YouGov: 50-50 (open thread)

Plus new Victorian and Queensland state polls, and an update on Liberal ructions ensuing from proposed new federal boundaries for Victoria.

The three-weekly YouGov federal poll records little change on last time, with two-party preferred steady at 50-50 from primary votes of Labor 30% (steady), Coalition 38% (steady), Greens 14% (up one) and One Nation 8% (steady). Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings are also unchanged at 41% approval and 53% disapproval, but Peter Dutton is down four on approval to 38% and up three on disapproval to 51%. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister is at 47-36, out from 44-37. The poll also finds an 84-16 split in favour of the proposition that workers have a right to strike for better wages and job security. It was conducted Friday to Tuesday from a sample of 1500.

There are also two state voting intention results from RedBridge Group, both combining two waves of polling in February and May:

• As reported in the Herald Sun, a poll for Victoria credits Labor with lead of 55-45, out from 54-46 in the last such poll in March, contrasting with the recent bi-monthly Resolve Strategic result which suggested the Coalition had moved into the lead. The primary votes are Labor 35% (down one), Coalition 38% (steady) and Greens 14% (up four). Kevin Bonham on Twitter notes that these primary votes suggest a 53-47 result based on a crude application of flows from the last election, but pollster Kos Samaras says the cumulative “others” pool has moved leftwards because “most of the right-wing minor party votes have shifted to the Coalition”. A full accounting of the results from the pollster should be along shortly. (UPDATE: The pollster has published the full result together with a full account of its “others” pool).

• The second poll such poll is for Queensland, and it maintains Labor’s run of diabolical polling there ahead of an election in October. The Liberal National Party is credited with a two-party lead of 57-43 from primary votes of Labor 28%, LNP 47% and Greens 12%. The poll has a sample of 880, and is somewhat at odds with a union-commissioned uComms polling provided last week to The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column, conducted on May 14 from a sample of 2400, which found Labor had gone from 26.9% to 30.0% from an earlier poll April, while the LNP had gone from 35.1% to 33.7%, the Greens from 13.0% to 10.9% and One Nation from 10.0% to 5.2%, with undecided down from 16% to 10%.

Latest news related to the various federal redistributions in progress, following last week’s publication of draft boundaries for Victoria and Western Australia:

• The Australian Electoral Commission has announced the proposed new federal boundaries for New South Wales, which will involve the abolition of one of the state’s 47 seats, will be published “around lunchtime” on Friday.

• Suggestions the redistribution proposal for Victoria may have strengthened the Liberals in Kooyong prompted a flurry of speculation concerning a comeback by Josh Frydenberg, with Josh Butler of The Guardian reporting on divided opinions within the party. Seemingly the only one to go on the record was soon-to-retire Queensland member Karen Andrews, who spoke approvingly of the idea, which would potentially have been helpful to a Frydenberg comeback given one of the chief obstacles is the optics involved in deposing an already preselected female candidate, Amelia Hamer. Antony Green was initially invoked as having calculated the seat had been strengthened for the Liberals, which many had taken as read given blue-ribbon Toorak was part of the area to be gained from abolished Higgins, but he shortly clarified it was not possible to infer independent member Monique Ryan’s level of support in areas where she was not on the ballot paper in 2022. The matter was shortly resolved in any case when Frydenberg declared his support for Hamer. Aaron Patrick of the Financial Review reported Frydenberg had commissioned Freshwater Strategy to poll the seat “several times”, with party sources saying the results “didn’t indicate he’d win”.

• The proposed abolition of Higgins has prompted suggestions defeated former Liberal member Katie Allen, who had again been preselected for the seat, will instead contest Chisholm, despite the party already having a candidate for that seat in Monash councillor Theo Zographos. Josh Ferguson of The Australian reports the party will challenge the abolition of Higgins in its submission in response to the proposed new boundaries. The report further says a political foundation established by the seat’s former member, Peter Costello, to help fund campaigning in the seat “is being eyed by Liberal bean counters to help stave off a feared collapse in fundraising capacity for the party”. A Liberal source is quoted saying the fund was established to ensure the money “was not ultimately seized by a factional rival”.

Polls: Essential Research, Roy Morgan and more (open thread)

One pollster finds undecided voters jumping off the fence, another finds a Labor slump last week was a one-off, and others yet offer insights on international affairs and things in general.

