NSW state polls: Resolve Strategic and RedBridge Group

Two more New South Wales state polls crediting the Minns government with unconvincing leads on two-party preferred.

Two concluding New South Wales state polls for the year, neither exactly hot off the press:

• Nine Newspapers’ Resolve Monitor feature has been updated with the bi-monthly state poll result, which doesn’t seem to have been reported on in the pages of Sydney Morning Herald. This has the Coalition steady on 37%, Labor up one to 33%, the Greens steady on 11% and independents down one to 13%, suggesting a Labor lead of around 51-49 on two-party preferred. Chris Minns leads Mark Speakman 35-17 as preferred premier, in from 37-14. The poll combines the New South Wales components of Resolve Strategic’s last two monthly surveys, with a combined sample of 1000.

• As noted here previously, there was a RedBridge Group poll a fortnight ago that had credited Labor with a 50.5-49.5 two-party lead, from primary votes of Labor 37%, Coalition 41% and Greens 9% (down from 9.7%). The poll was also conducted November 6 to 20, from a sample of 1088.

RedBridge Group: 51-49 to Coalition in Victoria

Another poll showing soft support for Labor in Victoria, where it has opted to sit out the Prahran by-election.

RedBridge Group last week had a poll of state voting intention in Victoria that has the Coalition leading 51-49, unchanged on the last such poll in late September and October. However, the primary votes suggest this implies an unusually strong preference flow to Labor: the Coalition is up three on the primary vote to 43%, which reflects a five-point drop in others to 13% rather than a further loss of support for Labor, who are steady on 30%, or the Greens, who are up two to 14%. The poll was conducted November 6 to 20 from a sample of 920. UPDATE: Full report here.

Labor has announced it will not field a candidate for the looming by-election in Prahran resulting from the resignation of Greens-turned-independent member Sam Hibbins, despite having held the seat as recently as 2010. The Greens have endorsed Angelica Di Camillo, a 26-year-old environmental engineer who had been preselected for the federal seat of Higgins before the redistribution abolished it. The Age reports a Liberal preselection vote is expected to be held on December 15, but there has been no indication as to who might run.

RedBridge Group also had a state poll for New South Wales, which doesn’t get its own post because I’m presuming there will be another along from Resolve Strategic in a week or two. This maintained a pattern of soft polling for the first term Labor government, credited with a 50.5-49.5 two-party lead that compares with a 54.3-46.7 result at the March 2023 election. The primary votes are Labor 37% (unchanged from the election), Coalition 41% (up from 35.4%) and Greens 9% (down from 9.7%). This poll was also conducted November 6 to 20, from a sample of 1088.

ACT election and NSW by-elections live

Live commentary on the count for the Australian Capital Territory election and the New South Wales state by-elections for Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater.

Live updated results from the Australian Capital Territory, Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater.

End of Saturday night

To summarise, the Liberals have had a disappointing result in the Australian Capital Territory, looking to have gained only one seat from their starting point of nine out of 25 and not even being assured of that. Labor has held steady on ten seats, despite its vote share being down by three to four points. The Greens have failed to match a best-ever result in 2020, but the cut in the party’s representation from six seats to three (or possibly four if things go their way in Brindabella) reflected only a slight drop in vote share. Of particular note was the election of two independents for the first time since the 1990s, dove-tailing with the emergence of David Pocock on the federal scene. With Labor and the Greens set to retain a combined majority, they face a marginal position in the new parliament.

Another notable independent win was chalked up last night by Jacqui Scruby in the New South Wales state by-election for Pittwater. Scruby fell 0.7% short of being the only teal independent to gain a seat at the March 2023 election, which she has accounted for on my projection with a swing of about 5%. In this she was no doubt aided by the ignominious circumstances of Liberal member Rory Amon’s departure, and also by both Labor and the Greens leaving the field vacant for her. Labor also did not contest yesterday’s by-elections for Epping and Hornsby, respectively vacated by Dominic Perrottet and Matt Kean, where Liberal candidates Monica Tudehope and James Wallace both looked to have scored majorities on the primary vote.

