Category: Federal Politics 2025-2028

The only new federal poll this week was the monthly-or-so accumulation from Roy Morgan, encompassing 5084 responses from between August 25 and September 21. Labor is credited with a lead of 55.5-44.5 on both the previous election and respondent-allocated measures, which is in from 56.5-43.5 last month on respondent-allocated, but unchanged on previous election. There is next to no change on the primary vote: Labor is on 34%, the Coalition 30% and the Greens 12%, no different from last time, while One Nation gains half a point to 9.5%. The accompanying release has two-party breakdowns by state and gender.

The other big electoral news of the week was Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian abandoning her Court of Disputed Returns challenge to her 26-vote defeat at the hands of independent Nicolette Boele in Bradfield. Kapterian said the opportunity to review the ballot papers that had been referred to Australian Electoral Officer for adjudication during the counting process left her “satisfied the right call was made overall”.

A little under five months after the federal election, the BludgerTrack poll aggregate has made its return, presently aggregating 14 poll results on voting intention and eight for leadership ratings. Going back as far as mid-June, it records a stable picture on two-party preferred, with Labor holding a consistent lead of around 57.5-42.5, but is distinctive on the primary vote in picking up a surge to One Nation, who are at level pegging with the Greens, at the expense of the Coalition. The series now makes use of the data from Roy Morgan, which was excluded in the previous term for reasons including its excessive frequency relative to other pollsters. This hasn’t been an issue post-election, having moved to roughly monthly reporting (a fresh result should be along later today), and it’s also relevant that it performed rather well at the election by leaning more strongly to Labor than its rivals.

BludgerTrack does not currently have enough data to work with to produce state breakdowns, but it gets one step closer today with The Australian publishing the first Newspoll geographic and demographic breakdown since the election, combining 3811 responses from three polls going back to mid-July. The full results on voting intention can be found under the “Poll Data” tab in the BludgerTrack display. At state level, it records two-party results of 60-40 to Labor in New South Wales (a swing to Labor of around 4.5% since the election), 58-42 in Victoria (around 1.5%), 51-49 in Queensland (ditto), 54-46 in Western Australia (a swing of around 2% to the Coalition) and 55-45 in South Australia (around 4% to the Coalition, bearing in mind that by this point the sample size is down to 283). There is no gender gap on two-party preferred, with Labor leading 57-43 among men and women, but Anthony Albanese has a narrower advantage over Sussan Ley on preferred prime minister among women (49-31) than men (54-31).

One further point to be noted is that New South Wales has a new Senator in Sean Bell, who fills the One Nation vacancy arising from the retirement of Warwick Stacey, who was elected in May, on grounds of ill health. A former adviser to Pauline Hanson, Bell was announced by the party as Stacey’s designated successor one day before a joint standing of state parliament convened to rubber-stamp its choice last week. Bell in fact lives in Queensland, but a party spokesperson told Max Maddison of the Sydney Morning Herald he was “in the process” of moving to the state he now represents.

Three big new poll results, a recurring theme being a surge in support for One Nation at the Coalition’s expense:

• The Australian reports Newspoll has Labor’s lead out from 56-44 to 58-42, with the Coalition recording its worst primary vote in the history of the series, which goes back to 1985. Labor is steady at 36%, with the Coalition down three to 27%, the Greens up one to 13% and One Nation up one to 10%. Both leaders’ personal ratings have deteriorated: Anthony Albanese is down four on approval to 45% and up four on disapproval to 50%, while Sussan Ley is down three to 32% and up five to 49%. Albanese’s lead as preferred prime minister unchanged at 51-31. The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1264.

• Nine Newspapers has the monthly Resolve Strategic poll, which has Labor’s two-party lead narrowing from a blowout 59-41 to 55-45. The primary votes are Labor 35% (down two), Coalition 27% (down two), Greens 11% (down one) and One Nation 12% (up three). Anthony Albanese is up one on approval (or to be precise, good plus very good on “performance in recent weeks”) to 44% and steady on disapproval (poor plus very poor) at 45%; Sussan Ley is up three on both, to 41% and 32%; and Albanese leads 38-26 on preferred prime minister, in from 41-26. The biggest movements on the breakdowns are by gender, with Labor down seven among women to 31% and up three among men to 39%, last month’s result being clearly the more orthodox of the two. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1800.

