Category: Tasmanian Politics

State polls: Tasmanian EMRS and Queensland Resolve Strategic

A Tasmanian poll offers both federal and state voting intention, while a regular Queensland state poll records a reverse for One Nation.

Two state polls that have been published this week:

• Pulse Tasmania reports on the quarterly EMRS poll, which features federal as well as state results from Tasmania. The former have Labor on 29%, One Nation on 26%, Liberal on 17% and the Greens on 15%, with a conventional two-party measure having Labor leading 57-43. The report provides no federal result for the Greens, who polled 11.1% at the election. The state results have Liberal up a point on last quarter to 26%, Labor down one to 23%, One Nation up two to 21% and the Greens up two to 16%. Jeremy Rockliff’s lead over Josh Willie as preferred premier has substantially narrowed, from 44-25 to 37-30. All three party leaders have weakened on net favourability, with Rockliff down three to minus seven, Willie down ten to minus 14 and Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff down 11 to minus 16. The poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday from a sample of 1000.

• The Brisbane Times reports the bi-monthly Resolve Strategic poll for Queensland has the Liberal National Party up four to 34%, Labor up one to 25%, One Nation down four to 20% and the Greens 10%. David Crisafulli’s lead over Steven Miles narrows from 44-20 to 41-22. The poll combines the Queensland responses from the pollster’s last two national surveys, conducted from July 6 to 11 and August 9 to 16, with a sample of 868.

Federal redistributions: South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT

Radical boundary changes in Tasmania, minor ones in South Australia and the ACT, and limited political implications all round.

Assuming the government serves out a more-or-less full term, the next federal election will be held under new boundaries in three states and one territory, the exceptions being New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Queensland’s redistribution has been held up pending official confirmation that its population growth will not entitle it to a new seat, but the other three redistribution processes have reached their fruition over the past fortnight, barring the delicate question of nomenclature.

The finalised boundaries for South Australia cancel two of the changes from the proposed boundaries published in March, leaving only the transfer of 10% of Spence’s voters to its northern Adelaide neighbour Makin, and small transfers from Mayo to Boothby and Barker. The former have little impact on the substantial Labor margins in both of the affected seats, while the latter adds half-a-point to Rebekha Sharkie’s margin in Mayo. Beyond that, the regional and remote seat of Grey, which bears the name of a colonial governor, will become O’Donoghue, in honour of the late Aboriginal leader Lowitja O’Donoghue.

Tasmania’s redistribution is as radical as South Australia’s is conservative, and has an extra layer of interest in also providing the boundaries for state elections (votes shares at state level have been calculated by Ben Raue). Where formerly Clark accommodated Hobart’s core and Franklin its south and east, the redistribution has made a hard boundary out of the Derwent River, causing Franklin — which has the proposed new name of Tongerlongeter (subject of a critical opinion piece by Tony Abbott in The Weekend Australian) — to lose the suburbs and periphery south of Hobart to Clark. Clark’s gains are balanced by transferring northern Hobart to what had previously been the largely rural electorate of Lyons, while Franklin extends up the state’s east coast as far as Bicheno, taking a large chunk of what had formerly been Lyons.

For all their scope, the impact of the changes appears remarkably modest in electoral terms. None of the changes I estimate in the Labor-versus-Liberal two-party margins reach a full percentage point, and One Nation, who would appear to be a competitive prospect in the state’s regional seats, has had minimal change to its primary vote shares. Losing a large chunk of the territory he has serviced since 2010 will not help Andrew Wilkie, but he likely remains safe: the transfer to Lyons (which accounts for 43% of the enrolment) is not his strongest territory, and future state independent Peter George scored 22.9% in the area being gained from Franklin, much of which would doubtless transfer to Wilkie.

The minimal changes arising from the Australian Capital Territory redistribution were covered in a post a fortnight ago. My own calculations for new margins and party vote shares are accounted for in very great detail in spreadsheets for South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. Similar exercises can be found on the sites of Antony Green and Ben Raue.

Friday miscellany: Morgan poll, by-election and redistribution news, Tasmanian state poll (open thread)

A second sharp drop for One Nation in a weekly poll series, an intriguing by-election on the way in Western Australia, and more.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll records One Nation tumbling another three-and-a-half points after their five-and-a-half point drop last week, reducing them to 22.5%. This still isn’t enough to cost them their lead over the Coalition, who are unchanged at 21.5%, while Labor is likewise steady at 28%. The difference is instead made up by a one-point gain for the Greens to 14% and a two-and-a-half point gain for independents and others to 14%. A Labor-versus-One Nation two-party measure based on respondent allocation has Labor’s lead out from 53-47 to 56-44. The lead over the Coalition is 55-45 based on respondent allocation, out from 53.5-46.5, and 54-46 based on 2025 election preference flows, out from 52.5-47.5. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1584.