Live commentary

9.46pm. Another update from Brindabella has the Liberals down from 2.58 quotas to 2.57 and the Greens up from 0.54 to 0.55.

9.26pm. The Brindabella preliminary distribution, which was calculated before the weakening of the Liberals’ position, had Labor’s Mick Gentleman, who is fighting for his and Labor’s third seat, excluded with 3708 votes to the third Liberal’s 4218, or 14.3% of the total to 12.6%.

9.19pm. Kevin Bonham can further discern a scenario where Brindabella comes out at Labor three and Liberal two, rather than the other way around. Clearly this is the electorate that will be the main focus of interest in the late count.

9.08pm. I’m not sure whether it’s because of the correction of the Chisholm booth error or a substantial addition of new votes, but the Liberals’ third seat in Brindabella no longer looks secure. The Liberals have a 2.58 quotas (a 9.7% surplus over the second quota), the Greens 0.54 (9.0%) and Independents for Canberra 0.45 (7.5%), leaving preferences from the latter the decisive factor in whether the Greens can yet pull an iron out of the fire here. The preliminary preference distribution has the Independents for Canberra preference going 30.5% to Labor, 19.2% to the Greens and only 13.1% to the Liberals, with 37.2% exhausting. That suggests to me the Liberals will need the fillip they are presumably likely to get from postals to hold out against the Greens.

9.03pm. Nothing in the preference distribution to doubt the earlier assessment of Kurrajong as two Labor and one each for Liberal, Greens and independent Thomas Emerson, the latter taking the Greens’ second seat.

8.55pm. No surprises in the distribution for Brindabella, a clear result of Liberal three and Labor two. Ginninderra is as expected projected as a status quo result of Labor two, Liberal two, Greens on. Jo Clay of the Greens gets the last seat by surviving ahead of Mark Richardson of Independents for Canberra by 13.6% to 10.6% at the decisive point of the late count.

8.46pm. Preliminary preference distributions have been published on the ACT Electoral Commission site, which I’ll now be poring over.

8.45pm. Antony Green on the ABC notes all 900 votes from the Chisholm booth in Brindabella have been allocated to the Liberals, an obvious error. However, its correction won’t fundamentally change the situation there.

7.58pm. So it looks to me like the Liberals are gaining a seat from the Greens in Brindabella, and independents are gaining seats from the Greens in Kurrajong and Murrumbidgee. That would leave Labor steady on ten seats but reduce their coalition partners in the Greens from six to three, while leaving them with a combined majority of 13 out of 25. The Liberals would at least gain parity with Labor on ten seats, but be unable to gain a majority even if the two independents supported them.

7.52pm. Yerrabi looks like a status quo result in every particular, returning incumbents Michael Pettersson and Suzanne Orr of Labor, Leanne Castley and James Milligan of Liberal, and Andrew Braddock of the Greens.

7.49pm. My system is now calling Pittwater for Jacqui Scruby (and I believe that’s despite a glitch in the projection that’s favouring the Liberals by a handful of votes).

7.48pm. A second independent looks like being elected in Murrumbidgee — Fiona Carrick, at the expense of Emma Davidson of the Greens, with Labor (incumbents Chris Steel and Marisa Paterson) and Liberal (incumbents Jeremy Hanson and Ed Cocks) remaining on two each.

7.44pm. Kurrajong, which went two Labor, two Greens and one Liberal in 2020, looks like electing Thomas Emerson, Independents for Canberra candidate and son of former federal Labor minister Craig Emerson. This is disappointing for the Liberals who look like remaining stalled on one seat (Elizabeth Lee’s), with the others going two Labor (Andrew Barr and Rachel Stephen-Smith re-elected) and one Greens (Shane Rattenbury re-elected, Rebecca Vassarotti failing to retain the Greens’ second seat).

7.33pm. Ginninderra looks like a status quo result of two each for Labor and Liberal and one for the Greens. Labor incumbents Yvette Berry and Tara Cheyne will be re-elected, as will the only recontesting Liberal, Peter Cain, likely to be joined by Chiaka Barry. Jo Clay should be returned for the Greens.

