Morgan: Labor 30.5, Coalition 23.5, One Nation 22, Greens 11.5 (open thread)

Morgan finds the Coalition losing most of the lead it opened over One Nation in the first poll under Angus Taylor, and RedBridge Group offers some useful data on preference flows.

This week’s Roy Morgan federal poll has Labor down a point to 30.5%, the Coalition down half to 23.5%, One Nation up one-and-a-half to 22% and the Greens down one to 11.5%. Labor’s two-party lead over the Coalition is out from 54.5-45.5 to 56-44, but this reflects an unusually strong result on respondent-allocated preferences: the two-party measure that applies preference flows from the 2025 election has the Labor’s lead in from 54-46 to 53.5-46.5. The poll was conducted last Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1554. Hopefully Morgan will shortly be publishing aggregated state breakdowns from its last month of polling, as it did at the end of January.

Speaking of respondent-allocated preferences, the Financial Review reports follow-up results from the RedBridge Group/Accent Research poll providing detail on how the flows from its result broke down by voting intention. This is particularly instructive in relation to Labor-versus-One Nation, for which election result data is scarce, Hunter being the only example of a seat where the final count came down to these two parties at the 2025 election. The poll found Liberal voters breaking 72-28 in favour of One Nation and other Coalition voters breaking 60-40, while Greens voters broke 89-11 to Labor and others broke 68-32. These are small sub-samples, the overall sample from the poll being 1006, but hopefully it’s an example other pollsters will follow.

The only similar polling data to have emerged on preference flows came from the Newspoll before last, which found 43% of Liberal voters favouring One Nation and 33% Labor, with the rest saying they did not know or that they would follow how-to-vote cards. The corresponding numbers were 70%, 6% and 24% for Nationals voters, 1%, 91% and 8% for the Greens, and 32%, 53% and 15% for others.

South Australian election minus 18 days

Candidate nominations reveal a bumper crop of candidates, with a lower house average of more than eight per seat.

Candidates have been declared for the South Australian election, and are featured in ballot paper order on the seat pages of the Poll Bludger election guide, at least for the lower house. There are a great many of them: 388 for the lower house, an average over eight per seat. Given there are fewer than 30,000 enrolled voters per seat, it would not surprise me if this were an Australian record in per capita terms. Not only Labor, Liberal, One Nation and the Greens but also the Australian Family Party (associated with former Senator Bob Day, who leads its upper house ticket, and not to be confused with Family First, which separately has 35 candidates) are running in all 47 seats, and six further parties have a substantial presence. The table below compares the number of candidates by party at this election compared with 2022.

2026 2022
Labor 47 47
Liberal 47 47
Greens 47 43
One Nation 47 19
Australian Family 47 6
Family First 35 34
Independent 33 20
Sarah Game Fair Go 22
Legalise Cannabis 17
Animal Justice 16 10
United Voice 14
Real Change 12 4
Nationals 3 8
SA Best 1 1
Liberal Democrats 1
TOTAL 388 240

The proliferation of candidates does not extend to the Legislative Council, which has about the same number of groups and candidates as in 2022. Rather remarkably, the ballot paper draw has placed every major or large minor party on the right of the ballot paper, if the Nationals might be thought to count in the South Australian context.

Other news:

• David Penberthy in The Australian reports that a conspicuous meeting at a city hotel between One Nation lead candidate Cory Bernardi and arch-conservative Liberal Senator Alex Antic has been “seen as a broader signal that Liberal conservatives in SA are death-riding the moderate-dominated parliamentary party, willing it to lose and lose badly, as final punishment for taking the party to the left”. One unidentified state Liberal MP is tipped to defect to One Nation “in the event the SA Liberals implode”.

• Former Liberal leader David Speirs is running as an independent in his old seat of Black. This would seem optimistic both politically, given his conviction his 2025 conviction for supplying drugs, and legally, given the state’s Constitution Act prohibits those convicted of indictable offences from serving in parliament.

• Roy Morgan had an SMS poll last week putting Labor at 35%, One Nation at 28%, the Liberals and Nationals at 16.5% and the Greens at 11% – well at the high end for One Nation out of recent state polling. Peter Malinauskas recorded 61% approval and 37% disapproval, compared with 52% and 42% for Ashton Hurn, with Malinauskas leading 60% to 30.5% on preferred premier. The poll was conducted February 19 to 23 from a sample of 2172.

Federal polls: Newspoll and RedBridge Group (open thread)

Angus Taylor brings better personal ratings than Sussan Ley, but little yield on voting intention.

