Category: Victorian Politics

DemosAU/Premier National have a poll of Victorian state voting intention that paints a picture fundamentally unchanged from before the Labor leadership change, with Labor up two points from June to 23%, the Coalition also up two to 32%, One Nation down one to 22% and the Greens down two to 13%. The Coalition holds an unchanged two-party lead over Labor of 55-45. Jess Wilson records a 43-34 lead over Ben Carroll on preferred premier, compared with Wilson’s 47-28 lead over Jacinta Allan. Wilson’s personal ratings are 35% positive (up three), 41% neutral (down five) and 24% negative (up two), while Carroll is on 21% positive, 42% neutral and 37% negative, compared with Allan’s 18%, 25% and 57%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Tuesday from a sample of 1007.

As noted in the post below, a Victorian state poll from Resolve Strategic in the Nine Newspapers is likely over the coming days.

UPDATE: The Age reports the monthly Resolve Strategic poll has Labor down two to 25%, the Coalition steady on 27%, One Nation up one to 23% and the Greens steady on 12%. A three-way preferred premier question has Jess Wilson on 26%, Ben Carroll on 20% and One Nation state president, Pakenham and prospective leader Warren Pickering on 10%, with 44% undecided. The poll was conducted Sunday to Saturday from a sample of 1000.

Two new bits of state polling from Victoria:

• Common Threads, an organisation that supports the state’s First Peoples treaty process, has published results from a multi-level regression and post-stratification poll conducted for it by YouGov, though its field work period of June 16 to July 10 long predates the leadership change. The poll has statewide voting intention results are Coalition 26%, One Nation 24%, Labor 23% and Greens 13%, with the Coalition leading Labor 53.8-46.2 on two-party preferred, but its main purpose is to produce produced modelled estimates of voting intention at seat level. The median forecast is for a hung parliament with 39 seats for the Coalition, 29 for Labor, 17 for One Nation and three for the Greens. Fifteen of the projected One Nation gains are at Labor’s expense, with a projection of eight seats being won by the Nationals (including Jacinta Allan’s seat of Bendigo East) being quite a bit healthier than their outlook in other contexts. Extensive detail on seat projections, demographics and responses to the questions on the First Nations treaty are featured in the full report. The sample for the poll is 4003 – high for a normal poll, but no the low side for an MRP poll.

• Roy Morgan had a poll conducted last Wednesday to Friday by SMS, a method I have my doubts about. It suggests only modest change since the last such poll in April, with the Coalition up two to 26%, Labor up half a point to 26%, One Nation down one to 23.5% and the Greens down one to 12.5%. Two-party preferred results had the Coalition leading Labor 51-49, reversing the result from April; Labor leading One Nation 56-44, out from 53.5-46.5; and the Coalition leading One Nation 63.5-36.5, out from 59-41. The sample for the poll was 2084.

Preselection news:

• The Liberal Party’s state executive voted to install Melbourne deputy lord mayor Roshena Campbell as its lead candidate for the Western Metropolitan upper house region on Friday. This filled the vacancy created three weeks earlier when the state executive voted unanimously to disendorse Moira Deeming. Campbell was chosen by 12 votes to seven ahead of incumbent Trung Luu, who has now nominated for a separate process to fill the second position on the ticket, from which he won election in 2022.

• The Herald Sun’s Backroom Baz column reports that Eastern Victoria region was missing from One Nation’s announcement of its lead upper house candidates because of a last-minute decision for party state president Warren Pickering to run in the lower house seat of Pakenham instead. The party has since announced its Eastern Victoria candidate will be Greg Hansford, who ran for the anti-lockdown Freedom Party at the 2022 election, and as One Nation’s federal candidate for Gippsland at the 2025 federal election.

• The Australian’s Victoria Ink column reported last month that Moonee Valley councillor Samantha Byrne had been preselected as Liberal candidate for Ben Carroll’s loseable seat of Niddrie ahead of Stefano Emodi, and related the further endorsement of candidates in Yan Yean (Amanda Dow), Ripon (Megan Read) and South Barwon (Libby Pettit). Elsewhere, the Herald Sun reports police detective Paul O’Halloran will be the Liberal candidate in Mordialloc.

The Financial Review has the first Victorian state poll since last week’s leadership change, courtesy of RedBridge/Accent Research. The results are not encouraging for Labor, who are down three on the same pollster’s result a month ago to 23%. The Coalition is up four on a soft primary vote result last month to 30%, but One Nation is down five to 22% while the Greens gain one to 14%. Labor trails the Coalition 57-43 on two-party preferred; the Financial Review’s graphic confusingly has One Nation with a 54-43 lead over the Coalition. Ben Carroll records a minus 15% on net favourability, though 57% said they had no strong impression of him. Jess Wilson is unchanged at plus 13% net favourability. Nineteen per cent said the leadership change made them more likely to vote Labor compared with 14% for less likely and 56% for no difference. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1014.