Other news:

• A Western Australian state by-election looms in the seat of Secret Harbour after Paul Papalia, who had been in parliament since 2007 and in cabinet since Labor came to power in 2017, announced his resignation on Monday citing a family illness. Labor confirmed yesterday its candidate will be Georgia Tree, a former staffer to local federal MP Madeleine King and government relations employee at Woodside. With its low ethnic diversity and abundance of trades workers, the outer southern suburbs seat appears to be promising terrain for One Nation. Tom Rabe of the Financial Review reports “multiple Labor sources” say recent internal polling from the seat has One Nation running neck-and-neck with Labor in the “mid-30s”, with the Liberal vote “hovering in the high teens”. Perhaps surprisingly, Liberal leader Basil Zempilas has vowed the party will field a candidate.

• The finalised boundaries were published this week for the federal redistribution of the Australian Capital Territory, with those for South Australia and Tasmania to follow over the coming weeks. This involves two seats that Labor won in 2025 by margins of around 20%, one over the Greens (Canberra, held by Alicia Payne) and one over the Liberals (Fenner, held by Andrew Leigh), and one the party came within 700 votes of losing to teal independent Jessie Price (Bean, held by David Smith). Bean both gains from and loses to Canberra: I calculate a 54.0-46.0 split in favour of Labor over Price out of the roughly 9500 formal votes being transferred from Bean to Canberra, and a near tie in the remainder. The extent to which the former helps Price, should she run again, depends on the unknown quantity of her latent support from the similarly sized area transferred from Canberra to Bean. What does favour her, albeit modestly, is the reversal of a plan from the originally proposed boundaries to transfer Norfolk Island from Bean to Canberra, whose votes I estimate as having broken 576-305 in Price’s favour in 2025.

• A DemosAU Tasmanian state poll for Pulse Tasmania has Liberal on 28%, One Nation on 21%, Labor on 21%, the Greens on 14% and independents on 12%. The last such poll in November did not feature One Nation as a response option, and had Liberal on 35%, Labor on 23%, the Greens on 15% and independents on 17%. The result at the election in July last year was Liberal 39.9%, Labor 25.9%, Greens 14.4% and independents 15.3%, producing a seat result of Liberal 14, Labor 10, Greens five, independents 5 and Shooters Fishers and Farmers one. The poll credits Premier Jeremy Rockliff with a 41-32 lead over Labor’s Josh Willie, in from 43-32. Rockliff is rated positively by 35%, neutrally by 27% and negatively by 38%; Willie positively by 23%, neutrally by 48% and negatively by 29%. The poll was conducted June 21 to July 6 from a sample of 999.

EMRS: Liberal 25, Labor 24, One Nation 19 and Greens 14 in Tasmania

A new poll offers an insight into what One Nation has in store for Tasmanian state politics.

The latest instalment in the occasional EMRS poll series on Tasmanian state voting intention is the second to include One Nation as a response option, and it records a five-point increase in their support to 19%, with Liberal down four to 25%, Labor up one to 24% and the Greens down one to 14%. This would seem to raise the prospect of future elections being contests between Liberal-One Nation and Labor-Greens blocs, with the present result being a moderate lead for the former.

Personal ratings for the three leaders are little changed, though Jeremy Rockliff’s 44-25 lead over Labor’s Josh Willie reverses a slump in the last poll, when it narrowed to 40-26 from 50-24 in the poll last August. Rockliff’s favourable rating is down one to 34% with unfavourable up two to 38%; Willie is steady on 17% and down one to 21%; and Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff is steady on 23% and down one to 28%. The poll was conducted last Monday to Wednesday from a sample of 1000.

This post also offers an occasion to do something I too often neglect to do, which is to follow up the results of the periodic upper house elections after election night, which produced two fairly close results. In Huon south of Hobart, independent challenger Clare Glade-Wright unseated independent incumbent Dean Harriss by a margin of 2.5%, chasing down a 30.8% to 27.4% deficit on preferences from Labor (16.7%), the Greens (15.0%) and two independents (5.4% to 4.7%). In the Launceston region seat of Rosevears, Liberal incumbent Jo Palmer’s 42.4% to 25.1% primary lead was enough to hold out against Labor’s Ben McKinnon: the 16.0% vote of independent Susan Monson appeared only moderately favourable to Labor while the Greens’ 16.4% split as Greens preferences typically do, giving Palmer enough leakage to prevail by a 2.8% margin.

