Category: Federal Politics 2025-2028

The Financial Review has the results of a large-sample poll from RedBridge Group, the second pollster to take the field post-election after Roy Morgan. The results are not far off Roy Morgan’s: Labor on 37%, compared with 34.6% at the election; the Coalition on 31%, compared with 31.8%; and the Greens on 11%, compared with 12.2%. Labor is credited with a 55.5-44.5 lead on two-party preferred, compared with an election result of 55.2-44.8 – lower than I might have expected based on preference flows from the recent election, but perhaps explicable by One Nation accounting for a larger share of “others”. Breakdowns are more balanced than you might expect with regard to gender, but results by age tell a familiar story of the Coalition vote descending from 44% among the 65+ cohort to 19% among 18-to-34, the Greens rising from 2% to 24%, and Labor fairly consistent across the board. The poll was conducted “late June” from a sample of 4036.

Another item of federally relating polling emerges from a report by Alexandra Smith of the Sydney Morning Herald on debate within the Liberal Party over whether to challenge independent Nicolette Boele’s 26-vote win in Bradfield in court. Local branch presidents are calling on the party to put up the money, but others consider this “a risk financially and politically”. The report cites polling conducted in mid-June for Climate 200 which suggests Boele would likely win a by-election resulting from a legal challenge, with her primary vote up from 27.0% at the election to 33.2%, with Gisele Kapterian’s 37.3% comparing with an election result of 38.0%.

It appears Roy Morgan may have resumed its weekly federal polling schedule, offering a new poll conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1522. This is consistent with its pre-election form and in contrast with its other two polls since the election, which had longer field work periods and bigger samples. The results, however, are much the same: Labor leads 57.5-42.5 on two-party preferred (56.5-43.5 when based on preference flows at the election rather than respondent allocation), in from 58-42 in last week’s result, from primary votes of Labor 36.5% (down one), Coalition 30.5% (down half) and Greens 12% (steady), although One Nation perks up two-and-a-half points to 8.5%.

Roy Morgan has its (and anybody’s) second federal poll since the election, showing Labor’s two-party lead unchanged from the first such poll three weeks ago at 58-42. The primary votes are Labor 37.5% (up half), Coalition 31% (steady), Greens 12% (up half) and One Nation 6%. The poll was conducted June 2 to 22 from a sample of 3957.

Also of note was the Australian Electoral Commission’s publication of preference flow data from the election, including aggregated measures of how each minor party’s preferences split between Labor and the Coalition. A large component of the pollsters’ failure to credit the 55.2% two-party vote share Labor ended up recording lay in an expectation, fuelled by recent state elections, that preference flows to Labor would not match those of 2022. In aggregate, Labor’s share of all minor party and independent preferences ended up being all but identical to 2022, vindicating the determination of RedBridge Group (together with late newcomer DemosAU) in their persistence with 2022 election flows in determining their two-party preferred headlines.

However, the preference flow by party data shows that beneath the surface stability was a continuation of an apparent polarisation in minor party preferences, reflected in record highs for both the Greens flow to Labor and One Nation flow to the Coalition. Pollsters were thus vindicated in revising upwards the flow of One Nation preferences to the Coalition – but none correctly apprehended that Greens preferences would continue to trend the other way, and at least one did the opposite.

JWS Research has published a post-federal election survey report along the same lines of a similar effort after the 2022 election, conducted May 6 to 8 from a sample of 1000. Key findings:

• Labor did distinctly better among those who voted early (encompassing postal as well as pre-poll voters), with 42% of those aged 65 and over but only 20% of those aged 18 to 34 reporting having voted more than a week out from election day, with a respective 25% and 47% voting on election day itself.

• Labor did much better among late deciders: 26% of Coalition voters said they always voted that way with only 10% saying they decided on the day they voted, whereas the respective figures for Labor voters were 17% and 16%. Of those who decided in the final week of the campaign, 39% voted Labor and 23% Coalition, compared with 38% and 30% in 2022.

• Forty-three per cent reported being at least party guided by how-to-vote cards (47% of Labor voters, 50% of Coalition and 32% of Greens), down from 49% in 2022, with 56% saying they made up their own mind (52% Coalition, 49% Labor and 65% Greens), up from 49%.

