Category: Federal Politics 2022-2025

Resolve Strategic state breakdowns and personal ratings (open thread)

New data on federal voting intention from Western Australia and South Australia, plus personal ratings for 34 federal politicians.

Nine Newspapers yesterday had Resolve Strategic’s quarterly state breakdowns, combined from their past three monthly polls. These aren’t news with respect to the three largest states, results for which are provided with each poll. That leaves fresh results for Western Australia, which show Labor on 30% (up one on last quarter, down from 36.8% at the 2022 election), the Coalition on 37% (up two, up from 34.8%), the Greens on 12% (down four, down from 12.5%) and One Nation 5% (steady, up from 4.0%). and South Australia, which show Labor on 27% (down one on last quarter, down from 34.5% at the election), the Coalition on 34% (down two, down from 35.5%), the Greens on 12% (down two, down from 12.8%) and One Nation on 8% (up two, up from 4.8%). The combined sample for the poll was 4831, with surveying conducted between October 1 and December 8.

Also published on Sunday were familiarity and net likeability results for 34 politicians from the most recent monthly survey. These seem to have elicited rote responses for most of the lower-ranking government ministers, eight of whom scored between between 41% and 55% on name recognition and between minus one and minus five on net likeability. Coalition politicians in the same name recognition range did better, ranging from even to plus seven.

The most instructive results were for those with familiarity scores of 70% and upwards, peaking at 98% for Anthony Albanese (minus 17 on net likeability) and 95% for Peter Dutton (even). Jacinta Price was the most favoured major party politician with 71% familiarity and plus 8 net likeability, though David Pocock and a number of Liberals did only slightly less well with much lower familiarity scores. Labor’s best performer was Penny Wong with 89% familiarity and plus 2 on net likeability. The worst result for a major party politician was Barnaby Joyce with 90% familiarity and minus 22 net likeability.

Jacqui Lambie tops the list, with 80% familiarity and plus 14 net likeability. David Pocock and Zali Steggall’s results were respectively good and mediocre, but otherwise non-major party politicians did poorly, Adam Bandt, Sarah Hanson-Young, Bob Katter and Fatima Payman all landing between minus 11 and minus 17. Worst-rated of all was Lidia Thorpe, whose recent activities have succeeded to the extent of scoring her 73% familiarity, with a net rating of minus 41 presumably demonstrating one point or another.

UPDATE: Further results have been published for age broken down into three cohorts. For 18-to-34, Labor is on 33% (up two from last quarter, steady on what was presumably the pre-election Resolve Strategic poll), the Coalition 27% (up two on both counts), the Greens 23% (down four, down two). For 35-to-54, Labor is on 30% (up two and down four), the Coalition 34% (down two and up two) and the Greens 12% (steady on both counts). For 55-plus, Labor is on 25% (down two and down eight), the Coalition 50% (up three and up four) and the Greens 4% (steady and down one).

Newspoll breakdowns: October to December (open thread)

New polling data suggests Labor has slipped among Victorians, women and low-to-middle income earners.

As well as test cricket, Boxing Day customarily brings Newspoll’s quarterly aggregated breakdowns in The Australian, this one combining 3775 responses over three polls from October 7 to December 6. The state results have it at 50-50 in New South Wales, after the Coalition led 51-49 last time, suggesting a Coalition swing of around 1.5% compared with the 2022 election; 50-50 in Victoria after Labor led 52-48 last time, a Coalition swing of around 5%; a Coalition lead of 53-47 in Queensland, in from 54-48, a Labor swing of around 1%; a Labor lead of 54-46 in Western Australia, out from 52-48 last time, a Coalition swing of around 1%; and Labor leading 53-47 in South Australia, in from 54-46 last time, a Coalition swing of around 1%. The gender gap disappears, with 50-50 results for both men and women, compared with 51-49 to the Coalition among men and 52-48 to Labor among women last time. A 54-46 lead to Labor last time in the $50,000 to $99,000 income bracket becomes 50-50 this time, while a 54-46 lead to the Coalition among those on over $150,000 reduces to 51-49.

