Category: Federal Politics 2022-2025

Essential Research’s fortnightly poll is due this week, although that will be less interesting than it was if it’s decided to stop publishing voting intention numbers, as was the case with last fortnight’s poll. RedBridge Group has also been in the field, with results potentially to be published this week. Other than that:

• Nine Newspapers reports Gavin Pearce, Liberal member for Braddon in north-western Tasmania, is withholding his preselection nomination until his electoral neighbour, Bass MP Bridget Archer, is expelled from the party. Archer crossed the floor last week to vote against Peter Dutton’s motion for a royal commission into child sex abuse in Indigenous communities, which the hitherto indulgent Dutton described as a “mistake”. The report says four other conservative MPs are backing Pearce’s course, with one saying there was “a chance party officials would side with him”, while acknowledging this would likely mean Archer retaining her seat as an independent.

• Linda Silmalis of the Daily Telegraph reports that Scott Yung, who came within 69 votes of defeating Chris Minns in Kogarah amid a backlash against state Labor among the Chinese community at the 2019 state election (UPDATE: It is noted in comments that Yung merely came within 69 votes of Minns on the primary vote, and that the final two-party margin was actually 1.8%)), is set to become the Liberal candidate for Bennelong after the withdrawal of rival nominee Craig Chung. Silmalis reports Yung had the backing of Peter Dutton, whereas Chung was favoured by moderates. Jerome Laxale gained the seat for Labor in 2022, the party’s second ever win in the seat after Maxine McKew’s famous victory over John Howard in 2007.

• Next door in North Sydney, which Trent Zimmerman lost to teal independent Kylea Tink at last year’s election, the Sydney Morning Herald’s CBD column reports that Sophie Lambert, media manager at the NSW Education Department, has nominated for Liberal preselection. Lambert’s preselection brochure says the seat was “stolen at the last election by a concerning new wave of politics”, and shows her pictured alongside conservative favourite Katherine Deves. The matter could be complicated by the current redistribution process, in which the seat could be radically redrawn or potentially abolished.

• Further to the above, responses to the call for public suggestions for the redistribution of New South Wales seats will be published on the Australian Electoral Commission site today, presumably to include the wish lists of the major parties and other interested actors.

The Courier-Mail will have a Queensland state poll through at 10am local time, presumably from YouGov, which the paper has been promoting with its trademark subtlety. Alongside the usual bilge about how the results will rock the state to its foundations, we are informed the poll includes questions on how respondents might vote if Labor changed leaders.

In what’s likely to be a fallow period for federal polling post-referendum, Roy Morgan turned a few heads with its weekly voting intention result, which is the first poll this term to credit the Coalition with a two-party lead, by a bare 50.5-49.5 margin, after Labor led 54-46 a week previously. However, the result is in large part down to an anomalous flow of respondent-allocated preferences: the primary votes of Labor 32% (down three), Coalition 36% (up two), Greens 14% (steady) and One Nation 4.5% are all in the ballpark of the 2022 election result, and in fact convert to 53-47 in Labor’s favour if preference flows from the election are applied. The poll was conducted in the immediate aftermath of the referendum, from last Monday through to Sunday, from a sample of 1383.

JWS Research has released its monthly True Issues survey of issue salience, which finds 56% nominating the cost of living when asked unprompted to identify their three most important issues, shooting up from 43% in June. Housing and interest rates, health and aged care and environment and climate change are little changed in second through to fourth place, with health levelling off after a long post-pandemic slide. An index measure of the federal government’s performance is down to 48, after the four previous readings since the 2022 election came in at 52 or 53. The survey was conducted

With most of the votes from the referendum now in, here’s a ranked listing of how the pollsters performed:

The Australian has published aggregated Newspoll breakdowns from polling conducted from August 28 to October 12, encompassing the four polls conducted since Pyxis Polling took over. The overall sample is 6378, having been boosted by 2368 in the pre-referendum poll (which recorded 57% for no and 37% for yes, converting to a bang-on-accurate 60.6-39.4 after exclusion of the uncommitted).

Keeping in mind that the previous set of results, from February 1 to April 3, were conducted by a different agency, the results show Labor’s two-party lead up slightly in New South Wales (from 55-45 to 56-44) and South Australia (from 56-44 to 57-43), but down solidly in Victoria (from 58-42 to 54-46) and Western Australia (57-43 to 53-47). The Coalition is credited with a 52-48 lead in Queensland after a 50-50 result last time, and we are given the rare treat of numbers for Tasmania, where Labor leads 57-43. This suggests swings to Labor of about 4.5% in New South Wales, 2% in Queensland, 3% in South Australia and 2.5% in Tasmania, and to the Coalition of 1% in Victoria and 2% in Western Australia.