UPDATE: I missed another poll out overnight, from Freshwater Strategy in the Herald Sun, although its field work period of July 21 to August 3 began well before the leadership change on July 28. It has the Coalition at 30%, up three on the last such poll in June; Labor at 25%, up two; One Nation at 22%, down three; and the Greens steady at 14%. The Coalition’s two-party lead is in from 53-47 to 52-48. Ben Carroll records 21% favourable, 31% neutral and 29% unfavourable; Jess Wilson 39% favourable, 25% neutral and 21% unfavourable. The sample for the poll was 1020.

Further Victorian election news:

• The government’s legislation to abolish group voting tickets is now before the upper house, having been introduced to the lower house on the same day Jacinta Allan was deposed and passed the following day. Reflecting the practice for the Senate, above-the-line voters will be directed to fill a number of boxes above the line equal to the number of vacancies (so five rather than six for the Senate), though a savings provision will in fact mean that a single number one will suffice for a formal vote. Since the legislation leaves intact the state’s eight five-member regions with their quota for election of 16.7% (abolishing them would require a referendum), Labor, the Coalition, One Nation and the Greens seem likely to dominate.

• One Nation finally announced a slate of eight candidates yesterday, and designated state party president Warren Pickering as its prospective parliamentary leader, and candidate for the lower house seat of Pakenham. The others named were lead upper house candidates: high-profile Liberal Party defector Colleen Harkin in South-Eastern Metropolitan; Mark Nicholson, the animator behind the party’s cartoon web series and Super Progressive Movie feature, in Northern Metropolitan; Chris Burson, Geelong councillor and former police officer and Angry Victorians candidate, in Western Victoria; criminal lawyer Aaron Sandford in Southern Metropolitan; Fiona Lopez in Western Metropolitan; Natalie Adams in Eastern Metropolitan; and the party’s sole incumbent, Rikki-Lee Tyrrell, who will seek re-election in Northern Victoria.

• As well as Jacinta Allan announcing she will not contest the next election, creating a vacancy in her seat of Bendigo East (margin 10.8%), two further senior ministers announced their impending retirements in the wake of last week’s leadership change: Climate Change Minister Lily D’Ambrosio, who holds Mill Park on a margin of 11.6%; and Health Minister Harriet Shing, who was second on Labor’s Eastern Victoria upper house ticket in 2022.

• Kim O’Keeffe announced last fortnight she will not recontest Shepparton, which she gained for the Nationals from independent Suzanna Sheed in 2022. Chip Le Grand of The Age reports Steve Threlfall, a Shepparton councillor and shooting and sports store owner, has confirmed he is seeking One Nation preselection, and there are suggestions the mayor, Shane Sali, could ran for One Nation or either of the Coalition parties.

• Will Fowles, who became Labor’s member for Ringwood in 2022 and resigned from the parliamentary party in August 2023, has announced he will not stand at the election.

The Australian brings an adroitly timed state Newspoll result for Victoria, which has Labor on 28%, the Coalition on 31%, One Nation on 19% and the Greens on 13%, with the Coalition leading Labor 52-48 on two-party preferred. This is distinctly weaker for One Nation than other recent polling, and suggests Labor to be more competitive than recent conventional wisdom has allowed. Any notion that this might boost Jacinta Allan ahead of today’s party room vote is torpedoed by her personal ratings of 25% approval and 71% disapproval, which Kevin Bonham informs us is the “worst net satisfaction recorded by a state Premier in the history of Newspoll”. Jess Wilson is on 47% approval and 39% disapproval and leads 51-32 on preferred premier.

Respondents were asked who they would favour to form government out of Labor, the Coalition and One Nation, with respective results of 41%, 35% and 18%, and who they would prefer out of “Jess Wilson and the Liberal-Nationals in alliance with One Nation” and “Jacinta Allan and Labor”, which respectively scored 48% and 42%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1035.

As for today’s spill motion, the Herald Sun quotes sources close to Ben Carroll saying they expect 40 to 45 votes in favour with 25 against and four undecided, which supporters of a “confident” Jacinta Allan describe as “inflated”. Should it pass, the question will arise as to whether Jacinta Allan will attempt to pursue the matter unto a ballot of the party membership, as she indicated she would in a letter to the party’s state secretary. This would require 14 party room members to support her nomination, which they might hesitate to do given it would involve a four-to-six week process during which an interim leader would need to be appointed who was not contesting the ballot. The Australian reports “disagreement within Labor” as to whether caucus has the power to prevent this by changing back to the more traditional method of choosing a leader.