Yuletide miscellany: more duelling pendulums, plus preselection and by-election latest (open thread)

The Australian Electoral Commission joins the redistribution wonk party with its own set of estimated margins for the looming federal election.

The Australian Electoral Commission has published its post-redistribution margins for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia, holding off for the time being on the Northern Territory as the redistribution there has not been finalised. This involves two sets of numbers: two-party preferred, which boil the issue down to Labor-versus-Coalition without regard to whether Greens or independents may have been in the mix, and two-candidate preferred, which tackles the sometimes knotty issue of estimating new margins between the parties and independents who actually made the final count at the last election.

The AEC’s report repeatedly observes that its numbers “may differ to the calculations of people external to the AEC”, by which they principally mean Antony Green but also me and Ben Raue at The Tally Room. Links to an extensive accounting of my own estimated margins were provided in an earlier post, which also offered a broad overview of the principles involved in making the calculations. I’m pleased to say my two-party margins are similar to the AEC’s: within 0.2% in 80 seats out of 100, and out by more than 0.5% only in the cases of Hume and Hasluck.

Now more than ever though, two-candidate preferred is a vexed question particularly where independents are involved, as they will not have been on the ballot paper in the parts of the electorate that have been added in the redistribution. Antony, Ben and I are all free to exercise common sense in treating the teals as a collective unit, which at least solves the problem in the cases of Warringah and Mackellar. Not only does the AEC feel it does not have the liberty to make such judgements, but Ben Raue also relates that its system is not designed to combine Labor-versus-Greens results from different electorates, which can readily be used to calculate fresh margins for Wills and Cooper — though not for Melbourne, which absorbs territory from Higgins and Macnamara, both of which had Labor-versus-Liberal two-candidate counts.

Ben Raue identifies the following electorates as ones in which mismatched two-candidate preferred counts must be combined from different parts of the electorate as redrawn by the redistributions (not counting those where the problem can be solved by falling back on two-party preferred, as can always be done where the seat is a “classic” Labor-versus-Coalition contest). These are Bradfield, Fowler, Grayndler, Mackellar, Sydney, Warringah and Wentworth in New South Wales, and Cooper, Goldstein, Kooyong, Melbourne, Nicholls, Wannon and Wills in Victoria. For reasons just explained, people external to the AEC are painlessly able to finesse the issue in Mackellar, Warringah, Bradfield, Cooper and Wills, which undoubtedly makes the non-AEC calculations more instructive in these cases. That leaves nine seats where varying degrees of creativity are required. In Labor-versus-Greens contests, this is a simple matter of estimating preference flows. But estimating support levels for independents in areas where they didn’t run last time is a very considerable challenge.

The differences in the various approaches taken are outlined at length in Antony Green’s post on the subject:

I base my estimates on a comparison of of House and Senate votes. Ben Raue uses an estimate based on the difference between two-party and two-candidate preferred results. William Bowe has not tried to adjust primary votes but rather allocates zero votes to the Independent and applies preference flows on accumulated primaries.

The chief virtue of my own method is the elegance involved in not requiring any data external to how people actually voted for the lower house of 2022, but it comes at the very substantial cost of crediting independents with very small vote shares in the newly added parts of their seats. However, the AEC’s approach is in this respect worse, as it apparently credits the independents with no votes in these areas at all (though I don’t see how that can be the case in Kooyong, where my own estimate for Monique Ryan is lower than the AEC’s). Antony Green’s and Ben Raue’s methods are of more practical value in addressing the task at hand, which is estimating how big the swing will need to be for the seat to change hands. Whether or not this is happening can be determined on election night by comparing the booths that have reported their results with the equivalent results from the previous election.

A few other bits and pieces from the last week or so:

• A second Victorian state by-election looms to go with the one to be held on February 8 in Prahran after Tim Pallas announced his resignation as Treasurer and member for Werribee, which he held in 2022 on a margin of 10.5%. The Age reports the Labor preselection front-runner is John Lister, a local teacher and Country Fire Authority volunteer.