7.21pm. Antony Green says the ABC computer is calling Pittwater for Jacqui Scruby. I’ve got her probability at 97.4%, and don’t call it until 99%.

7.18pm. I’ll now go through the ACT seats alphabetically. Brindabella looks like Liberal three and Labor two, with the Liberals taking a seat from the Greens. The only contesting Liberal incumbent, Mark Parton, has a quota on his own, with Deborah Morris (especially) and James Daniel looking good for the other two. Labor’s only contesting incumbent, Mick Gentleman, is coming third on his party’s ticket, behind Caitlin Tough and Tamius Werner-Gibbings, the latter of whom had to fight for preselection.

7.06pm. As my projection suggested it would, a fourth booth from Pittwater has moderated Jacqui Scruby’s lead. We also have, very early, a batch of postals, breaking 743-606 to Liberal. So Scruby will need her lead on the booth results. She’s very well placed, but my system still isn’t calling it.

7.03pm. I believe it was just the one bug, and it’s now fixed.

6.58pm. Bugs in my ACT page: pretty much everything in the summary table at the bottom of the entry page, and the bar charts on the seat pages are misbehaving. Initial impression is that the Liberals are doing very well in Brindabella, but more modestly elsewhere.

6.53pm. Thanks to the magic of electronic voting, a massive influx of results from the ACT.

6.51pm. Three booths in from Pittwater, and I’m projecting Jacqui Scruby with 55.6% TCP when her raw primary vote is 58.7%, so presumably these are from good areas for her. My system isn’t quite giving it away yet though.

6.48pm. Three booths in from Epping, Liberal candidate on nearly two-thirds of the vote.

6.43pm. Two booths from Pittwater look hugely encouraging for independent Jacqui Scruby, her primary vote at over 60% in both.

6.42pm. Sixty-nine votes from Wisemans Ferry offers nothing to disabuse the assumption that a Liberal win in Hornsby is a formality.

6pm. Polls are closed for each of the above-mentioned electoral events, which you can read a lot more about through the election guides at the top of the sidebar. My results page for the by-elections offer booth-matched swings and projections and full results at booth level in map and tabular form. The ACT page is more elementary – no results at booth level and the swings simply compare the current results with the final ones from 2020.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 32, Coalition 37, Greens 11 in New South Wales

A slight improvement for NSW Labor in a poll series that still shows it in an unusually weak position for a first-term government.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Resolve Strategic’s latest bi-monthly read on state voting intention in New South Wales, combining results from its last two regular monthly national polls, has Labor up two points on July-August to 32%, the Coalition down one to 37% and the Greens down one to 11%. This suggests a very slight two-party advantage to Labor, which won on that measure by 54.3-45.7 at the March 2023 election. Chris Minns leads Mark Speakman 37-14 as preferred premier, barely changed from 38-13 last time. The poll was conducted from a sample of 1111, half from September 3 to 7 and the other half last Tuesday to Saturday.

ACT and NSW state by-election guides

Beginners’ guides to next fortnight’s election in the Australian Capital Territory, where the Liberals hope to end a decades-long drought, and three by-elections for blue-ribbon state seats in New South Wales.

With thirteen days to go in both cases, this site now offers a guide to the Australian Capital Territory election, and individual guides to the by-elections for the Liberal-held state seats of Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater in northern Sydney. The former finds Labor, which governs in coalition with the Greens, seeking a seventh successive victory and an extension on its 23 years in office, in circumstances that are seemingly more promising for the Liberals than those that prevailed when it suffered a dismal result in 2020. Labor has forfeited each of the New South Wales by-elections, but that in Pittwater is of considerable interest in offering a second chance for teal independent Jacqui Scruby, who came within 0.7% of winning the seat at the state election in March 2023.

Weekend miscellany: federal preselections and double dissolution chatter (open thread)

Federal election candidates lining up on both sides of the aisle, reporting on Liberal internal polling, and Labor to site out looming state by-elections in New South Wales.