The Herald Sun also published results on Saturday of polling conducted by JWS Research for Australian Energy Producers targeting 1000 respondents across “28 marginal and significant seats between June 26 and July 3” that shows a 9% swing from Labor to the Coalition in two-party preferred terms, compared with the 7% recorded by Newspoll. The primary votes were Coalition 29%, One Nation 24%, Labor 23% and Greens 14%, which offers only so much insight in the absence of detail on which seats were polled, though we are told the equivalent results in 2022 were Labor 44%, Coalition 44% and Greens 9% (One Nation is credited with 1%, but presumably only ran in a handful of the seats).

RedBridge Group/Accent Research have a large-sample Victorian state poll in the Financial Review, showing One Nation overtaking the Coalition since the last such poll in February. The primary votes all but record a three-way tie between Labor, up a point to 26%, One Nation, up three to 27%, and the Coalition, down two to 26%, with the Greens steady on 13%. Two-party results have the Coalition leading Labor 54-46, and Labor leading One Nation 52-48. Jacinta Allan records 17% favourable, 24% neutral and 59% negative (which the Financial Review says are the worst recorded for any leader other than Anna Bligh and John Cain, though on what basis is unclear), and Jess Wilson is on 31% favourable, 51% neutral and 18% unfavourable. Pauline Hanson was thrown in for good measure, recording 37% favourable, 17% neutral and 46% negative. The poll was conducted June 17 to 28 from a sample of 5516.

Further electorally relevant news from Victoria:

• The Liberal Party state executive meets tomorrow to decide whether to remove Moira Deeming as lead upper house candidate for Western Metropolitan. The Age reports a “broad consensus” within the party that she should be dropped, as there would have to be to get the required agreement of 75% of the executive’s roughly 20 members. Deeming’s defeat in an April preselection vote by restaurateur and Indian community figurehead Dinesh Gourisetty prompted a backlash on the right, and she was shortly able to recover the position when Gourisetty was obliged to withdraw. However, last week’s events appear to have damaged Deeming’s prestige. Pauline Hanson bluntly told Melbourne station 3AW today that the party “don’t want her”, and hitherto strong supporter Peta Credlin, who is married to state executive chair Brian Loughnane, “has let it be known that she is now done with Deeming”, according to Chip Le Grand of The Age.

• Sumeyya Ilanbey of the Financial Review reports Labor has written off nine seats, including several where the threat would presumably be from One Nation: Sunbury, Ashwood, Melton, Yan Yean, Glen Waverley, Hastings, Pakenham, Bayswater and Bass. The party is confident of 19 seats and targeting another 26, suggesting it is plotting a bare minimum path to a majority of 45 seats out of 88.

• Kieran Rooney of The Age reported last week that Labor internal research indicated the Nationals seats of Gippsland South, Murray Plains and Gippsland East were likely One Nation wins, with Shepparton, Benambra and Lowan “leaning orange”. Also in the latter category were Berwick, the Melbourne fringe seat held by former Liberal leader Brad Battin, along with Liberal-held Narracan, Warrandyte, Eildon and Rowville. No Labor seats were identified, but One Nation was acknowledged to be “a major problem for both sides of politics”. Liberal sources expressed high hopes for gaining Niddrie and Macedon from Labor.

• Ryan Bourke of the Herald Sun reports One Nation “remains without a frontrunner” after an apparent failure to recruit as candidates Adam Giles, former Northern Territory Chief Minister and now chief executive of Gina Rinehart’s agricultural arm, and Heston Russell, former commando and founder of a party that ran at the last state election as Angry Victorians.

A two-month Victorian state polling drought has ended with a bang, with Freshwater Strategy reporting earlier in the week, DemosAU doing so today, and Resolve Strategic presumably set to follow next week. All of which would seem to be an unwelcome development for Jacinta Allan, with DemosAU joining Freshwater Strategy in showing Labor running third behind One Nation. The Coalition is up a point on the last DemosAU poll in February to 30%, with Labor down two to 21% and One Nation up two to 23%, and the Coalition’s two-party lead out from 53-47 to 55-45.

Jacinta Allan’s positive rating is up two to 18%, but her negative rating is up four to 57% with neutral down six to 25%. Jess Wilson is up five on positive to 32%, down three on neutral to 46% and down two on negative to 22%. The poll was conducted Sunday to Thursday from a sample of 1056. A full report including extensive demographic breakdowns will presumably be available on the pollster’s website shortly – Freshwater Strategy has now published its equivalent from the poll earlier in the week.