Category: General

Time for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly donation drive, and its attendant promotion of the site’s activities. A minor festival of democracy unfolds over the coming weeks: Saturday sees the Nepean state by-election in Victoria, together with elections for two of the seats in Tasmania’s 15-seat Legislative Council; the race-that-stops-the-nation event of the Farrer by-election will follow on Saturday week; and a third by-election, for the Queensland state seat of Stafford, on May 16. Links to guides for each of the three by-elections can be found in the sidebar, and as always the site will be running its live results and projections feature on election night and beyond. This is a fairly major undertaking on my part, as by-elections are useful dry runs for general elections.

Other recent projects have included a reupholstering of the Victorian state BludgerTrack, after the polling industry suddenly and unanimously went from not reporting One Nation up to the end of last year to having them at upwards of 20%. As can be seen from the primary vote trend, January marks the point where the One Nation-free series comes to an end and a new trend measure inclusive of One Nation begins. The trend measures for the new series are a whole lot more volatile than they should be at present, but this should resolve itself as more data becomes available.

The federal BludgerTrack is in good shape, for which it can probably thank One Nation: its surge seems to have been a boon to the opinion polling industry, which has produced a reliable supply of multiple polls a week that are often quite generous in the breakdowns provided. The trend measures for the smaller states especially can get a bit dubious when polling is in short supply, but they are currently looking quite robust. Note that as well as providing trend measures, BludgerTrack comes with a polling data archive in which you can peruse the various pollsters’ federal voting intention results broken down by state, gender, age cohort, income bracket and more. Particularly instructive are the breakdowns by vote at the 2025 election, which provides a detailed picture of where One Nation’s vote is coming from.

For these and other reasons, you may feel it worth making a contribution to the upkeep of this site, which is entirely reliant on reader donations. These can be made through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the page and the bottom of each blog post.

At the end of every second month, this site makes an appeal to readers for the donations that keep the lights on and the wolf from the door, and further takes the opportunity to advertise its wares, both present and future. Even without taking an imminent South Australian election into account, it’s been an extraordinarily busy time for the blog, partly owing to a One Nation-fuelled explosion in polling activity. I’ve lost count of how many federal and state polls there have been in the past week alone, but it’s solidly into double figures, a rate of activity normally associated only with federal election campaigns.

This has been reflected in the fact that 21 posts have been published on the blog in February alone, not counting this one. Nor has this entirely been a matter of simply relating poll results, though to be sure there has been a fair deal of that – readers have been kept regularly updated on the Liberal leadership change and looming by-elections federally and in Victoria (there’s also one Saturday week in Northern Territory which I can’t honestly claim to have had much to say about that, but that will be rectified next week). The March 21 election for South Australia has not been neglected in the frenzy, with regular posts supplemented by regular and ongoing maintenance work on the election guide.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate has been reupholstered to the extent that the poll data repository now features an even wider array of poll breakdowns before. Click the “more” tab at the top right enough times and you will see all the published data that exists on current voting intention by vote at the 2025 election, which among other things offers insights into the immensely significant question of where exactly the explosion in support for One Nation is coming from. Further reupholstering will be required to accommodate a fresh set of leadership rating trends for the new Liberal leader, so do stay tuned for that.

The highlight of the month to come will of course be the state election in South Australia, and as is now usual, this site will feature its second-to-none live results facility. This acquires new layers of sophistication every time it is put through its paces, with the focus this time being a new approach for calculating win probabilities that will result in seats being called more promptly without (I promise) any sacrifice in accuracy. The emergence of One Nation as a major player looks set to make this a more challenging endeavour than ever, but the system’s three-candidate prediction model makes it well equipped for the challenge.

In short, an immense number of work hours are going into the site at the moment, and in the total absence of advertising, it’s only by the grace of readers’ generosity that they are rewarded with anything more than satisfaction in a job well done, invaluable as that may be. These can be made by clicking on the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the page and the bottom of each post.

Time for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly appeal for cash, which invariably comes with a special note of pleading at this particular time of year, when the spirit of giving is typically directed elsewhere. By way of having done something to deserve it, I offer the following labour-intensive endeavours:

• A guide to the March 21 South Australian election went live this month, offering the usual panoply of details and features encompassing all 47 of the state’s electorates, together with an overview page and guide to the upper house.

• The BludgerTrack poll aggregate has been expanded, such that there are now tabs you can click on to see federal voting intention trends for the five mainland states.