It’s been a while since I last did an update of preselection and related federal election news, in which time the following has accumulated:

• Labor’s national executive anointed candidates a fortnight ago for three usually safe Labor seats in Melbourne whose incumbents will retire at the election. In Bill Shorten’s seat of Maribyrnong, Labor’s candidate will be Jo Briskey, national co-ordinator of the Left faction United Workers Union. Much has been made of the fact that Briskey moved to Melbourne in 2019 after an unsuccessful run for the Brisbane seat of Bonner, and has a backer in Queensland Left heavyweight Gary Bullock.

• The candidate in Brendan O’Connor’s seat of Gorton will be Alice Jordan-Baird, a water policy expert. Earlier reports indicated the preselection was developing into a contest between rival Right faction power bases, with Jordan-Baird the favourite of that associated with Richard Marles and the Transport Workers Union, while the Bill Shorten/Australian Workers Union axis favoured Brimbank mayor Ranka Rasic. State minister Natalie Hutchins, a Shorten ally who was earlier mentioned as a potential contender in Maribyrnong, said Jordan-Baird lacked a connection with the area and was chosen over an “experienced local” in Rasic.

• Basem Abdo, an adviser to outgoing member Maria Vamvakinou and fellow member of the Socialist Left, has been confirmed as Labor’s candidate for Calwell. Earlier reports indicated resistance among local party branches to a perceived factional fait accompli, reflecting general discontent around the fact that the party’s national executive has again taken over the Victorian preselection process.

• The Liberals have preselected Tom Venning, a Barunga Grains farming manager who formerly worked for the NAB and Deloitte, as their candidate for the regional South Australian seat of Grey, which will be vacated at the election with the retirement of Rowan Ramsey. Venning’s uncle, Ivan Venning, was a veteran state member of parliament. Other contenders included Suzanne Waters, a former United Australia Party candidate described by InDaily as “a regional paramedic who reportedly quit her job with SA Health over its COVID vaccination mandate”, who was endorsed by arch-conservative Senator Alex Antic. Also in the field were Kimba mayor Dean Johnson, Whyalla police officer Matt Sampson, and Rikki Lambert, chief-of-staff to ex-Family First Senator Bob Day.

• The Northern Territory Country Liberal Party has preselected Lisa Bayliss, police officer and senior vice-president of the Northern Territory Police Association, as its candidate for the Darwin seat of Solomon, held for Labor by Luke Gosling on a margin of 9.4%. Camden Smith of the Northern Territory News reports the CLP preselection for the other Northern Territory seat of Lingiari, which Labor came close to losing against the trend in 2022, “has been deferred and will be considered by the party’s management committee in coming weeks”.

• There was a brief flurry of early election talk last week after Anthony Albanese suggested a double dissolution election could result if the Coalition and the Greens persisted in blocking the government’s housing bill. The notion is complicated by the fact that a double dissolution cannot take place in the last six months before the term of parliament expires, the relevant date being January 25. To create a trigger, the government would need to follow a rejection of the bill this week with another attempt after a delay of more than three months, which would require that parliament be recalled in late December or January.

Paul Sakkal of The Age reports Victorian Liberal sources saying their polling has them “in front or neck-and-neck in Aston, Chisholm, McEwen and Goldstein, with Kooyong and Dunkley less likely chances”.

James Dowling of The Australian reports that Labor in New South Wales will not field candidates in the October 19 New South Wales state by-elections for Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater, respectively being vacated by Liberal members Dominic Perrottet, Matt Kean and Rory Amon.

Polls: Resolve Strategic, RedBridge/Accent MRP poll, Wolf & Smith federal and state (open thread)

One regular and two irregular polls, one projecting a Labor minority government, the other offering a rare read on state voting intention across the land.

A lot going on in the world of polling:

Resolve Strategic

Nine Newspapers has the regular monthly Resolve Strategic poll, which has Labor on 28% (down one), the Coalition on 37% (steady), the Greens on 13% (steady) and One Nation on 6% (steady). My estimate of two-party preferred from these results is 50-50, based on preference flows from the 2022 election. Anthony Albanese holds a 35-34 lead as preferred prime minister, after trailing 36-35 last time. Albanese’s combined very good and good rating is up one to 35%, with poor and very poor at up two 53%, while Peter Dutton is respectively steady at 41% and up four to 42%. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1614.