• DemosAU has a poll on the ban on social media use for under-16s, which finds 64% supportive and only 24% opposed, but 53% expecting the law will be ineffective compared with only 34% for effective. The poll was conducted December 5 to 16 from a sample of 809.

• Keith Pitt, who has held the Bundaberg region seat of Hinkler for the Nationals since 2013, has announced he will retire at the election, taking the opportunity to call for the party to abandon net zero emissions targets and support coal-fired power. There has been no indication that I can see of who might succeed him in Hinkler.

• The Nationals have preselected Alison Penfold, senior adviser to party leader David Littleproud and former chief executive of the Australian Livestock Exporters Council, to succeed the retiring David Gillespie in the Mid North Coast New South Wales seat of Lyne. Penfold won preselection ahead of Melinda Pavey, former state member for the upper house and the corresponding lower house seat of Oxley, and Forster accountant Terry Murphy.

• Left-aligned Ashvini Ambihaipahar, St Vincent de Paul Society regional director, Georges River councillor and unsuccessful candidate for Oatley at last year’s state election, has been confirmed by Labor’s national executive as candidate for the southern Sydney seat of Barton, to be vacated at the election with the retirement of Linda Burney. One of those overlooked, former state upper house member Shaoquett Moselmane, resigned from a party position in protest, Elizabeth Pike of the St George Shire Standard reporting rumours he may run as an independent.

• James O’Doherty of the Daily Telegraph reports that Warren Mundine will seek Liberal preselection for the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield, to be vacated at the election with the retirement of David Fletcher and contested again by teal independent Nicolette Boele, who came within 4.2% after preferences in 2022. Mundine is a former Labor national president turned conservative who ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in Gilmore in 2022, and was the public face of the campaign against the Indigenous Voice together with Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Price.

• Slightly old news now, but it had hitherto escaped my notice that Michelle Ananda-Rajah, Labor member for the abolished Melbourne seat of Higgins, will be making do with third position on the party’s Victorian Senate ticket.

Federal polls: Essential Research and Roy Morgan (open thread)

Little festive cheer for Labor in what may be the last two federal opinion polls of the year.

Two more pollsters get their last results in for the year, one being the fortnightly Essential Research series, which has Labor down two to 30%, the Coalition steady on 35%, the Greens up two to 13% and One Nation down two to 6%, with the undecided component steady at 5%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure is unchanged at Coalition 48%, Labor 47% and undecided 5%. Also included are the monthly leadership ratings which have Anthony Albanese down four on approval to 39%, his worst result of the term, with disapproval up two to an equal worst 50%. Peter Dutton is up two on approval to 44% and steady on 41% disapproval. A montly question on national direction reverses an improvement last month, with a four point drop in right direction to 31% and three point increase in wrong direction to 51%. The full report features a number of further questions in that vein. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1151.

The weekly Roy Morgan series, which may prove an exception to the rule of pollsters taking a break over Christmas and New Year, gives Labor its worst result of the term with a half-point drop on the primary vote to 27.5% while the Coalition gains three to 41%, with the Greens down half to 12.5% and One Nation down one-and-a-half to 5%. The headline two-party measure is unchanged on 52-48, but Labor does uncommonly well out of its respondent-allocated preference flow: the alternative measure based on 2022 election flows, which is invariably more favourable for Labor, has the Coalition leading 51.5-48.5 after a 50-50 result last time. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1672.

Freshwater Strategy: 51-49 to Coalition (open thread)

One of the final polls for the year records no change in voting intention from a month ago.

The Financial Review reports the final monthly Freshwater Strategy poll for the year (no link as of yet) has voting intention results identical to last time, with the Coalition leading 51-49 from primary votes of Labor 30%, Coalition 40%, Greens 14% and others 16%. Anthony Albanese is at 34% approval and 51% disapproval, up one on both counts, while Peter Dutton is steady on 37% and down one to 40%. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister widens from 44-43 to 46-43, but a suite of questions on the leaders’ attributes produces better results for Dutton, including a 44% to 31% lead for being a strong leader. The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday from a sample of 1051.