• Forty-nine per cent of Labor voters identified a favourable view of the party as the main motivation for their choice, followed by 23% for the leader, 18% for policies or issues and 7% for the local candidate. Among Coalition voters, 56% named the party, 20% policies or issues, 13% the local candidate and only 9% the leader.

• Eighty-three per cent found it easy to fill the lower house ballot paper compared with 8% for difficult, while 61% rated Senate voting easy and 22% difficult.

• Sixty-three per cent reckoned the election campaign important, up from 56% in 2022, compared with 16% for not important, down from 15%.

• Labor’s campaign was rated more positively than the Coalition measure on 11 of 12 measures, the exception being “a source of false/misleading information”, for which both scored 30%. The two most emphatic results both related to Trumpet of Patriots, whose campaign was rated “annoying” by 57% and a source of false/misleading information by 40%.

The Lowy Institute has published the full report of its annual survey of attitudes to foreign policy, conducted from March 3 to 16 from a sample of 2117. A taster was provided early in the election campaign in the shape of a question on which leader would be more competent at handling foreign policy, on which Anthony Albanese led Peter Dutton 41% to 29%.

The survey finds trust in the United States to act responsibly in the world at 36%, down 20 points on last year and by far the worst result going back to 2006 (the previous low being 51% in the last year if the first Trump presidency). Eighty per cent nonetheless continue to hold that the US alliance is important to Australia’s security, down three on last year; 57% say Australia should remain close to the US rather than distance itself, down seven, and 63% hold that the US would come to Australia’s aid if it were attacked. Support for the AUKUS nuclear submarines plan was effectively unchanged on last year, with 67% in favour and 32% opposed. While an even 49% supported and opposed Trump’s demands that US allies spend more on defence, opinion of seven other keynote Trump policies was negative, with mass deportations of undocumented immigrants at the low end (42% support, 56% oppose) and tariffs (18% support, 81% oppose) and pressuring Denmark over Greenland (10% support, 89% oppose) rating worst.

A regular question on whether China should be viewed more as an economic partner than a security threat produced a net positive result for the first time since 2020, with respective results of 50% and 47%. Nonetheless, 69% believed China will become a military threat to Australia in the next 20 years, down two from last year, 56% believed it would be the most powerful country in ten, compared with 27% holding out for the United States. An even 45% considered Trump and Xi Jinping the “more reliable partner for Australia”. Japan scored highest out of eight major countries as trusted to act responsibly in the world, at 90%, with China on 20% and Russia 11%. A “confidence in world leaders” question had the leaders of Australia, New Zealand, France, Japan, the United Kingdom and Ukraine rated positively by between 59% and 63%; Peter Dutton doing a good deal worse at 41% and 52%; and only Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un rating worse than Donald Trump.

The potential for a Liberal legal challenge to the result in Bradfield remains the only complication to a resolution of the federal election, with a 40-day period for the lodgement of such a challenge to commence when the Australian Electoral Commission returns the writs, which it must do by July 9. The impasse also stands in the way of a final resolution of the national two-party preferred result, with the AEC relating it is loath to disturb the ballot papers as required to complete its Labor-versus-Liberal count for the seat. The current progress result recorded for the seat on the AEC site is stuck at an early stage accounts for only about 10% of the total, and is evidently dominated by strong areas for the Liberals. With full results available for all other seats, the final result looks likely to land at 55.2-44.8 to Labor.

We remain in something of a limbo on the federal polling front. Roy Morgan had the first voting intention poll of the term last week, but has apparently not resumed its normal weekly schedule. Peter Lewis of Essential Research says his agency’s normally fortnightly poll is “on a post-election sabbatical/hiatus for a few months”. Experience suggests Newspoll in The Australian may be another month away, and Resolve Strategic for Nine Newspapers perhaps another month more.

Never fear though, for a snap Tasmanian election may shortly be upon us, just 14 months after an election at which the Liberals held on to power with the support of a now alienated cross-bench. The state’s Governor currently considering Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s request for a dissolution following last week’s parliamentary no confidence motion. I’ll have a post up on that when the situation becomes clearer, and if an election indeed ensues, will put together a guide for it as fast as humanly possible and set to work on live results. Local hero Kevin Bonham relates that the window for such an election is in the four weeks between July 19 and August 9.