• The Financial Review yesterday brought its second RedBridge Group poll since the election, the first having been in late June, which has Labor at 35% (down two), the Coalition on 30% (down one), the Greens on 11% (steady) and One Nation on 11% (up two). Labor’s headline two-party lead of 53.5-46.5 is their weakest in any poll since the election, but it’s partly down to respondent-allocated preference flows: applying flows from the election would have it at about 54.5-45.5. The poll had a long field work period, from August 19 to September 8, and a big sample of 5326. Breakdowns by age cohort, gender and location consequently have some meat on their bones: the biggest movement is a seven-point shift form Labor to the Greens among “Gen-Z”, which I take to mean 18-to-34, putting them at 38% and 31% with the Coalition on just 18%. UPDATE: Full report here, including breakdowns for the four biggest states.

The other big story on the polling front of late has been the emphasis placed by now former Coalition front-bencher Jacinta Price on a suggestion by Kos Samaras of RedBridge Group that Labor’s two-party vote among the Indian dispora might be as high as 85%. Samaras later clarified that a “more appropriate characterisation” would have it in the “mid-60s”. This would seem consistent with some more robust data points that have been doing the rounds since:

• The Co-operative Election Survey from before the May election gave Labor a primary vote advantage over the Coalition of 45% to 34% among those of “south Asian” ethnic identity.

• A survey of Indian-origin residents conducted by YouGov for the Carnegie Institute before the 2022 election had it at 43% to 26%, translating to about 47% to 29% upon exclusion of the 9% uncommitted. The former had a national sample of 4012, which presumably encompassed a south Asian sub-sample of about 300, while the latter had a sample of 800.

• Roy Morgan has aggregated its polling among respondents born in India and China going back to mid-2023, which finds both distinctive as major party voters as well as leaning to Labor. Compared with a Morgan average over the period that I calculate at Labor 31.9%, Coalition 36.2%, Greens 13.1% and One Nation 5.5%, the result among Indian-born respondents is Labor 45%, Coalition 39%, Greens 8% and One Nation 2%, which I estimate to be about 56-44 to Labor on two-party preferred; and among Chinese-born respondents, Labor 48%, Coalition 34%, Greens 11% and One Nation 1%, which I make at 61-39. There were 1332 respondents in the Indian-born sample and 738 in the Chinese.

None of the major opinion pollsters have anything to report today, but there’s a strong chance Roy Morgan will come through today, it being five weeks since their last result (UPDATE: Not so – so it looks like it’s actually a few weeks away). DemosAU continues to eke out results from a poll of 1079 respondents conducted July 31, last week reporting that 45% supported the government’s plan to increase the tax rate on superannuation earnings for balances over $3 million, with 33% opposed. Other than that:

• Nine Newspapers reports Special Minister of State Don Farrell has directed the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to inquire into fixed four-year terms, increasing the size of parliament, aggressive election campaign tactics, and funding of third-party campaigners. Four-year terms would require a referendum, and an earlier effort to that effect in 1988 was heavily defeated. One sticking point among many was that Senate terms would have become tied to those of the House, thereby undoing the intricate formula of staggered and fixed Senate terms that the small states insisted on during the federation debates of the 1890s. While not requiring a referendum, increasing the size of parliament is complicated by the Constitution’s “nexus” clause, which requires that the House be twice the size of the Senate. This means increases cannot occur in small increments: there would realistically have to be an increase from 12 Senate seats per state to 14, meaning 24 extra seats in the House even if the territories’ Senate representation was not increased, which presumably it would be. The Nine report says this could be “countered by phasing in the new electorates over a longer time frame” – I can only think this might mean a transitional term in which the Senate would have 13 members and the House would gain its required extra members over two terms.

• The focus of the JSCEM inquiry on election campaign tactics would seem to have been inspired by the activities of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, the fringe religious organisation formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren. Its involvement in the Liberal campaign was the subject of an exposé on Saturday by Michael Bachelard of Nine Newspapers.