UPDATE: Presumably paywalled report here. The poll finds 48% expect the Coalition to win the election, 18% in majority and 29% in minority, compared with 39% for Labor, 25% in minority and 14% in majority.

Weekend miscellany: duelling pendulums, Tasmanian seat polling and more (open thread)

Summarising federal redistributions ahead of the looming election, polling pointing to a status quo result in Tasmania’s federal seats, and various other electoral news.

Antony Green has published a pendulum display of post-redistribution seat margins for the federal election along with some explanation of what this entails. He did so exactly as I was finalising my own parallel effort, which I present here in the shape of a mock-up of the entry page for the federal election guide I’m hoping to publish around mid-January (a Western Australian election guide will precede it by a couple of weeks).

The margins shown are simply those from the 2022 election where no redistribution has been conducted, but the redistributions for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory require a process of distributing the votes from 2022 across the redrawn electorates. The Northern Territory redistribution is still in the public consultation phase, but I have taken a punt on the proposed boundaries (in this case simply a matter of drawing the line between Solomon and Lingiari) being adopted as they seem impossible to argue with, and it appears Antony Green has reached the same conclusion.

I believe the redistribution calculation methods used by Antony and me are identical with respect to how they handle ordinary votes, (i.e. those cast on election day or at pre-poll voting centres), but we have presumably adopted different methods to deal with the difficult question of “non-static” vote types, such as postals, which are published in aggregate for the whole electorate with no indication of geographic variation. I haven’t crunched the numbers too thoroughly, but the biggest anomaly I can see is that we have landed 0.5% apart in the substantially redrawn seat of Chisholm. We are in agreement that the margin in Deakin is a tiny 0.02%, but where he has it in favour of the Liberals, I make the seat to be notionally Labor.

Where we substantially differ is in seats where an independent is part of the equation. Calculations here are necessarily speculative, as independents will not have been on the ballot paper in newly added areas (where transfers have been conducted between teal seats, this can be dealt with by treating them as a collective). Antony has a method involving comparison of House and Senate vote shares which he says is “imperfect, but so are all alternatives”. The imperfection of my method, which gives independents no primary votes from newly added areas and allocates only the preference flows they might have expected from the other candidates, is that it’s very harsh on the independents, a fact most apparent with respect to Kooyong, where my 0.1% margin for Monique Ryan compares with Antony’s 2.2%.

Complete accountings of my redistribution calculations can be observed through the following links, for New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and Northern Territory.

Polling and electoral developments of note:

• This week’s Roy Morgan poll had the Coalition leading 52-48, out from 51-49 a week before, from primary votes of Labor 28% (down two, their worst result of the term), Coalition 38% (down half), Greens 13% (up half) and One Nation 6.5% (steady). The previous election two-party measure was a dead heat, unchanged on last week.

• The Australian reported last Saturday that a EMRS poll covering all five seats in Tasmania pointed to a status quo result of two Labor, two Liberal and one independent. In Labor’s precarious seat of Lyons, a generic party-based question has Labor on 34%, Liberal on 31%, the Greens on 11% and Jacqui Lambie Network 4%, while a separate question specifying candidates had 40% for Labor’s Rebecca White, 31% for Liberal candidate Susie Bowers and 9% for the Greens. The Liberals were well ahead in Braddon, leading 44% to 27% on the primary vote with the Greens on 9% and JLN on 7%. In Franklin the results were Labor 36%, Liberal 35% and Greens 11%, suggesting Labor would survive a substantial swing.

• Liberal MP Paul Fletcher announced this week that he will not recontest his seat of Bradfield. Fletcher retained the seat by 4.2% in 2022 in the face of a challenge from teal independent Nicolette Boele, who will run again at the coming election. His announcement comes shortly after teal independent MP Kylea Tink said she would not contest the seat following the abolition of her existing seat of North Sydney, much of whose territory will be transferred to Bradfield. The Sydney Morning Herald reports on two contenders to succeed Fletcher as Liberal candidate: Gisele Kapterian, an international trade lawyer and former staffer to Julie Bishop who shares Fletcher’s moderate factional alignment, and Penny George, director of corporate affairs at AstraZeneca and wife of state upper house member Scott Farlow. Kapterian was endorsed last year as the candidate for North Sydney, but had the rug pulled from under her with the seat’s abolition.