The Australian reports the first Newspoll since the Liberal leadership change shows little change on voting intention, with Labor down a point to 32%, One Nation steady on 27%, the Coalition up two to 20% and the Greens down one to 11%. Angus Taylor nonetheless records personal ratings markedly better than Sussan Ley’s at the last, with 35% approval and 38% disapproval, as compared with Ley’s 23% and 62%. Anthony Albanese is down three on approval to 40% and up two on disapproval to 55%, and his lead as preferred prime minister is 45-37, compared with 49-30 against Ley in the previous poll. The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1237.

The Financial Review has a RedBridge Group/Accent Research poll with Labor down two points on a month ago to 32%, One Nation up two to 28% and the Coalition unchanged on 19%. Going off respondent-allocated preferences, Labor holds two-party leads of 54-46 lead over One Nation and 53-47 over the Coalition. A three-way preferred prime minister question has Anthony Albanese on 34%, Pauline Hanson on 23% and Angus Taylor on 10%. Net favourability ratings are provided of minus 13 for Albanese (down three), minus one for Taylor (up three), and minus two for Pauline Hanson (up one). Further clarity can be expected on these points when the print edition is published or the pollster’s own report becomes available. The poll was conducted Monday to Friday from a sample of 1006.

UPDATE: The RedBridge/Accent poll has Anthony Albanese down two on approval (combined very and mostly favourable) to 32% and up one on disapproval (very and mostly unfavourable) to 45%. Angus Taylor is at 19% and 20%, respectively up six and up three on the previous poll, conducted before he became leader, while Pauline Hanson is up one to 38% and down one to 40%. Further net ratings are provided for Jane Hume, Tim Wilson and Larissa Waters, all of whom are at minus three from low recognition, and minus 13 for the somewhat better known David Littleproud and minus 17 for the still better known Barnaby Joyce. Also featured are highly useful and interesting figures on respondent-allocated preferences broken down by party support, which I believe will be published overnight.

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.

Donation drive

At the end of every second month, this site makes an appeal to readers for the donations that keep the lights on and the wolf from the door, and further takes the opportunity to advertise its wares, both present and future. Even without taking an imminent South Australian election into account, it’s been an extraordinarily busy time for the blog, partly owing to a One Nation-fuelled explosion in polling activity. I’ve lost count of how many federal and state polls there have been in the past week alone, but it’s solidly into double figures, a rate of activity normally associated only with federal election campaigns.

This has been reflected in the fact that 21 posts have been published on the blog in February alone, not counting this one. Nor has this entirely been a matter of simply relating poll results, though to be sure there has been a fair deal of that – readers have been kept regularly updated on the Liberal leadership change and looming by-elections federally and in Victoria (there’s also one Saturday week in Northern Territory which I can’t honestly claim to have had much to say about that, but that will be rectified next week). The March 21 election for South Australia has not been neglected in the frenzy, with regular posts supplemented by regular and ongoing maintenance work on the election guide.

The BludgerTrack poll aggregate has been reupholstered to the extent that the poll data repository now features an even wider array of poll breakdowns before. Click the “more” tab at the top right enough times and you will see all the published data that exists on current voting intention by vote at the 2025 election, which among other things offers insights into the immensely significant question of where exactly the explosion in support for One Nation is coming from. Further reupholstering will be required to accommodate a fresh set of leadership rating trends for the new Liberal leader, so do stay tuned for that.

The highlight of the month to come will of course be the state election in South Australia, and as is now usual, this site will feature its second-to-none live results facility. This acquires new layers of sophistication every time it is put through its paces, with the focus this time being a new approach for calculating win probabilities that will result in seats being called more promptly without (I promise) any sacrifice in accuracy. The emergence of One Nation as a major player looks set to make this a more challenging endeavour than ever, but the system’s three-candidate prediction model makes it well equipped for the challenge.

In short, an immense number of work hours are going into the site at the moment, and in the total absence of advertising, it’s only by the grace of readers’ generosity that they are rewarded with anything more than satisfaction in a job well done, invaluable as that may be. These can be made by clicking on the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the page and the bottom of each post.

UK Gorton and Denton by-election live

Polls point to a close by-election result in a normally safe seat for UK Labour. Also covered: Welsh and Scottish elections on May 7 and recent elections in Thailand and Bangladesh.

Live Commentary

4:09pm Regarding Reform’s performance, this seat was a very left-wing seat. If Reform gains 15% nationally at the next election, they are likely to win a large number of seats. Even if you take away the 6% drop for the Conservatives, it’s still an overall swing to the right of 9%. The Workers Party didn’t stand at the by-election after getting 10.3% at the 2024 election in this seat, so left-wing parties were overall about 8% below their 2024 result.