The fortnightly Essential Research poll has all the main players up on the primary vote, with the Coalition up two to 36%, Labor up one to 32% and the Greens recovering the three points they lost last time to return to 13%. Room is made for this by a two-point drop in the undecided component to 4% and a three point drop for One Nation to 5%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has Labor and the Coalition tied on 48%, with the balance undecided, after the Coalition led 47% to 46% last time. The monthly leadership ratings record little change for Anthony Albanese, steady on 43% approval and down one on disapproval to 47%, while Peter Dutton is down three on approval to 41% and up one on disapproval to 42%.

An occasional reading of national mood records a slight improvement on April, with 34% thinking the country headed on the right track, up two, compared with 49% for the wrong track, down one. Also featured are a series of questions on artificial intelligence and one on the impact of large technology companies, with 47% thinking them mostly negative for young people compared with 19% for positive, and 68% supporting an increase in the age limit on social media platforms from 13 to 16. Sixty-two per cent supported making hate speech a criminal offence with only 16% opposed, and 50% supported a weekend a month of national service for eighteen year olds consisting of paid full-time military placement, with 25% opposed, reducing to 46% and 26% for unpaid volunteer work. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1160.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll reverses a dip for Labor last week, their primary vote up two-and-a-half points to 31% with the Coalition down a point to 36%, the Greens down one to 14% and One Nation down one-and-a-half points to 4.5%. Labor now leads 52-48 on the respondent-allocated two-party preferred measure, after trailing 51.5-48.5 last time. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1579.

Also out this week is the Lowy Institute’s annual poll focusing on international issues, which affirms last year’s finding that Japan, the United Kingdom and France are trusted to act responsibly in the world, the United States, India and Indonesia a little less so, and China and Russia not at all. Joe Biden’s net rating turned negative, 46% expressing confidence, down thirteen on a year ago, and 50% lack of confidence, up twelve. Enthusiasm for Volodomyr Zelenskyy was off its earlier high, confidence down twelve to 60% and lack of confidence up seven to 29%, though this notably compares with 7% and 88% for Vladimir Putin, while Xi Zinping was at 12% and 75%. Fifty-six per cent rated the government as doing a good job on foreign policy compared with 41% for poor. The survey was conducted March 4 to 17 from a sample of 2028.

JWS Research’s quarterly-or-so True Issues issue salience report finds little change in the most important issues since February, with cost of living one of five issues nominated by 80% of respondents, well ahead of health on 58% and housing and interest rates on 55%. Nineteen per cent rated that the economy was heading in the right direction, unchanged on February, compared with 40% for the wrong direction, up one. An index score of the Albanese government’s performance records a two-point improvement to 47% after its lowest result to date in February.

Weekend miscellany: Senate preselections, electoral reform latest and more (open thread)

Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes dumped to an unwinnable position on the Coalition’s New South Wales ticket, and a return of talk about extra territory Senators.

The big electoral news for the week was the publication on Friday of proposed new federal boundaries for Victoria and Western Australia, which you can read all about on the dedicated post. Other than that:

• New South Wales Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes was dumped to fourth position on the Coalition ticket after running third in a Liberal preselection vote last weekend, the third position on the ticket being reserved to the Nationals. The top places will go to moderate incumbent Andrew Bragg and conservative challenger Jess Collins, who earlier ran unsuccessfully for preselection in North Sydney and for Marise Payne’s Senate vacancy. Hughes is part of the struggling centre right faction, but had endorsement from Peter Dutton, Jacinta Price and Michaelia Cash, while Collins was endorsed by Angus Taylor and Joe Hockey. Linda Silmalis of the Daily Telegraph reports that “while the right were claiming a major win, the left claimed it was the result of a larger and less factional state council”. A distribution sheet showed Bragg scored 196 votes in the first round of voting to 146 for Collins, 145 for Hughes and 51 for also-ran Lincoln Parker, which became a 191 to 167 vote win for Collins over Hughes after distribution of Parker’s votes and Bragg’s 16-vote surplus.

• The second position on Labor’s Queensland Senate ticket appears set to go to Corrine Mulholland, in-house lobbyist at Star casinos and the party’s candidate for Petrie in 2022. This follows the withdrawal of her two mooted rivals, former state minister Kate Jones and former Townsville mayor Jenny Hill. Jones had been backed by Left faction heavyweight Gary Bullock in a scheme that would have overturned a convention that the top two positions be shared between the Left, whose incumbent Nita Green will lead the ticket, and the Right, which is backing Mulholland.