• Liberal MP Ian Goodenough, who lost preselection in his northern Perth suburbs seat of Moore to former Stirling MP Vince Connelly, has surprised nobody by announcing he will seek re-election as an independent. Connelly was the member for Stirling, part of which is now the southern end of Moore, from 2019 until its abolition in 2022. Goodenough claims to have been told that “opportunities might arise that would be of benefit” if he didn’t run.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports former Senator Joanna Lindgren is “poised” to be preselected as the LNP’s candidate for the Ipswich region seat of Blair, held for Labor by Shayne Neumann on a margin of 5.2%. Lindgren served in the Senate for a year after filling a casual vacancy but failed to win re-election at the 2016 double dissolution. Trevor Evans, who lost Brisbane to the Greens in 2022, is expected to again be chosen as the party’s candidate for the seat at a preselection to be held today, though he faces an opponent in Fiona Ward, a past federal and state candidate and regular preselection aspirant. Two contenders are named for the party’s preselection for Lilley, held for Labor by Annika Wells on a 10.5% margin: Kimberley Washington, a former staffer to LNP-turned-independent Senator Gerard Rennick, and Dylan Conway, an army veteran and founder of a mental health charity.

• Sarah Elks of The Australian reports Clive Palmer has launched a High Court bid to overrule a section of the Electoral Act that disallowed him from re-registering his United Australia Party for the next election after his voluntary deregistration of it in September 2022. The report quotes electoral law expert Graeme Orr saying the section exists to prevent newly deregistered parties having their names poached and did not reckon seeking to de-register and re-register, the “obvious reason” for which was to avoid having to make financial disclosures.

• The Victorian state by-election for Prahran will be held on February 8, with the ballot paper draw to be held on January 17. Tony Lupton, who held the seat for Labor from 2002 to 2010, has announced he will run as an independent, calling his former party’s decision to forfeit the contest “cowardly”. The Liberals will choose their candidate in a preselection ballot today.

• South Australia’s state redistribution has been finalised. Ben Raue at The Tally Room has taken a much closer look than I have, and concludes that the already minimal changes from the proposal have become even more conservative in the final determination. One change is that the seat of Frome will become Ngadjuri, owing to concerns raised that the seat’s namesake had been involved in a retribution attack on an Aboriginal encampment.

• Poll Bludger regular Adrian Beaumont offers an overview of results for last month’s US presidential and congressional elections with a more optimistic take for Democrats than most commentators, especially their prospects at the November 2026 midterm elections.

Newspoll: 50-50 (open thread)

Labor moves back to parity on two-party preferred in Newspoll, but Resolve Strategic finds their position continuing to deteriorate.

The Australian reports the first Newspoll in four weeks has an even result on two-party preferred, where the Coalition led 51-49 last time. Primary votes are little changed, with Labor steady on 33%, the Coalition down a point to 39%, the Greens steady on 11% and One Nation up two to 7%. Anthony Albanese is steady at 40% approval and down a point on disapproval to 54%, while Peter Dutton is down a point to 39% and steady on 51%. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister has widened from 45-41 to 45-38.

Also featured is a suite of questions on leader attributes that Newspoll has been running on a semi-regular basis since 2010. Dutton scores small leads on experienced, has a vision for Australia and understands the major issues, and a large lead on decisive and strong, for which Albanese’s 44% is significantly worse than for any of the previous prime ministers covered. Albanese’s two good marks are a 57% to 45% lead over Dutton on cares for people, and a 58% to 47% deficit on arrogant. The poll was conducted Monday to Friday from a sample of 1258.

