Category: Victorian Politics

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.

Weekend miscellany: economy, nuclear and abortion polling, preselection latest (open thread)

More signs that economic sentiment may have turned the corner; Labor recruits a former state leader for a key state in Tasmania; and more besides.

With every pollster in the game bar the increasingly intermittent YouGov having weighed in over the past fortnight, it’s likely that a lean week awaits on the federal polling front, barring the usual weekly Roy Morgan poll. Besides the other new post on campaign finance, that leaves the following to relate:

• SECNewgate’s latest Mood of the Nation survey finds signs of improving economic sentiment: 35% confident and 65% not confident inflation will decrease over the coming year, compared with 31% and 69% in September, and 35% (up eight) anticipate the economy will improve over the next three months, with 38% thinking it will get worse (down eight). Labor is rated better to tackle the cost of living by 29% with 30% favouring the Coalition, reversing the result in September. It also finds 33% support lifting the nuclear energy ban with 42% opposed, and 64% saying they would be less likely to vote for a party that restricted access to abortion rights, compared with only 11% for more likely. The survey was conducted October 31 to November 4 from a sample of 1417.

• Labor has confirmed two existing political figures as candidates for federal seats in Tasmania, with former state leader Rebecca White confirmed as the candidate for Lyons, which she has served at state level since 2010. Incumbent Brian Mitchell, who survived a 4.3% swing to hold out by 0.9% in 2022 (a correction after the Liberals disendorsed their candidate mid-campaign in 2019), agreed to go quietly, saying the party should “grab her with both hands” if White sought a federal career. The north-western Tasmanian seat of Braddon, where Liberal member Gavin Pearce will retire after boosting his margin from 3.1% to 8.0% in 2022, will be contested for Labor by Anne Urquhart, who has served in the Senate since 2011. Among the many factors considered by Kevin Bonham are the recount that will be required to fill White’s state parliamentary vacancy, and the appointment to fill Urquhart’s Senate vacancy.

• A Liberal preselection for Mackellar, which teal independent Sophie Scamps won from the party in 2022, was won by James Brown, chief executive of the Space Industry Association of Australia, former state RSL president and former son-in-law of Malcolm Turnbull. Other candidates included Michael Gencher, executive director of Israel advocacy group StandWithUs; Brook Adcock, former Qantas pilot and founder of Pandora Jewellery; David Brady, chair of Deafness Forum Australia; and Paul Nettelbeck, director of a foreign aid not-for-profit; Lincoln Parker, a defence analyst; and Vicky McGahey, a high school teacher. Nothing came of a reported push to reopen nominations so that Sophie Stokes, former Commonwealth Bank executive and wife of former New South Wales Planning Minister Rob Stokes, might be persuaded to run in a field deemed to lack a strong female contender.

• A particularly interesting state by-election looms in Victoria after the resignation of Prahran MP Sam Hibbins, who quit the Greens last year after admitting to an affair with a staff member from his office. The seat has successively been held by Labor, Liberal and the Greens over the past two decades, reflecting a close three-way dynamic similar to that of the partly corresponding federal seat of Macnamara.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 28, Coalition 38, Greens 13 in Victoria

John Pesutto pokes his nose in front as preferred premier in another mediocre poll for Victorian Labor.

The Age reports the bi-monthly Victorian state poll from Resolve Strategic finds both Labor and the Coalition up a point on the primary vote, to 28% and 38% respectively, with the Greens down one to 13%. No two-party result is provided, but I would estimate it at around 50.5-49.5 in favour of the Coalition. John Pesutto takes the lead over Jacinta Allan of 30-29 as preferred premier, reversing the result from last time. The poll combining results from the pollster’s last two monthly national polls, with a combined sample of 1000.

RedBridge Group: 51-49 to Coalition in Victoria

The Coalition pokes its nose in front on two-party preferred, amid conflicting reports on the status of John Pesutto’s leadership.

The Herald Sun reports a RedBridge Group poll of state voting intention in Victoria has the Coalition leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, after the last such poll in late July had it at 50-50. The primary votes are Labor 30% (down one), Coalition 40% (steady), Greens 12% (steady). The poll was conducted from a sample of 1516 from September 26 to October 3, hence slightly before reports of a looming move against Liberal leader John Pesutto – which James Campbell of the Herald Sun reports has “stalled because disgruntled Liberal MPs can’t agree on who should be the potential challenger”.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 27, Coalition 37, Greens 14 in Victoria

Another poll suggesting Labor’s state primary vote in Victoria has a two in front of it, as The Greens fill the upper house vacancy arising from Samantha Ratnam’s federal election bid.

