Category: Federal Politics 2022-2025

The only recent poll I’m aware of is an Australia Institute survey on gas industry policy, which finds overwhelming support for export caps (52% strongly in favour, 28% somewhat so, 5% opposed and 2% strongly opposed) and a windfall profits tax (39%, 31%, 7% and 5%). However, the setting of the questions, which noted that the proposals had been made by former ACCC chair Rod Sims, might be thought encouraging to favourable responses. The poll was conducted November 1 to 4 from a sample of 1001, using an online panel licensed from Dynata. Such a poll wouldn’t normally be enough for me to hang a post on, but a new open thread is needed and I’ve been too consumed by the Victorian election to look into anything else. So there you have it.

The flood of polling in the week after the budget is inevitably followed in the week after that. Here’s all I have:

• The tracking poll of Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings maintained by US pollster Morning Consult records no significant change, with Albanese starting November on 57% approval and 30% disapproval, down one and up two from the start of October.

• As reported by Anna Macdonald at The Mandarin, Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers told the Joint Standing Committe on Electoral Matters the commission was struggling to attract staff at election time due to low pay and “bizarre behaviour” at polling places. Specifically, Rogers said the May federal election was marked by “people coming into the polling place and recording interactions with our staff, shouting at our staff, and some fairly bizarre behaviour that we haven’t seen previously”.

• Independent ACT Senator David Pocock has made a submission to the inquiry calling for the two territories to have six Senators serving six-year terms on the same staggered cycle that applies to the rest of the Senate, as distinct from the current situation where they have two Senators each whose terms are tied to the House.

The post-budget Newspoll finds Labor’s two-party lead at 55-45, in from 57-43 at the previous poll eight weeks ago. Both major parties are up on the primary vote, Labor by one to 38% and the Coalition by four to 35%. All other players are down: the Greens by two to 11%, One Nation by one to 6%, the United Australia Party by one to 1% and all others by one to 9%. Anthony Albanese’s lead on preferred prime minister has slipped from 61-22 to 54-27, and he is down two on approval to 59% and up four on disapproval to 33%. Peter Dutton is up on both approval and disapproval, respectively by four points to 39% and three points to 46%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1500.

The poll also includes the same suite of questions on response to the budget that Newspoll has been posing since the late 1980s, which you can read about here – I’ll have more to say about those later. Note also the other new posts below this one – my own lengthy compendium of New South Wales state election news, and Adrian Beaumont’s coverage of Brazil’s presidential election and other international electoral events.

UPDATE (Resolve Strategic): Now there is a Resolve Strategic poll from the Age/Herald, with stronger results for Labor: their primary vote is unchanged on the poll three weeks ago at 39%, with the Coalition up two to 32%, the Greens up one to 13%, One Nation down one to 4%, the United Australia Party down two to 1%, independents down one to 8% and others up one to 3%. Anthony Albanese leads Peter Dutton by 53-19 as preferred prime minister, in from 55-17 three weeks ago. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1611.

The budget was rated good for “the country as a whole” by 44% and for “me and my household” by 28%, compared with 50% and 40% respectively for the March budget – it’s not clear how many of the remainder particularly rated it as bad. Four options for action on power prices all received strong support: 79% for price caps, 59% for taxpayer subsidies for those on low incomes, 64% for heavily subsidising home solar power and 67% for reserving gas for the local market, with 3%, 14%, 11% and 4% respectively opposed. Thirty-six per cent considered Labor had broken promises to “cut power bills and get wages moving”, with 12% disagreeing and 53% either undecided or considering it too early to say.

UPDATE (Newspoll budget response): For the questions Newspoll asks after every budget, an even 29% rated it both good and bad for the economy, but 47% rated it negative for personal impact compared with only 12% for positive. Thirty-four per cent felt the opposition would have done a better job, with 48% disagreeing. Another question gauged the extent to which respondents felt the budget properly balanced the cost of living and the budget deficit: 6% felt it put too much emphasis on the former, 25% too much emphasis on the latter, 23% felt it struck the right balance and 31% felt it didn’t do enough for either.

This marks the thirty-sixth budget of which Newspoll has asked essentially the same set of questions going back to 1988. The results are the sixth worst for personal impact and the ninth worst for economic impact, although it rates in the middle of the pack on the question of whether the opposition would have done better. The latter point is illustrated by the first of the charts below, which records Labor budgets in red and Coalition budgets in blue. The second chart illustrates the correlation between positive results on personal and economic impact. In landing right on the trendline, this shows no particular sense that the budget favoured either economic concerns or personal finances relative to its somewhat negative reception overall.