Tasmanian upper house elections: Huon and Rosevears

One Liberal and one independent incumbent are defending Tasmanian upper house seats in today’s annual periodic elections.

Live commentary

9.30pm. I spoke too soon, as further pre-polls have been added, and they have pushed Jo Palmer up to 42.7% in Rosevears. I’m inclined to think that will be enough, unless the independent’s preferences are radically unfavourable to her.

8.20pm. I believe we may have had all the counting done for the night, and my reading of the situation is that Clare Glade-Wright is likely to unseat Dean Harriss in Huon, with preferences from Labor and the Greens accounting for the latter’s 30.5% to 27.2% lead on first preferences; while Rosevears should be a close race between Liberal incumbent Jo Palmer and Labor’s Ben McKinnon, with the former’s lead of 41.8% to 25.0% needing to hold up against a 17.4% Greens vote that will overwhelmingly favour Labor. That won’t of itself be enough though, which means the matter is in the hands of preferences from independent Susan Monson, who is on 15.8%, on which I can offer no guidance.

7.30pm. The Nepean count will be dominating by attention henceforth, but I notice the pendulum has swung back in favour of Jo Palmer with all but four booths reporting from Rosevears, giving her a 42.3% first preference vote share that will be difficult for Labor (who now have a fairly solid buffer in second place) to overhaul on preferences.

7.15pm. The Franklin booth in Huon provides a weak result for Dean Harriss, pushing him below 30%. In Rosevears, I spoke too soon in suggesting the Greens candidate would be first out, as they have now pulled ahead of independent Susan Monson. There is little to separate the three, but enough to suggest Monson makes the final count, which would be the worst case scenario for the Liberals.

7.10pm. Another large booth, Sandfly, has given Harriss and Glade-Wright equal shares of the primary vote, which likely means favouring Glade-Wright after preferences.

7.05pm. Dean Harriss has had a much better result for the Ranelagh booth, which provides 822 out of 1978 votes counted, pushing him to a lead over Glade-Wright of 675 (34.1%) to 507 (25.6%), giving him some hope of holding out against the coming preference tide.

7.00pm. A bad result for the Liberals from the Beauty Point booth reduces Jo Palmer to 631 out of 1491 (42.3%), and it now looks clear that the Greens will come fourth. I presume their preferences will push Labor clear of independent Susan Monson, with whom they are all but tied on first preferences, setting up a close result between Liberal and Labor after preferences. Six from 22 booths in from Huon and Clare Glade-Wright is maintaining a slight lead over Dean Harriss on first preferences. This seemingly bodes ill for Harriss, who is noted as a conservative and has to contend with nearly 30% of the vote being first preferences for Labor and the Greens.

6.55pm. A further booth in Huon and two more in Rosevears have been good for the Liberals: Jo Palmer in Rosevears has 483 votes out of 1047 (46.1%), which will be enough for her if she can maintain it, while the gap in Huon is down to four votes, though Glade-Wright will presumably enjoy ample preferences from Labor and the Greens, who have about 28% of the vote between them.

6.45pm. Two booths in from Rosevears have Liberal incumbent Jo Palmer in the lead with 251 votes out of 584 (43.0%) and the other candidates reasonably matched. Voters are required to number at least three candidates, which amounts to full compulsory preferences when there are only four candidates, and Labor and Greens preferences can be expected to flow strongly to each other. Independent Susan Monson’s preferences will presumably be less unfavourable to the Liberals, who will be hoping she doesn’t make the final count.

6.35pm. Three booths in from Huon, and they’re encouraging for independent challenger Clare Glade-Wright, who leads independent incumbent Dean Harriss by 133 (36.5%) to 88 (24.2%). However, these are small booths from far-flung parts of the electorate: things may be different, in one way or another, in the urban territory around Kingston.