Accent Research/RedBridge Group MRP poll

Accent Research and RedBridge Group have published their second multi-level regression with post-stratification (MRP) poll, in what looks like being a regular quarterly series. This aims for a detailed projected election result by surveying a large national sample, in this case of 5976 surveyed from July 10 to August 27, and using demographic modelling to produce results for each electorate. The full report isn’t in the public domain as far as I can tell but it’s been covered on the ABC’s Insiders and in the Financial Review. UPDATE: Full report here.

The results are not encouraging for Labor: where the previous exercise rated Labor a strong chance of retaining majority government, with a floor of 73 seats and a further nine nine too close to call, they are now down to 64 with 14 too close to call, with the Coalition up from 53 to 59. The median prediction from a range of potential outcomes is that Labor will hold 69 seats, the Coalition 68, the Greens three and others ten. This is based on primary vote projections in line with the recent trend of national polling, with Labor on 32%, the Coalition on 38% and the Greens on 12%.

Five seats are rated as Coalition gains that weren’t last time, Gilmore, Lingiari, Lyons and Aston having moved from too-close-to-call and Paterson going from Labor retain to Coalition gain without passing go. Bruce, Dobell, Hunter, Casey, Tangney, McEwen and Bennelong go from Labor retain to too-close-to-call, while Coalition-held Deakin and Moore are no longer on their endangered list. However, the traffic is not all one way, with Casey in Victoria and Forde in Queensland going from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call. So far as the underlying model is concerned, it is presumably not a coincidence that both seats are on the metropolitan fringes.

The results show a mixed picture for the teals, who are reckoned to have gone backwards in the city, such that Curtin goes from too-close-to-call to Coalition retain and Goldstein goes from teal retain to Liberal gain, but forwards in the country, shifting Wannon from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call while maintaining Cowper as a teal gain. For the Greens, Ryan goes from retained to too-close-to-call while Brisbane does the opposite, with Melbourne and Griffith remaining Greens retains.

Whereas the last assessment was based on 2022 election boundaries, the latest one makes use of the redistribution proposals for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. Respectively, this takes the teal seat of North Sydney out of contention and moves Hughes from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call; costs Labor Higgins and moves Chisholm from Labor retain to too-close-to-call; and introduces Bullwinkel to the too-close-to-call column.

My routine caveat with MRP is that it handles major parties better than independents and minors, perhaps especially with what by MRP standards is fairly modest sample (a similar exercise before the last election involving some of the same personnel had a sample of 18,923). I am particularly dubious about its projection of a blowout Labor win against the Greens in Wills. There also seems reason to doubt its precision in relation to a demographic wild card like Lingiari.

Wolf & Smith federal and state polling

Also just out is an expansive national poll from a new outfit called Wolf & Smith, a “strategic campaign agency based in Sydney” that appears to involve Jim Reed, principal of Resolve Strategic and alumnus of Liberal Party pollsters Crosby Textor. The poll was conducted from August 6 to 29 through an online panel from a vast sample of 10,239, and includes results federally and for each state government. The federal poll has Labor leading 51-49, from primary votes of Labor 29%, Coalition 36%, Greens 13% and One Nation 6%. At state level:

• The poll joins RedBridge Group and Resolve Strategic in recording weak numbers for the Minns government in New South Wales, showing a 50-50 result on two-party preferred from primary votes of Labor 32%, Coalition 38% and Greens 12%, from a sample of 2047.

• The Coalition leads 52-48 in Victoria from primary votes of Labor 28%, Coalition 40% and Greens 14%, from a sample of 2024, which is likewise broadly in line with recent results from RedBridge Group and Resolve Strategic.

• The Liberal National Party leads 57-43 in Queensland from primary votes of Labor 24%, Coalition 42%, Greens 12%, One Nation 8% and Katter’s Australian Party 3%, from a sample of 1724, which lines up well with the most recent YouGov poll.

• Labor leads 55-45 in Western Australia from primary votes of Labor 37%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 3%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%, from a sample of 878. Again, this sits well with the most recent other poll from the state, conducted for the Liberal Party by Freshwater Strategy in July from a sample of 1000 and published in The West Australian, which had Labor leading 56-44 from primary votes of Labor 39%, Liberal 33%, Nationals 5% and Greens 12%.

