Category: Federal Politics 2022-2025

YouGov: 52-48 to Labor (open thread)

Labor follows its Dunkley by-election win with better ratings for Anthony Albanese in one poll and a sharp improvement on voting intention in another.

The three-weekly federal poll from YouGov records little change on voting intention, with Labor steady at 32%, the Coalition up a point to 37%, the Greens up a point to 15% and One Nation down two to 6%, and Labor’s two-party lead steady at 52-48. However, Anthony Albanese personal ratings are improved, up four on approval to 44% and down three on disapproval to 50%, and his lead as preferred prime minister out from 45-38 to 48-34. Peter Dutton is at 39% approval and 49% disapproval, down two points on last time in net terms. The poll also records an 86-14 split in favour of the principle behind the recently passed “right to disconnect” laws. It was conducted February 24 to March 5 from a sample of 1539.

The rather more volatile weekly poll from Roy Morgan recorded a spike this week in favour of Labor, who lead 53.5-46.5 on two-party preferred after a dead heat last week, from primary votes of Labor 34% (up two-and-a-half), Coalition 36.5% (down one-and-a-half), Greens 13.5% (up one-and-a-half) and One Nation 3.5% (down one-and-a-half). The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1679.

The other big item of federal electoral news for the week was Monday’s Liberal preselection for Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook, where a by-election will be held on a date to be determined. The winner was Simon Kennedy, former McKinsey consultant and unsuccessful candidate for Bennelong in 2022, who won in the first round with 158 votes to Carmelo Pesce’s 90, Gwen Cherne’s 35 and Benjamin Britton’s 13.

Post-Dunkley miscellany (open thread)

The Liberals prepare to choose a successor for Scott Morrison in Cook this evening, an event likely to be of greater interest than the by-election itself.

The Dunkley by-election is now out of the way – if the progress of late counting interests you, the Poll Bludger’s live results page and live commentary post will continue ticking over. Another federal by-election now looms on the horizon for a date to be confirmed, though in the probable absence of a Labor candidate it is unlikely to generate as many column inches:

• The Liberals will choose their candidate for the by-election to replace Scott Morrison in Cook this evening, with a close race expected between Carmelo Pesce, Simon Kennedy and Gwen Cherne, the latter being boosted by an endorsement from John Howard (a fourth contender, Benjamin Britton, appears less fancied). Pesce is the subject of an unhelpfully timed report in the Sydney Morning Herald today relating that he participated in a Sutherland Shire council vote on an apartment development after earlier declaring a conflict of interest with the developer.

• Canning mayor Patrick Hall has withdrawn from the Liberal Party’s preselection for the Perth seat of Tangney, saying a controversy in which he is involved would “reflect poorly on the party and the seat of Tangney”, notwithstanding that he is the innocent party to the alleged incident. This came after Jesse Jacobs, a former council colleague of Hall’s, entered the preselection race despite facing charges of stealing Hall’s election campaign signs, following an incident in which Hall personally performed a citizen’s arrest on Jacobs and his co-accused. Other nominees are Mark Wales, SAS veteran and Survivor contestant; Sean Ayres, a former staffer to defeated former member Ben Morton; Howard Ong, a Singapore-born IT consultant; Melville councillor Jennifer Spanbroek; and Bill Koul, owner of an engineering consultancy.

• Victorian Labor Senator Linda White, whose six-year term began after her election in May 2022, died on Friday at the age of 64. White was a former assistant national secretary of the Australian Services Union, and succeeded veteran Kim Carr in the Left-mandated second position on the party’s Victorian ticket.

Dunkley by-election live

Live coverage of the count for the Dunkley by-election.

Click here for full display of Dunkley by-election results.

Monday night

Labor had slightly the better of a second batch of postals, breaking 2945-2908 in their favour on two-candidate preferred, after those counted on election night went 4118-3721 to the Liberals.

Sunday night

Today’s counting consisted of rechecking and the addition of 338 formal votes from special hospital teams and electronic assisted voting. Of note in the former case was the correction in the Langwarrin booth that had inflated the Liberal swing there from 5.0% to 11.1% on two-party and from 7.6% to 13.7% on the primary vote. The latter figure was cited by News Corp’s James Campbell as evidence the Liberals had done better in the “richer, Tealier part of the electorate”. A similar argument by in a jointly written column for the Financial Review by Tim Wilson and Jason Falinksi, who lost their seats to teals in 2022, hangs on the slender thread of the Mount Eliza North booth — the one that gave the Liberals false hope when it was the first to report on Saturday, and which turns out to have had the biggest Liberal swing. Left unmentioned is that the other three election day booths in Mount Eliza, which each had two to three times more votes cast at them than Mount Eliza North, recorded below par swings of 1.0% to 1.6% (each of the electorate’s three pre-poll centres, including the one in Mount Eliza, swung by 4% to 5%). In point of fact, a geographical pattern to the results is difficult to discern.