Overview

With the first Saturday of May comes Tasmania’s periodic upper house elections, in which either two or three of the chamber’s 15 seats go up for election over a six-year cycle. The detachment of this process from lower house general elections is conducive to the election of independents, particularly outside Hobart, and the current numbers in the chamber are three each for Liberal and Labor, one for the Greens and eight independents. Up for election this time are Huon, covering the area south of Hobart inclusive of the metropolitan fringe centre of Kingston, which is held by independent Dean Harriss; and Rosevears, encompassing the western part of Launceston inclusive of the town centre and Tamar Valley territory to the north, which is held for the Liberals by Rockliff government Education Minister Jo Palmer.

Both seats are being defended by their incumbents, who tend to be difficult to dislodge at these elections. Dean Harriss won Huon at a by-election in 2022 after the resignation of Labor member Bastian Seidel, recording a 2.5% winning margin over the Labor candidate. His father, Paul Harriss, held the seat as an independent from 1996 to 2014 and later served as a Liberal in the lower house division of Franklin from 2014 to 2016, which presumably has an indirect relationship to the fact that the Liberals are not fielding a candidate at the current election. Harriss’s competition consists of Labor candidate Abby McKibben, Greens candidate Paul Gibson and three independents. The most high-profile of the latter is Kingborough deputy mayor Clare Glade-Wright, who is endorsed by the Voices for Franklin community group and lower house independent Peter George.

Jo Palmer gained Rosevears for the Liberals in 2020 upon the retirement of independent Kerry Finch, securing a 260-vote winning margin over independent Janie Finlay, who made her way to parliament a year later as a Labor member for Bass. Palmer faces competition from Labor candidate Ben McKinnon, Greens candidate Charlene McLennan and a seemingly low-profile independent, Susan Monson.

Tasmanian draft redistribution

A radical redistribution proposal for Tasmania brings the formerly rural electoral of Lyons deep into Hobart, and moves most of the eastern coast to the formerly Hobart-dominated seat of Franklin.

A draft redistribution proposal has been published for Tasmania, to to apply at both federal and state elections, which is rather gobsmacking in its extent, it evidently having been determined that population growth in Hobart makes it no longer feasible to have most of it accommodated by Clark (traditionally encompassing the western bank of the Derwent, including the city centre) and Franklin (the eastern bank and the southern outskirts). The proposed solution to this problem is to transfer the entire northern half of Clark to Lyons, which continues to encompass the central parts of the state but will now become largely urban in character; for Clark to absorb all of Franklin’s territory on the western side of the Derwent, including southern Hobart and the hinterland beyond together with wilderness areas further to the west; and for Franklin to occupy most of the state’s eastern coast, while maintaining the Hobart suburbs on the eastern bank of the river. The northern seats of Bass and Braddon, by contrast, are all but entirely unchanged.

I have calculated the following vote shares based on the 2025 federal election result adjusted for the new boundaries, which runs into the fairly substantial problem that Clark is dominated electorally by Andrew Wilkie, and that the second strongest performing candidate in Franklin was another independent, Peter George. Wilkie, for instance, thus ends up with 26.8% in Clark and 18.8% in Lyons, drawn entirely from those parts of the seat that were in Clark as of the 2025 election. The “two-candidate preferred” estimates outside of Bass and Braddon are thus of little value, divided as they are between three rather than two candidates. However, this does not apply to the “two-party preferred” estimates, which boil things down to Labor-versus-Liberal. For all the extent of the voter transfers, the effect here is remarkably modest, with Labor’s commanding margins over the Liberals (at this election, at least) very little changed.

Further detail can be found at the Australian Electoral Commission. Submissions will be received until March 27, and I dare say they will be lively and plentiful – proposals as sweeping as this are quite often reined in after the consultation period. The most useful way to explore the changes is through the interactive maps featured at The Tally Room. A proposal for the Australian Capital Territory will be published in a fortnight.

Everything everywhere all at once (open thread)

A leadership change in Canberra, by-elections federally and in Victoria and the Northern Territory, polling federally and from Tasmania.

As you will have read elsewhere, Angus Taylor has replaced Sussan Ley as the leader of the Liberal Party. The significance of the occasion was further sharpened, from the perspective of this website, when Ley promptly announced she would be leaving parliament, requiring a by-election for the regional New South Wales seat of Farrer, which she has held since gaining it from the Nationals in 2001. This promises to be a radically complex contest involving both the Liberals and Nationals, with the later rated “likely” to run by a party source quoted in The Australian; One Nation, who have opened nominations for preselection; and perhaps two independents with substantial track records.