We’re now in week seven of the Newspoll drought, but that does not come as a surprise this week as the budget will be brought down tomorrow, and a poll will assuredly follow in its wake. We did have from The Australian on Friday results from an SEC Newgate Research on Friday which found the federal government’s overall performance rated as excellent by 3%, very good by 9%, good by 26%, fair by 35%, poor by 16% and very poor by 10%. This marked a nine-point drop in the combined excellent, very good and good result since the question was last asked in August. However, the party’s lead over the Coalition as best to manage cost-of-living was little changed over the same period, from 38-24 to 40-24. Ratings for state governments were down across the board, which likely reflects an unwinding of strong results for governments across the board during the pandemic. Some of the results from the poll, but not those above, can be found on the organisation’s website. It was conducted from October 5 to 10 from a sample of 1200.

Food for thought:

• Constitutional law expert George Williams calls for the voting age to be lowered to 16 in a column for The Australian.

• Joo-Cheong Tham of the University of Melbourne law school argues for the franchise to be extended to permanent residents and long-term visa holders.

• Digital Rights Watch calls for the removal of exemptions for political party voter databases from privacy laws in light of the recent Optus hack.

• The Centre for Public Integrity calls for campaign spending caps, after its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the federal election analysed the increase in spending over the past decade.

The Guardian reports the fortnightly Essential Research poll includes the monthly question on Anthony Albanese’s leadership, recording 58% approval (down one) and 26% disapproval (up one). Respondents were also asked what appear to have been all-or-nothing questions on stage three tax cuts, finding 53-47 in favour of sticking with them rather than breaking an election promise regardless of the economic situation, and 52-48 against a more general proposition as to whether break election promises should ever be broken. However, the split in favour of keeping the tax cuts was 70-30 in favour among those who felt they were most likely to benefit compared with 60-40 for least likely. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1122 – there should be a good deal more from it when the full report is published later today.

UPDATE: Full report here.

Newspoll may be spinning on its wheels, but the Age/Herald has come through with the third Resolve Strategic poll of federal voting intention since the election, three weeks after the last. This one has Labor on 39% (steady), the Coalition on 30% (down two), the Greens on 12% (up two), One Nation on 5% (down one), the United Australia Party on 3% (up one) and independents on 9% (up one). Resolve Strategic doesn’t publish its own two-party numbers, but a fun new tool from Armarium Interreta allows you to punch in primary vote numbers and get a two-party result based on preference flows from the May election, which suggests a Labor lead of about 58-42.

Anthony Albanese’s combined very good and good rating is 60% (steady) compared with 25% for poor and very poor (up one), and he leads 53-18 on preferred prime minister (53-19 last time). Peter Dutton has a positive rating of 30% (up two) and a negative rating of 41% (up one). The poll also had questions on the budget and tax, the most interesting of which finds 34% supporting and 13% opposing the repeal of the stage three tax cuts, with fully 53% “undecided/neutral”, and on the Optus security breach. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1604.

We’re now five weeks without a Newspoll, which is unfortunate from my perspective as it’s time for a new post and I’ve been too busy working on my Victorian election guide (which should be up later this week) to have put much thought into how one might look. There’s always the regular Roy Morgan two-party figures from its weekly update video, which have lately found it moving to the rest of the pack by recording growth in Labor’s leads, the latest result putting it at 55-45 after a 54.5-45.5 result the previous week.

Elsewhere:

• Shaun Ratcliff at YouGov offers findings from its Australian Cooperative Election Survey, conducted during the May election campaign, that appear to suggest the age effect for the Coalition primary vote doesn’t amount to much up to the age of about 40, but accelerates dramatically thereafter. The implication that support for the Coalition is heavily concentrated among the very oldest voters would not appear to bode well for them in the short to medium term.

• Antony Green and Adrian Beaumont at The Conversation both sound off against Victoria’s retention of group voting tickets for the Legislative Council, making the state the last bastion of preference harvesting following recent reforms in Western Australia.

• The turnout for the recent state by-election for North West Central in Western Australia, which has the state’s second highest indigenous population share, came in at just 47.7%, or 5335 out of an enrolment of 11,189. The Nationals have blamed the Western Australian Electoral Commission for insufficient advertising. Merome Beard of the Nationals won the seat with 3071 votes after preferences (60.5%) to 2008 for Liberal candidate Kim Baston (39.5%).

• Rod Culleton, who ran at the May election as the lead Senate candidate of the Great Australian Party in Western Australia, has been charged with providing false information on his nomination form. This included a declaration that he was not an undischarged bankrupt when the National Personal Insolvency Index identified him as such, although Culleton insists this was not the case. Culleton was elected as a One Nation Senator in Western Australia in 2016 but subsequently disqualified after being declared bankrupt by the Federal Court.