End of Saturday night

The 3.9% two-party swing currently recorded against Labor in Dunkley can only be described as unremarkable. It is worse than the 1.3% average for first-term governments out of the twelve previous contested by-elections going back to 1983, but that includes some notable successes for governments in the first-flush of their honeymoons, including the 6.4% swing to Labor in Aston last year. All but two of the twelve were conducted in the government’s first year in office: in the two that weren’t, there were anti-government swings of 2.7% (last year’s Fadden by-election) and 6.1% (the Canning by-election in 2015, held days after Tony Abbott was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull). Another minor contingency is that Labor did badly out of the ballot paper draw, with the Liberal in first position and Labor last, whereas Peta Murphy was second behind an independent in 2022.

Evidence that by-elections caused by deaths are easier on the incumbent party than those caused by resignations seems to me rather thin. The average 4.8% swing in seats at by-elections caused by the deaths of government members calculated by The Australian is, by my reckoning, actually slightly higher than an overall 4.2% average in government-held seats over the same period. A linear regression analysis I conducted testing for death, disqualification, first-year and first-term effects going back to 1972 turned up no statistically significant evidence for any of them.

The Liberals’ 6.7% gain on the primary vote likely reflected reduced options for right-of-centre voters, with 7.9% up for grabs from the absent United Australia Party and One Nation. The other right contenders, independent Darren Bergwerf and the Libertarian Party (then the Liberal Democrats), were also in the field last time, and respectively made up a little ground and no ground. Conversely, the entry of Victorian Socialists meant there was more competition for the left-of-centre vote, although their 1.7% only partly accounted for a 3.8% drop in support for the Greens. Animal Justice gained 1.0%, and it seems likely Labor was able to hold level on the primary vote through net gains from the Greens that balanced out net losses to the Liberals.

Talk of a danger to Labor from apathy-driven low turnout does not seem to have been borne out. The votes of 74.2% of the enrolled voters have been counted, already in excess of the 72.5% at the Fadden by-election of last year, and likely to reach 81% after around 12,000 outstanding postals are processed. However, this will still leave it short of the 85.6% in Aston.

Election night commentary

Continue reading “Dunkley by-election live”

Dunkley eve miscellany (open thread)

A cliffhanger expected tomorrow in Dunkley, as Liberal preselection candidates jockey ahead of the next by-election off the rank in Cook.

Reports continue to suggest both parties expect a tight result in the Dunkley by-election, which this site will be over like a rash during counting tomorrow evening, being likely the only place that will publish results at booth level as they are reported. The Australian reports Liberal internal polling pointing to a swing of about 5%, just short of the 6.3% needed to win. Labor is reportedly concerned that its chances will be harmed by low turnout: as of Wednesday, 15.15% of enrolled voters had cast early votes, which compares with 17.93% and 17.08% at the same stage before last year’s by-elections in Aston and Fadden.

Other electoral news of the last week:

• A weekend Liberal preselection vote for the Perth seat of Curtin, which the party lost to teal independent Kate Chaney, resulted in a 192-64 vote win for Tom White, former Uber chief executive in South Korea and staffer to state MP Peter Collier, ahead of Matt Moran, an Afghanistan veteran and former Ten Network reporter now employed in government relations at naval shipbuilder Luerssen Australia.

• Michelle Grattan of The Conservation quotes a Labor sources saying it is “highly unlikely” the party will contest the by-election for Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook, the date for which remains to be confirmed. Reports increasingly indicate Sutherland Shire mayor Carmelo Pesce, initially presumed the front-runner, faces stiff competition from Simon Kennedy, McKinsey partner and unsuccessful Bennelong candidate. Pesce has mostly moderate backing, including from state party leader Mark Speakman, while Simon Kennedy has mostly conservative supporters including Tony Abbott and Dominic Perrottet, although an exception appears to be moderate Senator Dave Sharma. Rounding out the field of four are Gwen Cherne, veteran family advocate commissioner, and the little-fancied Benjamin Britton, an army veteran and former United Australia Party candidate. The Sydney Morning Herald’s CBD column reports ANZ banker Alex Cooke, whose campaign slogan would have written itself, has withdrawn.