The West Australian reports preselection runner-up Howard Ong, IT consultant and former Australian Christian Lobby activist, has been confirmed as the new Liberal candidate for Tangney following the withdrawal of the initial winner, Mark Wales.

• Special Minister of State Don Farrell told Senate estimates on Thursday that the government had been seeking a cross-party deal on electoral reform that included doubling the number of Senators for the two territories, and that legislation could be expected “soon”. The government also hopes to introduce truth-in-advertising laws and real-time disclosure of campaign donations of greater than $10,000.

• I belatedly observe that Nine Newspapers’ report on Resolve Strategic’s quarterly state breakdowns includes data for Western Australia and South Australia for four sets of quarterly aggregations over the last year, where normally the pollster’s breakdowns are only for the three larger states.

Federal redistributions: Victoria and Western Australia

Analysis of newly published draft federal boundaries for Western Australia and Victoria.

Proposed new federal boundaries have been published today for both Western Australia and Victoria.

Victoria

The Victorian proposal is here. The proposed seat for abolition is Higgins, reflecting under-enrolment in the inner eastern areas of Melbourne. Below are my estimates of the new vote shares (you’ll have to click on the image for it to be legible), which can be compared with Ben Raue’s similar exercise. Note that there are three seats where the two-candidate preferred has to be split three ways: Melbourne is to take a chunk of Higgins, for which there are no ALP vs GRN numbers; Goldstein gets parts of Hotham and Isaacs, where there is no TEAL vs LIB; and Kooyong gets a big piece of Higgins, ditto.

The best news for Labor is that Menzies now has a notional Labor margin of 0.7% (0.3% by Ben Raue’s reckoning) compared with an actual Liberal margin of 0.7%. Beyond having lost Higgins, the news is bad for them in Chisholm, where their margin is down from 6.4% to 3.3% by Ben Raue’s reckoning and 2.8% by mine, and Wills, where the Greens have been handed the gift of Carlton North and Fitzroy North from Melbourne, cutting the Labor margin over them from 8.6% to 4.2%. However, their 0.7% improvement in Dunkley might prove handy one day.

At first glance, I would imagine that Monique Ryan would be pleased not merely to have had her electorate maintained, but to have had it supplemented with the inner urban end of Higgins and to have lost territory in the east to Menzies and Chisholm. Goldstein teal MP Zoe Daniel’s gains from Hotham and Isaacs are perhaps less helpful, though that is harder to read.

Western Australia

The proposed sixteenth seat for the state is called Bullwinkel and encompasses eastern suburbs of Perth and the Avon Valley further afield, taking much of the territory of Hasluck along with parts of Swan, Burt, Canning, Durack and O’Connor. The new seat has a notional Labor margin of 2.9%, but in the absence of a defending sitting member and given the unusual nature of the 2022 result, the Liberals would be favoured to win. However, its creation has given Labor a helpful 4.7% boost in Hasluck, which loses its most conservative territory to the new seat. Andrew Hastie is a loser out of the redistribution in Canning, but is presumably not in too much danger. Labor has been favoured slightly in Tangney and Swan, Liberal in Cowan. The changes are unlikely to make much difference to teal independent Kate Chaney in Curtin.

Polls: Accent Research-RedBridge Group MRP and Roy Morgan (open thread)

An ambitious endeavour to project an election result seat-by-seat suggests Labor will more likely than not maintain its majority, but the weekly Roy Morgan poll has other ideas.

I’m advised that the proposed federal redistribution for Western Australia will be published early afternoon eastern time in Friday, and that EMRS will publish its first quarterly Tasmanian poll since the election at around midday today. Other than that, two items of polling news, one somewhat encouraging for Labor and another rather a lot less so.

The first of these is a multi-level regression with post-stratification (MRP) poll by Accent Research and RedBridge Group, an exercise that aims for a detailed election projection by surveying a large national sample of 4040 and using demographic modelling to project results for each electorate, and which it plans to conduct on a roughly quarterly basis. A similar exercise was conducted before the last election by YouGov which involved Shaun Ratcliff, who is now the principal of Accent Research. It performed reasonably in predicting 80 seats for Labor and 63 for the Coalition, compared with an actual result of 77 and 58. But it underestimated the scale of the gains by teal independents and the Greens, which maintained a record of the method doing better with major parties than minor parties and independents. The YouGov exercise also had a substantially larger sample of 18,923, which presumably allowed its demographically modelling to be more finely grained.