• Sarah Ison of The Australian reports Mark Dreyfus, having been dumped as Attorney-General after the election, is expected to announce his retirement in the coming months, citing one Labor source saying it will be as soon as next month. The party’s national secretary, Paul Erickson, has been mentioned as a possible successor in Dreyfus’s Melbourne seat of Isaacs, which would mean the Left taking a seat currently held by the Right. The Right faction Australian Workers Union, with which Dreyfus is associated, favours Steve Michelson, founder and director of communications firm Banksia Strategic Partners and a former adviser to Bill Shorten.

• Adelaide’s Sunday Mail reports Liberal sources saying they believe Tony Pasin will be challenged for preselection in Barker by Nicolle Flint, who held Boothby from 2016 to 2022 and failed in a comeback attempt in May. David Penberthy of The Australian reported a fortnight ago that Flint had been at loggerheads with Pasin and hard right ally Alex Antic, giving rise to rival conservative sub-factions respectively identified as “the prayer group” and “the coalition of the disaffected”. The catalysts were the Antic-Pasin faction’s refusal to back Flint as candidate for Boothby and traditional conservatives for state council; Antic deposing Anne Rushton at the top of the Senate ticket for the election in May; and concerns sitting conservative MPs would be targeted for preselection (the latter perhaps referring to the Sunday Mail report’s suggestion that Heidi Girolamo and Ben Hood may face challenges for the top positions on the state upper house ticket).

• Weeks after taking up his seat in the Senate, New South Wales One Nation Senator Warwick Stacey announced his resignation in mid-August citing “personal health issues”. Rhianna Down of The Australian reports “speculation Senator Hanson could replace Senator Stacey with her daughter Lee Hanson or long-term One Nation staffer James Ashby”. There has been no further reportage on the matter so far as I’m aware.

YouGov has conducted an MRP poll for moderate Liberal think thank the Blueprint Institute, a procedure well described in the accompanying release as “different from traditional polling because it uses polling data collected across Australia to model the results across each of the federal 150 electorates by matching the polling data to electorate level data”. Ample detail, and voluminous colour-coded maps, are featured in the accompanying report.

The poll is not concerned with voting intention, but whether respondents would so much as consider voting for each party. With the catch that the survey was conducted some time ago – July 10 to 29, from a sample of 5007 – it finds that only 33% would consider voting Coalition, whereas 58% reported doing so at some point in the past. The equivalent responses on the former question are 42% for Labor, 17% for the Greens and 12% for One Nation. Out of the four Australian Electoral Commission geographic classifications, only in “rural” were respondents more likely to consider voting Coalition than Labor, by a margin of 2.8%, with Labor leading by 8.5% in provincial, 14.8% in outer metropolitan and 17.1% in inner metropolitan.

Helpfully for the poll’s clients, who are presumably resisting a push within the party to abandon its net zero commitment, it finds 49% agreeing the target should be maintained and 30% that it should be dropped, with 51% agreeing they would “only consider a party ready to govern if they have credible policies to address climate change and its impacts”. Among other findings: 24% agreed and 52% disagreed that the Coalition was “in touch with modern Australia”; 33% agreed and 45% disagreed that the party was aligned with their personal values and priorities; and 33% agreed and 42% disagreed that that the Coalition’s values aligned with its own on access to affordable housing.

Essential Research reported this week for the first time in four weeks, though it has yet to resume voting intention polling. Leadership ratings recorded a one point drop in approval for Anthony Albanese to 49% and a two point increase in disapproval to 43%, while Sussan Ley was up two on both measures, to 35% and 37% respectively. Labor was dominant on two questions relating to economic management, leading the Coalition 42% to 25% as best party to ensure the economy works in the interests of everyday Australians, and 41% to 28% for managing the economy generally.

A regular national mood has a steady 38% holding that the country is headed in the right direction, with wrong track up two to 47%. Perhaps relatedly, there was a six-point increase since January in the view that the economy will worsen over the next six months to 35%, although there was also a three-point increase for improvement to 22%, with “stay the same” down nine to 43%. Thirty-four per cent supported and 30% opposed the recognition of Palestine, while 50% supported and 24% opposed the introduction of a four-day working week.