• A suggestion that Liberal moderates including powerbroker Michael Photios hope to persuade independent Wentworth MP Allegra Spender to join their party and faction in the “medium term”, potentially with an offer of a front bench position, has received short shrift from the proposed target. The Financial Review reports those concerned are “unconvinced it will be possible to wrest the once safe Sydney seat away from her”, and believe her 4% margin “has grown since she entered parliament”.

Polls: Essential Research and Roy Morgan (open thread)

Essential Research follows Resolve Strategic, though not Newspoll, in finding Labor in its weakest position since the election.

Newspoll aside, it’s been a week of soft polling for Labor (see also the previous post on the Dunkley by-election), including their weakest result this term from Essential Research. With the undecided component down a point to 4%, it finds the Coalition up a point to 35% and Labor down one to 30%, respectively their best and worst results this term, with the Greens down one to 13% and One Nation steady on 7%. The Coalition also leads on the pollster’s 2PP+ measure for the first time, up two to 48% with Labor down three to 47%.

The monthly leadership ratings nonetheless find Anthony Albanese up a point on approval to 42% and steady on disapproval at 47%, while Peter Dutton is up two on approval to 40% and up one on disapproval to 44%. A number of further questions inquiry into the leaders’ and parties’ performance in different policy areas. A monthly national mood question finds a one-point increase in right direction to 33% and steady on wrong track to 49%.

High awareness was recorded for last week’s asylum seeker arrivals in Western Australia and the release of immigration detainees (66% and 61% respectively), and finds 59% of the view that the government is taking too long to put those released back into detention and 51% of a view that the government is “losing control of its borders”. Sixty-two per cent supported criminalising doxxing (described in the question as “the public release of personally identifiable data (e.g. phone numbers, addresses, social media details) with malicious intent”) with only 19% opposed. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1145.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll has the Coalition drawing level on two-party preferred for the first time since December, erasing Labor’s 52.5-47.5 from last week, with Labor down two-and-a-half points on the primary vote to 31.5%, the Coalition up one to 38%, the Greens down one to 12% and One Nation up one to 5%. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1682.

Nine Newspapers have published further results from the Resolve Strategic poll, including one finding 36% in favour of nuclear energy, 23% opposed and 27% “open to the government investigating its use”. On the revised state three tax cuts, 52% were in favour and 14% opposed, with 37% considering the $146,400 threshold for greater and lesser tax cuts under the stage three changes to be about right, 14% too low and 17% too high.

A series of questions on other potential changes found 40% supportive and 26% opposed to reducing negative gearing concessions, 36% and 24% for reducing capital gains tax concessions, 28% and 29% for reducing franking credits, 39% and 22% for scaling back concessions on family trusts, 59% and 16% for “tax reform to help make buying a first home easier for younger people”. A question on the revised stage three tax cuts found 52% supportive and 14% opposed.

Dunkley by-election minus four days

A second poll emerges pointing to a tight race in Saturday’s Dunkley by-election.

Following an earlier poll by uComms for the Australia Institute showing Labor leading 52-48, a second Dunkley by-election poll has emerged from YouGov showing the Liberals with a lead of 51-49, accounting for an existing Labor margin of 6.3%. However, the poll is based on a very modest sample of 394, with the pollster calculating an effective margin of error of 6.1% after taking the effects of weighting into account. The primary votes are 40% for Liberal candidate Nathan Conroy, compared with a 32.5% Liberal vote in 2022; 33% for Labor candidate Jodie Belyea, compared with 40.2%; 9% for Greens candidate Alex Breskin, compared with 10.3%; 7% for independent Darren Bergwerf, who polled 3.9% when he ran in 2022; and 11% for the four other candidates. The poll was conducted from February 15 to 22.

As ever, both sides are keen to manage expectations before the event, with Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review reporting the Liberals are anticipating a swing in their favour of 3% to 4%, only slightly exceeding their 2.7% swing at the Fadden by-election last July. A separate report in the Financial Review last week said both sides were “nervous”, with Labor figures expressing concern that right-wing activist group Advance was “cutting through” with advertising targeting the government over the cost of living and the release of immigration detainees.

Polls: Newspoll and Resolve Strategic (open thread)

Little change from Newspoll, but the first Resolve Strategic poll for the year produces a somewhat unexpected fillip for the Coalition.