3:39pm The Greens have GAINED Gorton and Denton from Labour, beating Reform by 12 points with Labour a further 3.3 points behind in third.

2:44pm The podium for the results announcement has been set up.

1:56pm The BBC reports a Greens source says they are very confident of a win.

1:17pm As a general comment on UK elections, it would be FAR better to have vote counting from booths reported publicly, which would usually give us a result in the first two hours after polls close. Instead all we have are party sources until the result is officially declared.

12:50pm A Reform source is claiming that Labour will come third.

12:38pm The BBC reports Labour sources say it’s been a good night for the Greens, turning out support in a way they wouldn’t be able to replicate at a general election according to these sources. Turnout for the by-election is 47.6%, which is actually UP 0.8% on the turnout in this seat at the 2024 general election.

11:30am The BBC says a result is expected between 3am and 4am UK time (2pm to 3pm AEDT).

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.

Polls close at 9am AEDT today for the parliamentary by-election for the UK Labour-held seat of Gorton and Denton. At the 2024 general election, Labour won with 50.8%, followed by the far-right Reform with 14.1%, the Greens with 13.2%, the Workers Party with 10.3% and the Conservatives with 7.9%. I previously related that Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham was blocked from running as Labour’s candidate for this by-election.

There have been two small-sample polls for the by-election. In the Omnisis poll, the Greens led Reform by 33-29 with 26% for Labour. In Opinium, the Greens and Labour were tied at 28% each with 27% for Reform. If Reform wins such a left-wing seat, it will highlight the UK’s bad first past the post system.

The Election Maps UK aggregate of national polls has Reform leading with 28.2%, followed by Labour at 19.8%, the Conservatives 18.8%, the Greens 14.1% and the Liberal Democrats 12.5%. There has been some movement to the Greens and against Reform in the last two weeks. But with FPTP, Reform still wins a clear majority with 348 of the 660 House of Commons seats.

Upcoming Welsh and Scottish elections

Welsh and Scottish parliamentary elections and English local government elections will occur on May 7. Labour has been the dominant party at Welsh elections since the first devolved election in 1999, winning half or just under half the seats. At this election, there will be 96 members elected in 16 six-member electorates by proportional representation. This reform scraps the FPTP seats.

The Election Maps UK aggregate gives the left-wing Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru 28.2%, followed by Reform at 27.9%, Labour 17.7%, the Conservatives 11.6%, the Greens 7.4% and the Lib Dems 5.7%. Labour has been rising recently with a dip for Plaid and the Greens. Seat projections give Plaid 33 seats, Reform 32, Labour 19, the Conservatives nine, the Greens two and the Lib Dems one. If this occurs, Plaid and Labour combined would be able to govern.

Of the 129 Scottish seats, 73 are elected by FPTP and 56 are list seats, with the list seats used to maintain overall proportionality, so that parties that win a large number of FPTP seats don’t win many list seats. The Scottish National Party (SNP) has dominated since 2011.

In the Election Maps UK aggregate, the SNP has 34.5% of the vote in the FPTP seats, followed by 19.5% for Reform, 16.2% Labour, 10.3% Conservatives, 9.1% Lib Dems and 7.6% Greens. Seat projections give the SNP 58, Reform 23, Labour 17, the Conservatives 12, the Greens ten and the Lib Dems nine. If this occurs, the SNP will hold government with the Greens’ support.

Thai and Bangladeshi elections

Of the 500 Thai lower house seats, 400 are elected by FPTP and 100 by national PR. At the February 8 election, the conservative populist Bhumjaithai won 193 seats (up 122 since the 2023 election), the left-wing People’s 118 (down 33), the populist Pheu Thai 74 (down 67), the centre-right Kia Tham 58 (new) and the conservative Democrats 22 (down three).

This is the first time a conservative party has won the most seats in a Thai election in the 21st century. Bhumjaithai won 174 of the 400 FPTP seats and Kia Tham 56, while People’s won 87 and Pheu Thai 58. Popular votes in the FPTP seats were 29.9% Bhumjaithai, 23.6% People’s, 17.3% Pheu Thai and 11.5% Kia Tham.

Of the 350 Bangladeshi seats, 300 are elected by FPTP with the remaining 50 reserved for women who are appointed proportionally to the elected members. The February 12 election was the first since the July 2024 uprising that forced the authoritarian Awami League from power. The Awami League, which was the centre-left major party before it became authoritarian, was banned at this election.

The somewhat conservative Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won 209 of the 299 FPTP seats (one seat’s election was postponed owing to a candidate’s death). The Islamist Jamaat won 68 seats. Vote shares had the BNP defeating Jamaat by 50.0-31.8.