The Victorian sub-sample of 518 respondents (I’m unclear as to why it’s quite so much out of an overall sample of 1034) were asked for their view of the state party leaders, recording 36% approval and 51% disapproval for Jacinta Allan, and 40% approval and 35% disapproval for Brad Battin. The poll overall was conducted last Wednesday to Tuesday.

Monday’s Nine Newspapers had more results from last week’s Resolve Strategic poll, this time on carbon emissions targets, finding 17% support for a more ambitious target for 2030, 28% for the current 43% by 2030 target, 12% for abolishing a 2030 target while maintaining net zero by 2050, and 17% for abolishing both.

Roy Morgan pops up again with one of its federal polls accumulating nearly a month’s worth of its regular weekly polling, in this case encompassing a sample of 5001 surveyed from July 28 to August 24. It finds both major parties down on the primary vote from a month ago, Labor by two-and-a-half points to 34%, the Coalition by one to 30%. The Greens are steady on 12% and One Nation is up two to 9%. Labor’s lead on the two-party preferred measure based on 2025 election preference flows duly narrows from 57-43 to 55.5-44.5, though the change on respondent-allocated preferences is more modest, from 57-43 to 56.5-43.5. The accompanying report features breakdowns by state and gender.

DemosAU has a further result from a poll that last week that produced a finding on Palestinian statehood, this one finding 56% support for “the federal government’s proposal to ban access to YouTube for children under 16 as part of a broader social media restriction”, with 29% opposed. The poll was conducted July 31 from a sample of 1079.

Nine Newspapers had follow-up questions from the Resolve Strategic federal poll on Tuesday involving matters related to the economic roundtable, which 49% knew about and 51% didn’t. Pluralities favoured a business cashflow tax (40% for, 15% against) and reducing or abolishing negative gearing (37% and 19% against) and capital gains tax concessions (41% and 21%), but predictably opposed increasing the GST rate (20% for, 51% against) and broadening its base (26% and 44%). It also found 64% support for work-at-home guarantees along the lines being pursued by the Victorian government, with only 17% opposed.

In other news, the first vacancy of the new parliament has emerged with recently elected New South Wales One Nation Senator Warwick Stacey calling it a day less than two months after being sworn in, citing “personal health issues”. The only reporting I’ve seen on who might replace him, which will be a matter for the party’s state branch, is The Australian’s observation of “speculation Senator Hanson could replace Senator Stacey with her daughter Lee Hanson or long-term One Nation staffer James Ashby”. However, “a One Nation source rejected this, saying the replacement should rightfully be a NSW resident”.

Two major new federal opinion polls:

• The Australian brings us the first Newspoll result in four weeks, which has Labor with a two-party lead of 56-44, in from 57-43 last time. The primary votes are Labor 36% (steady), Coalition 30% (up one), Greens 12% (steady) and One Nation 9% (up one). Anthony Albanese is up two on approval to 49% and down one on disapproval to 46%, while Sussan Ley is steady at 35% approval and up two on disapproval to 44%. Albanese leads 51-31 on preferred prime minister, shifting from 52-32 last time. The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1283.

• The monthly Resolve Strategic poll from Nine Newspapers has Labor’s lead at 59-41, out from 56-44 last time, though the primary votes are similar to Newspoll’s: Labor up two to 37%, the Coalition steady on 29%, the Greens steady on 12% and One Nation up one to 9%. Anthony Albanese has nonetheless slipped on his personal ratings, his combined very good and good score down two to 43% with poor and very poor up three to 45%. Sussan Ley is unchanged at 38% and 29% respectively, while Albanese’s lead on preferred prime minister shifts from 40-25 to 41-26. The poll also has “likeability” ratings for various political figures – Albanese has a net result of plus three and Ley plus ten, but beyond that I would want to see what the uncommitted results are, name recognition being an important feature of such findings. The sample was 1800: field work dates are not provided, but last time it was over a seven-day period from Saturday to Friday.