It could also lead to further state by-elections, as both the local state members have indicated they might run. Albury MP Justin Clancy said he would “consider carefully” whether to run for a Liberal preselection which, according to The Australian, “looks set to nominate a candidate from the Right”. Helen Dalton, who won the state seat of Murray for Shooters Fishers and Farmers in 2019 and retained it as an independent in 2023, said she had some “serious thinking to do” in deciding whether to run. Michelle Milthorpe, who ran as an independent in Farrer in 2025 with backing from Climate 200, has announced she will run.

Also on the immediate by-election calendar:

• The Victorian state seat of Nepean faces a by-election at a date yet to be determined following the resignation of former Liberal deputy leader Sam Groth. Lucy Callander of the Mornington Peninsula Leader reports the party has given special dispensation for Mornington mayor Anthony Marsh to run for preselection, despite not having hitherto been a party member. Also in the mix are former Frankston mayor Nathan Conroy, who ran unsuccessfully for the federal seat of Dunkley at the by-election in 2023 and the general election in 2025, and David Burgess, a Sorrento real estate agent and upper house candidate in 2022. Also mentioned have been Marty Barr, a senior executive at Myer and former adviser to Denis Napthine; Briony Camp, who ran under maiden name of Briony Hutton in Hastings at the 2022 election; Jacquie Blackwell, chair of the state party’s women’s council; and Alex Screen, a financial adviser.

• Last week’s resignation by the only Greens member in the Northern Territory parliament, Kat McNamara, has proceeded quickly to a date of March 7 being set for the by-election in her northern Darwin seat of Nightcliff. McNamara unseated former Labor Chief Minister Natasha Fyles by 36 votes at the August 2024 election, after an unusually weak flow of Country Liberal preferences to Labor. The Greens candidate for the by-election is Suki Dorras-Walker, a community legal service paralegal and former teacher who ran for the party in Fannie Bay in 2024. Labor’s candidate is Ed Smelt, a Darwin councillor and civil engineer. A Country Liberal candidate is expected to be named in the coming days.

Two items of polling to relate:

• Roy Morgan, whose weekly surveying is conducted from Monday to Saturday, went to print last night with results from its 1216 responses from Monday to Thursday. This showed a further two-and-a-half point drop for the Coalition vote to 20%, with Labor up two from an unusually soft result last week to 30.5%, with One Nation up half to 25% and the Greens down half to 13%. Respondent preference allocation was markedly favourable to Labor, giving them a blowout two-party lead over the Coalition of 58.5-41.5, out from 53.5-46.5. The change on 2025 election preference flows was more modest, from 53-47 to 55-45.

• A Tasmanian state poll from DemosAU offers a look into a parallel world without One Nation, finding both Liberal and Labor losing ground to all other comers since the July 2025 election. The Liberals are at 35%, down six from the previous poll in November, and five from the July election; Labor are on 23%, down one on November and three on July; the Greens are on 15%, unchanged on the last poll and up half a point on the election; Shooters Fishers and Farmers are on 4%, up two on November and one on July; independents are only 17%, up three on November and two on July; and others is on 6%, up two on the previous poll. The poll was conducted January 27 to February 12 from a sample of 1071.

Tasmania: EMRS and DemosAU polls

Two Tasmanian state polls, the more recent of which records a fall in support for the Liberals, with the Greens rather than Labor yielding the dividend.

The quarterly EMRS poll of state voting intention in Tasmania has the Liberals at 34%, down four points on the August poll and six points on the July election result; Labor on 25%, respectively up one and down one; and the Greens on 17%, respectively up four and up three. A leadership rating question that invited respondents to rate the leaders on a ten-point scale found 33% giving Jeremy Rockliff a rating of seven or more, 25% a neutral rating of four to six, and 34% an unfavourable rating of zero to three. Josh Willie scores 16% positive, 34% neutral and 20% unfavourable. Nineteen per cent had never heard of Willie, compared with 2% for Rockliff. The poll was conducted November 17 to 21 from a sample of 1000.

There was also a Tasmanian poll a month ago from DemosAU which found little change from the election result, with the Liberals on 41%, Labor on 24%, the Greens on 15%, independents on 14%, Shooters Fishers and Farmers on 2% and others on 4%. Jeremy Rockliff held a 46-34 lead over Josh Willie on preferred premier. Personal ratings had Jeremy Rockliff on 39% for positive, 27% for neutral and 34% for negative, with Josh Willie on 21%, 53% and 26% respectively. Further results for a range of state political figures, together with demographic breakdowns on voting intention, can be found in the accompanying release. The poll was conducted October 16 to 27 from a sample of 1021.

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