• In the first poll result of any substance from the state since the March 2022 election, Labor leads 60-40 in South Australia from primary votes of Labor 41%, Liberal 28%, Greens 11% and One Nation 5%, from a sample of 856. The Liberal leadership change occurred in the first week of the poll’s three-week survey period.

• A Tasmanian sample of 786 finds both major parties down from the March election result, Liberal from 36.7% to 32% and Labor from 29.0% to 23%, with the Greens steady on 14% (13.9% at the election) and the Jacqui Lambie Network up from 6.7% to 11% – though most of the survey period predated the party’s recent implosion.

And the rest

• The University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre has results of polling conducted by YouGov in June concerning the US alliance and related matters of regional strategy, conducted in conjunction with polling in the US and Japan. Together with an Essential Research poll in July, it points to a softening in attitudes towards Donald Trump, with 26% now rating that Australia should withdraw from the alliance if he wins, down from 37% last year. However, 46% would be “very concerned about the state of US democracy. Twenty per cent of Australian respondents felt US handling of China was too aggressive, compared with only 9% in Japan and 10% in the US, and 40% agreed Australia should send military forces “to help the United States defend Taiwan … if China attacks”, down six from last year, with 32% disagreeing, up ten. Respondents in all three countries were asked if it were “a good idea for Australia to have nuclear-powered submarines”: 51% of Australians agreed while 19% disagreed, compared with 35% and 16% of Americans daring to venture an opinion one way or the other. The survey was conducted from June 17 to 25, from sample of a little over 1000 in each country.

• JWS Research has the results of its latest quarterly True Issues survey on issue salience. Cost of living remains by far the issue most frequently invoked as being among the “most important issues the Australian government should focus on”, despite a six-point drop since May. The survey also finds a net minus 22 rating for direction of the national economy, down two on May and the equal worst result going back to the series’ inception in 2013.

NSW by-elections: Epping, Hornsby, Pittwater

Two long-anticipated state by-elections in New South Wales set to be joined by a rather less expected third.

There are now three state by-elections looming for blue-ribbon Liberal seats in Sydney, that latest arising after Pittwater MP Rory Amon promptly resigned from parliament after being charged with child sex offences on Friday. Michael Koziol of the Sydney Morning Herald reports it is “likely to be scheduled alongside other by-elections on October 19”, and that “most Liberals were resigned to losing the seat” – presumably to teal independent Jacqui Scruby, who came within 0.7% of winning the seat when Amon succeeded Rob Stokes at the 2023 election.

Megan Gorrey of the Sydney Morning Herald reports that Stokes has thrown his support behind Northern Beaches deputy mayor Georgia Ryburn, who was touted in a report last week as a possible challenger to teal independent Sophie Scamps in the federal seat of Mackellar, though she has not publicly identified herself as a contender in either case. Another name to have emerged is Michael Gencher, a council colleague of Ryburn’s and fellow victim of the party’s nominations fiasco. Others are familiar from the contest to succeed Stokes before the last election: Natasha Maclaren-Jones, an upper house member who withdrew as it became apparent she lacked sufficient support; and Claire Longley, EY consultant and daughter of former member Jim Longley, who was refused an exemption from a party rule barring nominees who had not been financial members for six months. (UPDATE: The Manly Daily reports Ryburn, Longley, Gencher and another Northern Beaches councillor, Bianca Crvelin, have nominated for Liberal preselection, while the Sydney Morning Herald reports Jacqui Scruby has confirmed she will run again).

As noted in a previous post, the other two by-elections will be held to replace Dominic Perrottet in Epping, where the Liberals have preselected Monica Tudehope, former policy director to Perrottet and daughter of Damien Tudehope, a former member for the seat who now leads the party in the Legislatve Council; and Matt Kean in Hornsby, where the new Liberal candidate is Corrs Chambers Westgarth lawyer James Wallace. Labor reduced the margins at the 2022 election to 4.8% in Epping with a 6.5% swing, and to 8.0% in Hornsby with an 8.8% swing.

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