PP+ measure widens from 49-44 to 52-43, the balance being undecided. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1124.

As was the case with the Resolve Strategic poll with numbers published on Saturday, the Essential Research poll featured further results on AUKUS, finding 40% agreement with contention that the submarine agreement would “make Australia more secure” (down four from November) versus 21% for less secure (up five) and 40% saying it would have no impact (up one). Respondents were also less inclined to rate that China was a threat needing to be confronted than in November, down six to 20%, and correspondingly more favourable to the alternative view that it was a “complex relationship to be managed”, up six to 67%, with an unchanged 13% considering it “a positive opportunity to be realised”. Twenty-six per cent considered the purchase worth the expense, 27% felt the submarines were necessary but the expense too great, and 28% believed the submarines were unnecessary.

An occasional series of questions on leaders’ attributes, the first such since February last year, found Anthony Albanese’s biggest strength to be that he was in control of his team (59%), while 54% felt he changed his opinions too much and 49% rated him out of touch with ordinary people. Peter Dutton scored weak results across the board, his strongest being that 47% felt him in control of his team, and his weakest being 61% for out of touch and 34% or 35% for visionary, understanding of women’s issues and more honest than other politicians.

In other poll news, JWS Research finds 42% favouring a yes vote in an Indigenous voice referendum, down one since August, with 28% for no, down five; and the latest Roy Morgan voting intention results, conducted from March 6 to 12, have Labor leading 56.5-43.5 from primary votes of Labor 37%, Coalition 34% and Greens 12.5%.

The fortnightly Essential Research poll was published yesterday, showing the following:

• On voting intention, primary vote numbers inclusive of a 7% undecided component have Labor and the Coalition on 32% each, which is one down in Labor’s case and two up in the Coalition’s. The Greens are down two to 12% and One Nation are up one to 7%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor down two to 49% and the Coalition up two to 44%, with 7% undecided.

• Leader favourability ratings, in which respondents are asked to rate the leaders from zero to ten (distinct from a more conventional approval question that is asked of the Prime Minister once a month), offer the most distinctive evidence yet for a softening of Anthony Albanese’s position: 40% now give him a rating of seven to ten, down seven on last month, with 28% scoring him from zero to three, up six.

• For the first time since Labor came to power, a “national mood” question records a net negative result, with 42% rating that the country is on the wrong track, up five on a month ago, compared with 38% for the right track, down five.

• A series of three questions on tax policy includes one on “reducing tax concessions for people with superannuation balances over $3 million”, which found 50% supportive and 19% opposed. Forty-seven per cent rate themselves unlikely to have $3 million in super when they are old enough to access it along with 23% for not that likely, while 8% think it very likely and 15% fairly likely. “Tightening up the rules around family trusts to make it more difficult for wealthy families to split their incomes and reduce their tax” was supported by 55% and opposed by 15%, and cancelling stage three tax cuts has 42% support with 22% opposed.

The poll was covered Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1141. Other poll findings around the place:

• An additional result from this week’s Newspoll has support for an Indigenous voice at 53%, down three on a month ago, with opposition up one to 38%. Last week’s Resolve Strategic poll also had a supplementary question on the voice, which had support at 58%, down two from December and January, and opposition up two to 42%.

• The quarterly True Issues survey of issue salience by JWS Research finds concern over the cost of living continuing to raise, now rated as one of the three main issues by 47%, up from 44% in October and just 16% a year ago. Housing and interest rates is up seven since October to 26%; health has steadied after a long decline as the pandemic faded from the limelight, now up two to 31%; and environment and climate change is down three to 23%. The survey was conducted February 24 to 27 from a sample of 1000.

• The latest weekly Roy Morgan federal voting intentions have Labor on 38%, the Coalition on 33.5% and the Greens on 11.5%, with Labor’s two-party lead narrowing from 56.6-43.5 to 54.5-45.5. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday; as usual, the sample is not specified.

Federal voting intention numbers from the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll have both parties down a point on the primary vote from a fortnight ago, with Labor at 33% and the Coalition at 30%, with the Greens enjoying a curiously timed three point surge to 17%, One Nation down two to 6% and undecided unchanged at 5%. Presumably reflecting the elevated result for the Greens, Labor is up two on the 2PP+ measure at 55% and the Coalition are down two to 40%, with undecided steady at 5%.

The poll also featured the pollster’s monthly “favourability ratings” for the two leaders, whom respondents rate on a scale of one to ten rather than provide straight approval and disapproval responses. Anthony Albanese’s results were little changed from late November, with 47% rating him seven or higher (up one), 27% from four to six (up one) and 22% from zero to three (down one), while Peter Dutton is respectively at 26% (down two), 31% (down one) and 35% (up two).

Support for an Indigenous voice increased two points to 65% with opposition down two to 35%, while 30% said they felt well informed about the proposal compared with 37% for poorly informed. Forty-three per cent rated that the country was headed in the right direction (down one), compared with 37% for the wrong direction (up one). The 300 respondents from New South Wales were again asked about approval of the state leaders, with Dominic Perrottet up four on approval to 51% and down three on disapproval to 33%, while Chris Minns at is steady at 38% and down two to 25%.

The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1000.