A huge week for state opinion polling continues with Resolve Strategic’s bi-monthly read on state voting intention in Victoria, combining survey results from its last two monthly national polls. As reported in The Age, this records no change for either major party since the June-July result, with Labor on 27%, the Coalition on 37% and the Greens down a point to 14%, suggesting a roughly even split on two-party preferred. There is also next to no change on preferred premier, with Jacinta Allan’s lead over John Pesutto in from 31-28 to 30-29.

The poll also finds 43% support for the Suburban Rail Loop project with 27% opposed. However, 53% favoured the airport-to-city rail link project when it was put to them that “some people have been argued” the money should be used for that instead, with only 16% preferring the Suburban Rail Loop and 19% saying it should be spent on neither. The sample for the poll was 1054.

Also of note from Victoria is the Greens’ choice of a new member of the Legislative Council for Northern Metropolitan region, following party leader Samantha Ratnam’s departure to contest the federal seat of Wills. A party ballot was won last week by Anasina Gray-Barberio, Samoan-born founder of Engage Pasefika, an organisation “committed to advancing Pacific Island Health equity”. Gray-Barberio was chosen from a field of eight that also included Yarra mayor Edward Crossland and former Merri-bek mayor Angelica Panopoulos.

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.

RedBridge Group: 50-50 in Victoria

More evidence of declining support for state Labor in Victoria; a parliamentary inquiry recommends abolishing group voting tickets for the upper house, among many other things; and teal candidates threaten a legal challenge against campaign finance laws.

The Herald Sun reports a RedBridge Group poll of Victorian state voting intention has Labor and the Coalition tied on two-party preferred, after the last such poll in June had Labor ahead 55-45. The primary votes are Labor 31% (down four), Coalition 40% (up two) and Greens 12% (down two). The poll was conducted July 23 to August 1 from a sample of 1514. (UPDATE: Full report here).

Two further items of Victorian state electoral news:

• The parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee has produced a report into the 2022 election that makes particularly interesting reading after an election conducted amid an unusually febrile atmosphere. It offers a remarkably thorough program of recommendations, including abolishing group voting tickets for the Legislative Council, as has been done everywhere else; addressing the increasing in inappropriate behaviour at voting centres; introducing truth-in-advertising laws; and tightening the election timeline so that nominations close earlier, early voting begins later, and the electoral roll is closed on the day the writs are issued (which the High Court disallowed when the Howard government tried it, but that was without Victoria’s scheme of election day enrolment). The report also recommends further inquiries into transferring certain responsibilities of the VEC, such as enforcing electoral law, to other bodies; reforming the Legislative Council system to counter-balance the likely impact of abolishing group voting tickets on small party representation; and modernising the Electoral Act through a “holistic review”.

• Josh Gordon of The Age reports unsuccessful teal candidate from the November 2022 election are threatening a High Court challenge against the government’s campaign finance laws, arguing they advantaged established parties and violated the implied constitutional right to political communication. Sophie Torney, Melissa Lowe, Nomi Kaltmann and Kate Lardner, who were unsuccessful in their respective bids for Kew, Hawthorn, Caulfield and Mornington, have alerted the government to concerns over a “nominated entity exception” to donations caps, allowing Labor to receive $3.1 million from its Labor Services and Holdings entity and the Liberals to receive $2.5 million from its Cormack Foundation. Donations from entities set up after 2018 were capped at $4320 over the course of a four-year parliamentary term.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 27, Coalition 37, Greens 15 in Victoria

Victorian Labor continues to struggle in the latest bi-monthly state poll, which finds support for its housing targets but strong opposition for raising the age of criminal responsibility.

The Age reports Resolve Strategic’s bi-monthly read on Victorian state voting intention finds no respite for Labor after a plunge last time, their primary vote down a point to 27% with the Coalition steady on 37% and the Greens up two to 15%, suggesting a two-party preferred result of around 50-50. Jacinta Allan’s lead over John Pesutto as preferred premier has narrowed from 31-26 to 31-28. Further questions find 57% supporting and 22% opposing the government’s housing targets and 28% supporting and 57% opposing raising the age of criminal responsibility. The poll combines results from Resolve Strategic’s last two monthly polls, with a sample of 1000.

Page 2 of 42
1 2 3 … 42