The first federal poll since the election is what will presumably be the resumption of the regular weekly Roy Morgan series. This accumulates poling conducted over the month since the election, encompassing 5128 respondents from May 5 to June 1. The result is strong for Labor even by the standards of post-election honeymoons, with a two-party preferred reading of 58.5-41.5, presumably based on respondent-allocated preferences. This compares with what looks like being an election result of 55.3-44.7, based on the almost complete determination of the AEC. The primary votes from the poll are Labor 37% (34.6% at the election), Coalition 31% (31.8%), Greens 11.5% (12.2%) and One Nation 6% (6.4%). With its large sample, the accompanying release features breakdowns by state and age cohort.

With Labor’s win confirmed yesterday in Calwell, Labor can lay claim to 94 seats in the House of Representatives, shattering its previous record of 86 at the 1987 election. In seat terms, the only result that bears comparison for Labor is the wartime election of 1943, when Labor under John Curtin won 49 in what was them a chamber of 75 seats. As covered on the dedicated late counting thread, the only seat that remains seriously in doubt is Bradfield, where the Liberals hold a 14-vote lead over the independent in the early stages of a recount – a partial recount begins today in Goldstein, though something fairly extraordinary would have to turn up to overturn the 260-vote Liberal lead. If nothing changes from here, the Liberals will have 29 seats, the Nationals nine, independents nine, and the Greens, Katter’s Australian Party and the Centre Alliance one each.

Some further random points of note:

• JWS Research has produced a “post-federal election survey report” along the same lines of a similar effort after the 2022 election, but has been sparing with details thus far. The Financial Review reports it found 49% of Labor voters identified a favourable view of the party as the main motivation for their choice, followed by 23% for the leader, 18% for policies or issues and 7% for the local candidate. Among Coalition voters, 56% named the party, 20% policies or issues, 13% the local candidate and only 9% the leader. The pollster further relates a finding that 16% decided on the day they voted and another 39% during the campaign period, which didn’t differ greatly from the 2022 results. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Wednesday in the week after the election from a sample of 1000.

• Josh Dolega, an officer at the Australian Taxation Office in Burnie and organiser with the Left faction Community and Public Sector Union, has been preselected to fill the Labor Tasmanian Senate vacancy created by Anne Urquhart’s successful move to the lower house seat of Braddon. Sue Bailey of The Mercury reports the field also included Unions Tasmania secretary Jessica Munday, Meander Valley councillor Ben Dudman, former party state secretary Stuart Benson, Australian Education Union state president David Genford, and Burnie councillor and disabilities worker Chris Lynch. Dolega has a distinctly low profile, but had backing from Urquhart and her power base in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

• By way of refuting suggestions that Labor’s low primary vote raised questions about Labor’s legitimacy or mandate, national secretary Paul Erickson noted in his National Press Club address last week that the party recorded a higher vote in the Senate than the House of Representatives, which he attributed to tactical voting in the lower house. While the distinction was fine – Labor recorded 34.6% of the vote in the House and 35.1% in the Senate – the last occasion I can identify where the two were matched at concurrent elections was in 1958.

• On the subject of Paul Erickson, Nine Newspapers reports on suggestions he could contest a by-election for the Melbourne seat of Isaacs should Mark Dreyfus react to his dumping as Attorney-General by quitting politics, the odds on which would seem rather short.

Some random scraps of reading to keep the ball rolling until normal service resumes:

• Casey Briggs at the ABC has a very nifty bit of data visualisation recording how seats moved between Labor, Coalition and – most tellingly “others” at the signpost elections of 1995, 2004, 2022 and 2025, which you can observe by moving the scroll bar from about a third to half way down. Sticking the change from 2022 to 2025, it can be noted that seats either moved leftwards from Coalition to Labor or upwards from either to “others”.

• Samantha Maiden of news.com.au reports on the post-election reckoning following the Coalition’s evidently over-optimistic internal polling, a neat analogue to a similar failure in the Labor camp in 2019, both failures to some extent reflecting the errors in the published polling.

• I took part in a weekly Crikey debate feature on Friday, arguing to a brief in defending our electoral system. Kevin Bonham has a piece in The Guardian responding to those who have responded to a displeasing result by taking aim at preferential voting, which would have been a helpful thing for me to link to if the chronology had been right.