Things are starting to crank up as the election moves closer into view, such that I can offer a second detail-packed post for the week. On the polling front:
• DemosAU has polling of both federal and state voting intention in Queensland, the former being relatively cheering for Labor, with a 53-47 two-party lead to the Coalition suggesting a 1% swing in their favour since 2022. The primary votes are Labor 31% (27.4% in 2022), Coalition 39% (39.6%), Greens 12% (12.9%) and One Nation 10% (7.5%). The state numbers show little change from the October election on two-party preferred, with the Liberal National Party leading 54-46 (53.8-46.2 at the election), from primary votes of LNP 40% (41.5%), Labor 30% (32.4%), Greens 12% (9.9%) and One Nation 10% (8.0%). The poll was conducted February 10 to 14 from a sample of 1004, with the pollster reporting an effective margin of error of 4.2%.
• A survey by the Australian Population Research Institute leads its principals, Katharine Betts and Bob Birrell, to conclude that voters support neither the “neoliberal agenda”, the “progressive values agenda”, nor a “big Australia”. Evidence for the first includes 67% support for protection of manufacturing “using tariffs if necessary”, with only 15% favouring the wholesale abandonment of tariffs; 47% support for higher taxes on high-income earners and big business, 18% for maintaining current tax rates and 24% for lower taxes across the board; 53% support for “subsidies for energy bills, solar projects and the like”, with 29% wanting them curbed; and 70% support for governments building “a large number of homes, both for rent and for sale”, with only 19% opposed. For the second, 53% disagree that “a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman, regardless of their sex when born”, with 25% agreeing, and 59% agreeing that migration policy should take into account “a migrant’s ability to fit into the Australian community”, with 28% opposed. Eighty per cent would favour lower immigration in some degree, with 11% wanting “the high numbers to continue”. The survey was conducted December 12 to 23 from a sample of 3023.
• Peter Brent at Inside Story has a useful piece on two pollsters tweaking the formulas by which primary votes are converted to two-party preferred, the conventional method of using preference flows from the previous election generally being thought to flatter Labor. YouGov’s polling going forward will apply a result combining “historic flows”, presumably from more than one election, with the respondent-allocated preferences it recorded in its massive sample MRP poll. This credits Labor with 79% of Greens preferences (compared with 85.7% in 2022), 59% of independent preferences (63.8%) and 31% of One Nation’s (35.7%). However, the “others” flow to Labor would appear to be higher now: YouGov says 49%, whereas I calculate the 2022 result at 42%. All we are told of Newspoll is that the 64.3% flow of One Nation preferences to the Coalition from 2022 has been increased, guided by Antony Green’s calculation that their share at the October state election in Queensland was 73.8%, compared with a Queensland figure of 66.9% in 2022.
• A new election forecast model by John Collins, based on machine learning models making use of polling, demographic and economic data, is on the bullish side for Labor as these things go, estimating a 27.4% chance it will retain a majority.
Other news that’s been accumulating over the past few weeks:
• Clive Palmer again plans to impose himself on a federal election through a new party modestly called Trumpet of Patriots, a name pointing to an explicitly Trumpian agenda, will full-page advertisements already to be seen in the nation’s newspapers. The party has inhabited the shell of an entity that has in the past contested elections as the Country Alliance and the Federation Party, following the failure of Palmer’s High Court bid to overturn a law that prevented him from re-registering his United Australia Party, which he voluntarily deregistered it after the 2022 election. On Wednesday he announced the party would contest “all lower house teal and Liberal-held seats and potentially many Labor electorates”. Palmer himself will not be a candidate, the party’s mooted leader being Suellen Wrightson, who will contest the seat of Hunter.
• Paul Karp of the Financial Review reports that “Liberals believe they are close but behind in Mackellar and Warringah, but privately concede Allegra Spender is unbeatable in Wentworth”.
• The Financial Review reports that Emma King, senior manager at Orica, is likely to be chosen as Liberal candidate for Shortland ahead of cardiologist and perennial bridesmaid Michael Feneley. The southern Newcastle seat has been historically safe for Labor, but the party’s position has weakened in recent times and its post-redistribution margin is 6.0%. The report notes concern among local Liberals that the party has left the redistribution too late.
• In a report on a Nationals plan to keep Barnaby Joyce confined to his own electorate, Paul Sakkal of Nine Newspapers notes the party faces a number of “hard contests” against independents, among them “well-known farmer James Gooden”, who is challenging former leader Michael McCormack in Riverina. The party is “bracing for a loss” in Calare, which Andrew Gee hopes to retain as an independent after quitting the party, and Pat Conaghan again faces teal independent Caz Heise in Cowper, who came within 2.3% of a surprise win in 2022.
• Carol Berry, chief executive of a Wollongong disability support non-profit, has been confirmed as Labor’s new candidate in the Illawarra seat of Whitlam, following Stephen Jones’ recent retirement announcement. Berry is a formal national secretary of the Greens who was twice a lower order Senate candidate for the party and, as Ben Raue notes on BlueSky, “came very close to being preselected” to a winning position on the party’s state upper house ticket in 2003. Keely O’Brien, general manager of corporate affairs for the Council of Australian Life Insurers, also nominated, but factional arrangements were widely reported as guaranteeing the seat for Berry’s Left faction rather than O’Brien’s Right.
• Having hitherto kept his cards close to his chest, Russell Broadbent has announced he will seek re-election as an independent in Monash. The 74-year-old Broadbent has served in parliament with a few interruptions since 1990, and quit the Liberal Party in November 2023 after suffering a heavy preselection defeat at the hands of Mary Aldred.