UPDATE: I had missed that Nine Newspapers also have the monthly Resolve Strategic poll, which gives Labor its worst result of the term, their primary vote down three to 27%. The Coalition is also down, by one point to 38%, with the Greens up one to 12% and One Nation up two to 7%. Personal ratings for both leaders have significantly weakened: Anthony Albanese is down six on approval to 31% and up six on disapproval to 57%, while Peter Dutton is down five to 40% and up two to 42%. The poll continues to record a tie on preferred prime minister, shifting from 37-37 to 35-35. Other findings include 59% saying they are worse off since the 2022 election, with only 13% better off; 36% saying Dutton and the Coalition would improve things more over the next three years, compared with 27%; and 44% expecting the Coalition will win the next election, compared with 33% for Labor. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1604.

Weekend miscellany: Accent-RedBridge MRP poll, JWS Research polling, preselection latest (open thread)

A modelled election result forecast now rates the Coalition more than likely to emerge with the most seats in what still looks like being a hung parliament.

Accent Research and RedBridge Group have published their third quarterly multi-level regression with post-stratification (MRP) poll, which survey a large national sample (in this case of 4909, conducted from October 29 to November 20) and use demographic modelling to project a detailed seat-by-seat election result. It records a continuing deterioration in Labor’s position: where the first result had Labor on a minimum 73 seats with another nine two close to call, and the second had it down to 64 with 14 too close to call, now Labor is down to 59 with too-close-to-call still at 14. With the Coalition credited with a clear lead in 64 seats, this means the poll gives Labor no chance of retaining a majority on the present numbers, with the probability of the Coalition doing so at 2%.

The seats that get the Coalition from their present 55 to 64 are Bennelong, Gilmore, Macarthur, Paterson and Robertson in New South Wales; the by-election loss of Aston in Victoria; the new seat of Bullwinkel in Western Australia, which is notionally marginal Labor; Lyons in Tasmania; and Lingiari in the Northern Territory. Potential further gains are Dobell, Hunter, Macquarie, Reid, Shortland and Werriwa in New South Wales; Chisholm, Corangamite, Hawke and McEwen in Victoria; and the teal seats of Mackellar in New South Wales and Curtin in Western Australia. Conversely, Labor is rated a chance of gaining Casey in Victoria and Sturt in South Australia. A line chart display of the national primary vote looks to me like it has the Coalition on 39%, Labor on 31% and the Greens on 11%.

Also:

• JWS Research has results from a survey on attitudes to the US presidential election result, which was rated negatively by 51% and positively by 28%. Here as in the US, a wide gender gap was recorded, men being 35% positive and 40% negative compared with 22% positive and 60% negative for women. The survey was conducted November 8 to 11 from a sample of 1000.

• The JWS Research survey was conducted in tandem with its quarterly True Issues issue salience survey, which found concern about cost-of-living at a new high: 61% named the issue unprompted when asked to identify three the government should be most focused on, up twelve points since August. It also ranks last out of 25 on a measure of the government’s performance, behind interest rates and housing affordability, with its best scores being for defence, innovation, mining and provision of public services. Another finding of the survey was that 49% supported the government’s cut to HECS debts, with 32% opposed. The latter finding was approximated by the last Resolve Strategic poll, which Nine Newspapers this week reported found 54% supportive and 27% opposed.

• Anthony Albanese has asked the Labor national executive to intervene in the preselection process for the Sydney seat of Barton with a view to favouring his Left faction colleague Ashvini Ambihaipahar, a regional director for the St Vincent de Paul Society, Georges River councillor and unsuccessful candidate for Oatley at last year’s state election. The seat will fall vacant with the retirement of Linda Burney, the member since 2016 and likewise a member of the Left. Others seeking the position include Sam Crosby, who also has a director role at the St Vincent de Paul Society, and was formerly executive director of progressive think tank the McKell Institute and unsuccessful candidate for Reid in 2019; Shaoquett Moselmane, a former member of the state upper house; and state upper house member Mark Buttigieg.

• The Guardian reports state party president Leah Blyth is the front-runner for Liberal endorsement to fill the South Australian Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Simon Birmingham. Whereas Birmingham is a leading moderate, Blyth has the backing of arch-conservative Senator Alex Antic. Adelaide councillor Henry Davis is also nominating with a promise to represent the “sensible centre”, but The Advertiser reports he has “acknowledged he would not be favourite”.

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