DemosAU: Labor 43, One Nation 19, Liberal 18, Greens 12 in South Australia

A South Australian state poll suggests a possibly unprecedented Labor landslide at the March 21 election, with One Nation and Liberal closely matched for a distant second place.

The third poll of the South Australian state election campaign, conducted by DemosAU/Ace Strategies for InDaily, finds Labor on 43% (compared with 44% from Newspoll and 37% from YouGov), One Nation on 19% (24% from Newspoll, 22% from YouGov), the Liberals on 18% (14% from Newspoll, 20% from YouGov) and the Greens on 12% (12% from Newspoll, 13% from YouGov). Also featured through the link are fairly extensive breakdowns by gender, age, education and housing tenure.

Results from the poll were published earlier in the week on upper house voting intention, with Labor on 38%, One Nation on 21%, Liberal on 15%, the Greens on 11%, Family First on 4% and Animal Justice on 3%. With 11 seats up for election and a quota of 8.33%, this suggests a clean four seats for Labor, two for One Nation, one for Liberal and one for the Greens, with the remainder most likely going to a fifth Labor, a third One Nation and a second Liberal, although Family First might be competitive. Otherwise the total numbers in the chamber would be Labor ten, Liberal six, One Nation four and Greens two.

The poll was conducted January 31 to February 16 from a sample of 1070.

Federal polls: YouGov, Essential Research, Roy Morgan (open thread)

Uneven signs of the Coalition recovering a small share of its recent losses to One Nation in the wake of last fortnight’s leadership change.

The first fortnightly YouGov-Sky News Pulse poll since the Liberal leadership change finds the Coalition narrowing but not closing its primary vote gap against One Nation, with the Coalition up three to 22% and One Nation down four to 24%, while Labor is down a point to 29% and the Greens are up one to 13%. Anthony Albanese is up two on approval to 40% and down two on disapproval to 54%, while Angus Taylor debuts at 33% approval and 38% disapproval. Albanese holds a 45-34 lead on preferred prime minister, compared with a 47-25 lead over Sussan Ley a fortnight ago.

Two-party preferred results have Labor’s lead over the Coalition narrowing from 54-46 to 53-47, while that over One Nation widens from 55-45 to 56-44. One Nation voters were asked to explain themselves: 42% professed “no confidence in major parties”, 33% enthusiasm for One Nation policies and 21% admiration for Pauline Hanson’s leadership, with only 4% citing the Barnaby Joyce factor. The poll was conducted February 17 to 24 from a sample size not specified in the report (UPDATE: Exactly 1500).

Essential Research has also published its monthly voting intention results showing Labor down a point to 30%, the Coalition up a point to 26%, One Nation steady on 22% and the Greens up two to 11%, with 4% undecided. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure, which leaves in the undecided component, is the first poll result in about a year to credit the Coalition with a lead over Labor, of 48% to 47%. This suggests a stronger respondent-allocated preference for the Coalition than it recorded at last year’s election: applying those flows to the primary vote numbers gives Labor a lead of around 51.5-48.5.

The full report is not yet on the pollster’s website, but The Guardian reports further results include the striking finding that 58% were open to voting for One Nation, including 51% of Coalition voters and 33% of Labor voters. Anthony Albanese recovers some of the ground he lost last month, with his approval up three to 43% and disapproval down five to 48%. It is not clear if the question was asked of Angus Taylor, but The Guardian relates a finding that he had made 26% more likely and 19% less likely to vote Liberal. The poll was conducted “last week” from a sample of 1002 – more detail to follow later today (UPDATE: Full report here).

This week’s Roy Morgan poll maintains its impression of a slight improvement in the Coalition’s position under Angus Taylor, of which there was little or no sign in the DemosAU and Fox & Hedgehog polls. The Coalition primary vote is at 24%, up half-a-point on the small sample result it published from its surveying immediately after the leadership change the Friday before last, while One Nation is down a point to 20.5%. This compounds the straight three-and-a-half point movement from One Nation to the Coalition recorded last week between polling conducted immediately before and after the change. Labor is down a point to 31%, with the Greens unchanged at 12.5%.

Labor’s lead over the Coalition on respondent-allocated two-party preferred is in from 55-45 to 54.5-45.5. With the Coalition back in front of One Nation, the pollster has resumed providing a two-party result based on 2025 election flows, on which Labor’s lead is at 54-46 – a sharp contrast with Essential Research, in that the Coalition’s respondent-allocated preference flow is weaker than it recorded at the election. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1649.

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