• There is also now a BludgerTrack poll aggregate for the Victorian state election that will be held on November 26, presently showing an effective tie on two-party preferred.

Time for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly hustle for a little extra cash, which can be made through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the site and at the bottom of each post. Donations are always gratefully received, though perhaps especially so in the fallow period that typically follows a federal election. The next big electoral event is the South Australian state election on March 21, for which I’m currently making good progress on an election guide that I hope to get into a publishable state before the end of November. Also on the horizon is a potentially interesting state by-election for the northern Queensland seat of Hinchinbrook, though the relevant authorities seem to be dragging their heels on setting a date. Whenever it is, Poll Bludger will be on the case with its famous live results and projections feature.

Time for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly appeal for donations, which have a way of drying up once the excitement of a federal election period is out of the way. The bills keep coming in though, one novel recent addition being a non-trivial imposition from Google for my use of their mapping in my results pages and election guides, which gets applied once a threshold of their bandwidth is passed. Coming attractions to the site will include coverage of the New South Wales state by-election for Kiama in a fortnight’s time, which will feature the usual live results and projections treatment, and the return of BludgerTrack, which I hope to have in action at around the same time.

Time for the bi-monthly appeal to the readership of the Poll Bludger to help keep the proverbial wolf from its proprietor’s proverbial door, which can be done by making use of the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the site and the bottom of each post. I had hoped this would coincide with the publication of my guide to the July 19 Tasmanian state election, but after a long night of labours must reluctantly concede that it will have to wait until tomorrow. It will happen tomorrow though, and feature the usual panoply of tables, charts, interactive maps, historical detail on each electorate and summaries of all major candidates. With that out of the way, coverage of the campaign will pick up as it enters the business end of proceedings, to culminate as usual with this site’s famed live results features on election night and beyond.

In a spirit of striking while the iron is hot, a special federal election edition of the Poll Bludger’s normally bi-monthly donation drive, to which you can contribute through the “become a supporter” buttons that appear at the top of the site and the bottom of each post. These posts double as an occasion to promote my site’s wares, such as the fact that I’ve made good on my objective of publishing a federal politics post for each day of the campaign, only a few of which were limited to rote dissemination of polling numbers. Obviously there’s no danger of me dropping the ball on that score on the few days that remain.

The biggest looming attraction though is the live results feature on election night, now based on a three-candidate model that hopefully had the bugs ironed out of it when it had a run at the Western Australian election in March. This will prove especially useful in Macnamara, the Greens seats in Brisbane and possibly one or two other places I can’t presently foresee. To this will be added the brand new bell and/or whistle of a a map results display, of which you can get a very clear sense based on this test run from the 2022 election, recording how it saw the situation at around 8:30pm on the night (note that the page architecture is set up for the current election, so the map has Bullwinkel but not North Sydney and the table reflects this election rather than the last).

The map will colour in as results are reported to reflect who the system deems to be ahead or to have won, respectively indicated with a lighter or darker shade. Scroll over an electorate on the map and you’ll a window with a two-party pie chart and other essentials of the result. Click and the results page for the seat will be revealed, featuring progress totals, projections, probability estimates, a table recording votes and swings for each booth and, if you click on the button at the bottom, a booth results display map.

This site likes to be sparing with its pleas for contributions, with posts like this one normally appearing at the end of every second month. A federal election, however, is a moment of sunshine in which hay must be made, so this mid-campaign entry is here to supplement the one that would fall due on election eve in any case. To make the case that I’ve been earning my keep, I need only point to the fact that I have thus far met my performance indicator of one fresh federal election post each day since the campaign began a fortnight ago, as well as promptly updating the BludgerTrack poll aggregate as new results come to hand.

Naturally there will be no let-up over the next three weeks, culminating in the live results feature that will run on election night and beyond — some sense of which can be gleaned from the corresponding effort for the Western Australian election. This encompasses a three-candidate prediction model that will come into its own in seats where support for Labor, Liberal and Greens and/or independent candidates is finely balanced, of which there are now more than ever. Another new feature added late in the game during the WA count is a live results map that will start out white and then colour in as seats report, in lighter or darker shades to indicate who’s ahead and which seats have been called. I hope to develop further features for this in time for May 3.

If any of that sounds worthy of a contribution, these can be made through the “become a supporter” buttons that appear at the top of the site and at the bottom of each post.