With that all taken on board, the seat projection has Labor on 73 and the Coalition on 53 with another nine too close to call, meaning a 50-50 result after rounding to whole numbers, including seven that are lineball between Labor and the Coalition. These are Labor-held Gilmore, Lingiari, Lyons and Robertson, together with their by-election gain of Aston, and Coalition-held Deakin and Moore (the latter of which points to a rather rosy reading of Labor’s situation in Western Australia).

Curtin is rated lineball between teal independent incumbent Kate Chaney and the Liberals, with Brisbane likewise between Greens incumbent Stephen Bates and the LNP, though the primary vote estimates appear to suggest Labor the more likely winner than the Greens (here I would repeat that warning about the method’s record in reading minor party and independent support). Only three seats are identified as changing hands: Cowper, where teal independent Caz Heise is tipped to succeed on the second attempt at unseating the Nationals by 52-48; Fowler, where Labor is credited with a 54-46 lead over independent member Dai Le; and Liberal-held Menzies, where Labor is credited with a 51-49 lead.

The exercise also works as a conventional opinion poll with the rate treat of breakdowns for each state and territory. Labor is credited with a 52-48 lead nationally, from primary votes of Labor 32%, Coalition 36% and Greens 13%. This represents very modest change on the 2022 result, which is also the case in each state and territory, including notably in Western Australia. All of the details, including the estimated results for each of the electorates (keeping in mind that these are set to be redrawn in three states and one territory), are available in the full report.

The less happy news for Labor comes from the weekly Roy Morgan poll, which is their worst result in this series for the term, putting the Coalition ahead 51.5-48.5 on two-party preferred, compared with a 50.5-49.5 Labor lead last time. The primary votes are Labor 28.5% (down two), Coalition 37% (steady), Greens 15% (up half) and One Nation 6% (up half). The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1715.

Weekend miscellany: redistribution and preselection latest (open thread)

Back to the drawing board for the Liberals in Tangney, Labor preselection jockeying in Queensland, and a confirmed date for proposed new federal boundaries for Western Australia.

The week after the federal budget was as always a big one for federal opinion polling, which means it will be followed by a trough next week. Happily, an important milestone on the road to the federal election is looming into view:

The Guardian relates that the proposed redistribution for Western Australia will be published on Friday, with those for New South Wales and Victoria “expected in the first two weeks of June, or perhaps slightly earlier”.

• Mark Wales, the preselected Liberal candidate for the crucial Perth seat of Tangney, has stood aside due to a health issue within his family. The West Australian reports the party’s state council passed a motion that the second-placed candidate in last month’s preselection vote will get the nod if no new candidates nominate by the May 29 deadline, that being Howard Ong, an IT consultant and former Australian Christian Lobby activist.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports that state Ipswich MP Jennifer Howard has withdrawn her preselection challenge against Shayne Neumann in the federal seat of Blair. Anthony Albanese threw his weight behind Neumann amid concern over the security of Labor’s hold on a seat Neumann has held since 2007, and which he retained by a 5.2% margin in 2022.

• Feeding the Chooks further reports that Katie Havelberg, policy adviser at Queensland Health and president of Professionals Australia, will join Renée Coffey, chief executive of a foundation that helps children whose parents have a mental illness, in contesting Labor preselection in Griffith, the inner Brisbane seat that Max Chandler-Mather won for the Greens in 2022. Potential nominees in the seat of Brisbane, which Stephen Bates gained for the Greens from the LNP in 2022, include Tracey Price, the party’s unsuccessful candidate for the lord mayoralty in election in March, and candidate from 2022, Deloitte Australia director Madonna Jarrett.

More post-budget polling: Freshwater Strategic, Roy Morgan, Essential Research (open thread)

Three more polls add to a general impression of a budget with popular measures individually but concern about its impact on inflation and interest rates.

The post-budget polling avalanche rumbles on:

• Yesterday’s Financial Review had a Freshwater Strategy poll with two-party preferred at 50-50, unchanged on mid-April, from primary votes of Labor 32% (up one), Coalition 40% (steady) and Greens 14% (up one). Anthony Albanese is down one on approval to 37% and steady on 45% disapproval, while Peter Dutton is down a point on both to 31% and 40% respectively. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister is out from 45-39 to 46-37. Twenty-four per cent said the budget would make them better off, 23% worse off and 46% no difference, but 39% felt it would have an upward impact on interest rates compared with only 11% for downward and 28% for no effect. Nonetheless, questions on which parties were better placed to handle various areas of policy found Labor doing better on the whole than last month, having widened their lead on welfare and benefits and narrowed deficits on economic management, crime and social order and immigration and asylum. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1056.