The Australian reports the three-weekly Newspoll shows no change on two-party preferred, with Labor maintaining a lead of 52-48, and little change on the primary vote, with Labor down one to 33%, the Coalition steady on 36%, the Greens steady on 12%, One Nation down one to 6% and others up two to 13%. Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 43% and steady on disapproval at 51%, while Peter Dutton respectively steady at 37% and up one to 51%. Albanese’s lead on preferred prime minister is 47-35, out slightly from 46-35. The report provides no information on field work dates or sample size, but the last one was Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1245.

UPDATE: It turns out to have been Monday to Friday, with the sample again 1245. Respondents were also told of “a proposal to build several small modular nuclear reactors around Australia to produce zero-emissions energy on the sites of existing coal-fired power stations once they are retired”, of which 55% approved and 31% disapproved.

We also have from Nine Newspapers the first Resolve Strategic poll since late November/early December, which is at at odds with its competitors in recording movement to the Coalition: up three points to 37%, with Labor and the Greens each down a point, to 34% and 11% respectively, and One Nation up one to 6%. My own estimate of two-party preferred based on preference flows in 2022 is a narrowing from around 54.5-45.5 to 52-48. This pollster had hitherto been comfortably the strongest series for Labor, but these numbers bring it back to the field.

There are also peculiarities on personal ratings: Anthony Albanese records a five-point increase in approval (or to be more precise, the sum of his good plus very good results) to 41% with disapproval (poor plus very poor) down one to 47%, but his lead as preferred prime minister has narrowed from 42-28 to 39-32. Peter Dutton is up one on approval to 35% and down three to disapproval to 45%. Further findings from the poll include 52% support and 14% opposition to the revised stage three tax cuts. It was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1603.

Weekend miscellany: issue polling, Cook preselection, retirements and more (open thread)

Rising concern about housing affordability and immigration, but signs of improving sentiment on the economic front.

New polling from the past few days:

• The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor’s two-party lead out from 52-48 to 52.5-47.5, from primary votes of Labor 34% (down half), Coalition 37% (steady), Greens 13% (up one) and One Nation 4% (down half). The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1706.

• Two recent issue salience polls – the SECNewgate Mood of the Nation report and JWS Research’s True Issues survey – continue to find cost of living well in the lead as the issue of greatest concern, but with housing affordability and interest rates narrowing the gap. Immigration and border security, while still well down the lists, are up in both surveys, by five points to 13% in the case of JWS Research. The latter’s “performance index” scores across various issues record “population growth” as the issue on which the government has lost the most skin over the past year. The SECNewgate poll was conducted February 1 to 5 from a sample of 1588, while JWS Research was from February 8 to 11 and a sample of 1000.

• DemosAU found 51% supportive and 32% opposed to the tax cut changes in a poll of 1154 respondents conducted from February 1 to 13, while the SECNewgate poll had it at 60% and 21%. The latter also recorded improvement since October on national direction (with the right-wrong direction split narrowing from 37-63 to 44-56) and predictions for the economy, particularly for the “in twelve months” time frame (from 25% better and 48% worse to 39% better and 36% worse).

Also:

• Samantha Hutchinson of the Financial Review reports a field of five has emerged for the looming federal by-election in Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook, including Sutherland Shire mayor Carmelo Pesce and McKinsey partner Simon Kennedy, who have generally been reckoned the front-runners, and the likewise previously noted Gwen Cherne, Veteran Family Advocate commissioner. The other two are Alex Cooke, head of institutional and private banking at ANZ, and Benjamin Britton, a former United Australia Party candidate and presumably a long shot.

• Western Australian Labor Senator Louise Pratt announced earlier this week she will not contest the next election. Dylan Caporn of The West Australian reports the party’s state secretary, Ellie Whiteaker, has “emerged as the front runner” after confirming her interest in replacing her on the ticket. Whiteaker is a former staffer to Pratt and shares her association with the Left faction Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

• Two significant Liberal Party events will be held this weekend: the preselection for the Perth seat of Curtin, which the party lost to teal independent Kate Chaney in 2022, between Matt Moran and Tom White; and a meeting of the New South Wales state council that among things will vote on a motion to expel Mitchell MP Alex Hawke.

• Jake Dietsch of The West Australian reports the Liberal preselection for Forrest, previously thought to be a lock for former Senator Ben Small, will in fact be a contest involving Bunbury councillor Gabi Ghasseb, who won an internal party appeal against his exclusion for submitting his nomination 20 minutes after the deadline (and who has also nominated for state upper house preselection). However, Small “remains the overwhelming favourite”. Incumbent Nola Marino recently announced she would not seek another term.

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