The age breakdowns do not repeat a Labor blowout last time among the 18-to-34 cohort, which has progressed over the term’s three Newspoll breakdowns from 65-35 to 69-31 to 64-35. A five-point Coalition gain on the primary vote to 26% means they do not again finish behind the Greens, who are up a point to 25%, with Labor down six to 37%. The results among the older cohorts are essentially unchanged.

Further results suggest the opening of a substantial new gender gap, or of distinctive house effects between the two polling outfits. Where last time Labor was credited with a slightly bigger lead among men (55-45) than women (54-46), its advantage is now out to 56-44 among women and in to 51-49 among men. Income breakdowns now conform with the traditional pattern, with a 57-43 Labor lead among households on annual incomes of up to $50,000 progressively receding to 50-50 among those on $150,000 or more. The previous breakdowns had Labor strongest in the two middle-income cohorts.

I suspect we’re entering something of an opinion poll drought, with media polling budgets having been exhausted in the last stages of the referendum campaign. On that subject, my live results feature continue to update on a daily-or-so basis. There is also Simon Jackman’s, which includes an impressive feature allowing the user to observe relationships between booth results and various electoral and demographic measures.

Other news:

• The federal redistribution processes for Western Australia and Victoria, which will respectively increase the state’s representation from 15 seats to 16 and reduce it from 39 to 38, moved along a notch this week. Submission deadlines for suggestions have been set at November 17 for Western Australia and November 24 for Victoria; supporting information including the enrolment data that will set the quotas for enrolment (both current and projected to 2028) have been published for Western Australia and will follow for Victoria on Wednesday. The deadline for suggestions in New South Wales, which reduces from 47 to 46 seats, is this coming Friday.

• The former Liberal Democratic Party, which has lost the right to have the word “liberal” in its name following legislative changes before the last election, is seeking to register as the Libertarian Party (with a proposed logo that looks to be rather a lot like that of Queensland’s Liberal National Party). This is now its formal name in Victoria, where it boasts one seat in the Legislative Council, though it retains its old name in New South Wales, where ditto.

• The Australian reports the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters will bring down its final report on the 2022 election next month. Most of the terms of reference were addressed in the interim report, the exception being “proportional representation of the states and territories in the Parliament, in the context of the democratic principle of ‘one vote, one value’”.

Click here for full display of Indigenous Voice referendum results.

I am continuing to update the live results feature about twice daily, which should get incrementally worse for yes as late batches of postals are added. Antony Green notes that no got 56.2% on the election day vote, 64.5% on the pre-poll vote and 68.7% on the postal vote – disparities far greater than typical at elections, which have had the effect of widening the no lead as the count has progressed. Further reading (and listening) on the referendum:

• I had a paywalled piece in Crikey on Monday that observed the strength of the yes vote in Indigenous communities and teal seats, respectively contrary to suggestions advanced during the campaign by no advocates and voluminous newspaper reports on supposed internal polling.

• Nine Newspapers has further results from the Resolve Strategic poll of 4728 respondents from September 22 to October 4, which show Jacinta Nampijinpa Price viewed positively by 26%, neutrally by 22% and negatively by 16%; Nyunggai Warren Mundine respectively at 22%, 25% and 15%; and Lidia Thorpe at at 9%, 23% and 32%. All scored much higher on name recognition than yes campaigners Noel Pearson (11% positive, 20% neutral, 13% negative), Marcia Langton (9%, 15% and 12%) and Thomas Mayo (5%, 16% and 10%).

• The Guardian has various attitudinal results from Accent Research and Octopus Group, the former of which is headed by the eminent Shaun Ratliff, the most interesting of which is Voice support by top news source of choice. Sky News and The Guardian reigned at opposite ends of the table; Twitter uses favoured the Voice by 54-46 while Facebook went 67-33 the other way.

• DemosAU has published results on attitudes to the referendum from 7341 respondents over the past three months, which are covered at The New Daily. Among other things, the survey found 50% of Greens and 45% of Labor voters believed “the constitution needs altering to reflect our modern nation” compared with 17% for the Coalition and 14% for One Nation, with the latter much more likely to rate that “the constitution has worked satisfactorily for over a century, we shouldn’t alter it”.

• I discussed the results of the referendum the day after the event with Ben Raue of The Tally Room on a podcast you can listen to below.