The Guardian reports the fortnightly Essential Research poll has Labor and the Coalition unchanged at 31% and 34% of the primary vote respectively, but with the Greens down to 10%, One Nation up one to 8% and 6% undecided. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure is unchanged with the Coalition leading 47% to 46% and the remainder undecided. Last time it was noted here that the 2PP+ implied an unusually strong flow of respondent-allocated preferences to the Coalition – this remains the case this time in lesser degree, my own estimate of two-party preferred based on 2022 election preference flows being 51-49 in favour of Labor. All the major initiatives in the budget recorded strong support, but only 27% thought it would make a meaningful difference to the cost of living. Sixty per cent felt only low and middle-income households should get the $300 energy rebate, with only 35% favouring it going to all households as per the government’s approach. The poll had a sample of 1149 and was presumably conducted Wednesday to Sunday – there will be more detail in the full release later today.

• After four successive weeks at 52-48, the regular Roy Morgan poll has Labor’s two-party lead narrowing to 50.5-49.5, from primary votes of Labor 30.5% (down one-and-a-half), Coalition 37% (steady), Greens 14.5% (up one) and One Nation 5.5% (steady). The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1674.

Post-budget polling: Newspoll and Resolve Strategic (open thread)

Labor up in Newspoll and down in Resolve Strategic amid a likewise mixed picture on response to the budget.

The post-budget Newspoll in The Australian offers good news for Labor on voting intention, despite recorded an at best subdued reaction to the budget. Labor holds a two-party lead of 52-48, out from 51-48 in the last poll four weeks ago, from primary votes of Labor 34% (up one), Coalition 37% (down one) and Greens 13% (steady). Anthony Albanese also records his best personal numbers since before the referendum, with approval up three to 47% and disapproval down three to 47%, and widens his lead over Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister from 48-35 to 52-33. Peter Dutton is up two on approval to 38% and down one on disapproval to 50%

The less happy news for Labor comes with responses to the budget, which 39% think will worsen inflation compared with only 15% who think it will be favourable. An even 27% think the budget will be good for the economy, which is in fact the equal worst result since the Abbott government’s first budget in 2014. However, the result is better on anticipated impact on personal finances, presumably reflecting response to the tax cut changes: 27% expect it will improve them compared with 29% for worse, which is substantially better than the minus 16% and minus 35% net ratings recorded in the May 2023 and October 2022 budgets. No detail yet as to field dates or sample size. UPDATE: Thursday to Saturday from a sample of 1280.

In Nine Newspapers, Resolve Strategic has its worst result for Labor this term, with the qualification that it was a markedly pro-Labor series until the end of last year, and has since been closer to the pack. Labor is down a point from a month ago to 29%, the Coalition is steady on 36%, the Greens are down one to 12%, One Nation is up two 7% and the United Australia Party is steady on 2%. The pollster does not produce a two-party preferred result, and calculating one is complicated by its large 12% reading for a generic “independent” option. My own favoured method of estimating the result from preference flows at the last election, which rolls independents together an “others” category, has Labor barely ahead 50.2-49.8. Anthony Albanese also takes a knock on his personal ratings, with his combined very good and good rating down four points to 39%, with poor and very poor up four to 49%. Peter Dutton is respectively at 39%, down one, and 42%, steady. However, Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister is little changed at 40-32, in from 41-32.

Other than that, the budget seems to have been reasonably well received by respondents, with 40% rating it good for their household, 41% good for the country, 38% good for the economy and 34% good for fighting inflation, with respective poor ratings of 21%, 21%, 21% and 27%. Questions about five specific budget items found strong support for all of them, including 68% support for the stage three tax cut changes with only 8% opposed, and 62% for Future Made in Australia with only 10% opposed. However, 60% felt the government was handling immigration in an “unplanned and unmanaged way”, compared with only 20% for planned and managed. Sixty-six felt immigration numbers too high last year, 23% about right and only 2% too low, but expectations for next year were less unfavourable at 50%, 35% and 4% respectively. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1602.

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