EMRS Lib 25 (-4) ALP 24 (+1) ON 19 (+5) GRN 14 (-1) IND 16 (+1) others 2 (-2)
Seat estimate off this poll if election "held now" Lib 8-9 ALP 10 ON 8 Grn 4-5 IND 4 others 0
The funniest thing about this week's EMRS poll is that it was taken before. Before we found out on Friday that, in proof of assurances that TT Line couldn't possibly be insolvent because the government could just keep throwing it money, the embattled shipping company would be flicked a lazy half a billion dollars to keep it afloat. Or perhaps I should better say, adrift. Before we found out, also on Friday in federal budget week, that TasInsure, a "state-backed insurance company" floated out of nowhere in the 2025 election campaign in a desperate attempt to talk about anything at all except the stadium, had gone to the great bus mall in the ground and was being refashioned as a watchdog-shaped object. And perhaps most significantly of all, before whatever lurks in this week's state Budget.
And yet, the sample taken May 11-3 is still spectacular. It has the Liberal Government on a 25-year low of 25% with the goodies going entirely to One Nation which rises to 19% although it has presently no Tasmanian MPs, not even a state registration as yet and no known state leader or candidates. The combined major party vote sinks to a new all time low of 49%. The last time the Liberals were this low was May 2001 when they were on 23%. At that time Labor under Jim Bacon was on 59% and the Liberals were in chaos with Sue Napier having months earlier warded off Bob Cheek 6-4 in a leadership challenge. Cheek would go on to finally claim the leadership in August, then lose his seat the next year.
Happily for analysis purposes, Labor, the Greens and independents are all more or less treading water since the last election, which means that the gain in One Nation voting intention is coming mostly off the Liberals and to a small degree by sucking votes out of the minor right wing parties. This doesn't mean votes aren't flowing in and out, but for instance Labor could be taking some votes from the Liberals but themselves losing some to One Nation. It is not worth spending too much time on a seat estimate when the next election is notionally over three years away and when there is the prospect of a major redistribution of three divisions before then, but I thought it would be worth having a look at what the natural strengths and weaknesses of One Nation in given electorates would do.
When One Nation surges the increases in support tend not to be a case of simply gaining the same amount everywhere but rather they gain more in areas where they were already strong, and less in the inner cities. So what I did to estimate how 19% for One Nation might distribute was simply take their 2025 Senate vote and redistribute it proportionally. I found that the results were on the whole extremely close to what I got if I took EMRS's February federal breakdowns with One Nation on 24 and scaled them back to 19 by the same method, and I averaged these two numbers. I then made proportional adjustements to the Others vote in the seat where Others ran at the last election, uniform swing adjustments to Greens, Independents and Labor, and then deducted everything over 100 from the Liberals. Plus a few minor adjustements to make everything add up.
This might then be Tasmania on current boundaries if One Nation polled 19%:
Although the Liberals are on 25% to Labor's 24% the unevenness in their vote kills them in this model as they don't win two in Franklin and don't win three anywhere, while Labor wins five twos. So Labor could become the biggest party. The Independent vote is likely to be overstated in this poll (generic independent tends to run about four points too high) but in terms of the breakdown it does not matter - eg in Braddon Craig Garland can get half a quota and still win on a breakdown like this. It would be very difficult for either major party to govern by itself without going into coalition or having some outside ministries.
The other thing to bear in mind here is that Peter George in Franklin has said he intends this to be his only term. His movement translated very neatly (and then some) to independent Clare Glade-Wright in the Huon Legislative Council election so perhaps it can be a lasting movement that can elect somebody at the next election. If not, the seat just goes to the Greens.
This One Nation wave may well collapse by the presumptively distant state election (and the sight of it may make everyone involved more inclined to want it to stay distant). If it doesn't there will be an unholy scramble of all kinds of badly vetted political misfits, opportunists and major party rejects to get aboard the One Nation train and try to get a seat in state parliament. It's very possible that at an actual Hare-Clark election One Nation will underperform if its candidates are mostly nobodies but that theory only goes so far - most of their seats in the projection above are very solid. The proposed redistribution would probably shore up their Franklin seat, potentially at the expense of the Clark one which might instead go to the Liberals, Greens or an independent. (I'm a bit cautious about even 12% One Nation in the current Clark but I suspect they would break 20% in the northern Glenorchy booths.)
Leaderships
Jeremy Rockliff's 19 point lead (44-25) over Josh Willie has been casually described as some sort of record lead but is of course nothing of the sort; Rockliff even led Willie 53-24 in August and Peter Gutwein had far bigger leads. Nonetheless it's interesting that Rockliff is so far ahead when his party is only just over level on primaries and would be decisively losing a preferential election. Indeed the 19 point gap between Rockliff's 44% and his party's primary of 25% appears to be an EMRS record (Peter Gutwein was 16 ahead of his party in August 2020) - noting that prior to 2014 EMRS did three-way preferred Premier polls that would have made it harder to record such numbers. And in the Bacon days they didn't do preferred Premier at all.
The Poll Position pod released net favourability ratings finding Rockliff on +4 (38-34), Willie -4 with a high neutral and unsure response (17-21), Greens Leader Rosalie Woodruff on -5 (23-28). Several other political figures including Treasurer Eric Abetz were canvassed; I am not sure when results from those might appear.
The usual disclaimers apply - this is only one poll etc. But the trajectory in terms of the Liberals shedding votes poll after poll since the 2025 election is a stark one.
