EMRS: Thirty Or Turkey By Christmas?

EMRS Lib 26 (+1) ALP 23 (-1) ON 21 (+2) Grn 16 (+2) IND 14 (-2) others 1 (-1)

Seat estimate (new boundaries) Lib 10 ALP 9 ON 8 Green 5 IND 3

The latest EMRS poll is out as released on the Poll Position pod and the changes on state voting intentions are all within the in-theory margin of error from the previous edition.  There would be mild relief for the government that the dramatic slide in its numbers in the past few polls has stopped.  But political tragics could only have eyes for the ALP figure after leader Josh Willie was reported to have set a target of polling a 30% primary by Christmas.  (Something I somehow, in a feat tantamount to winning the Last Man contest for not knowing the Superbowl winner, managed to not find out about for a month!)  

This figure has led to predictable jibes from opponents that not only will Labor not attain this heroic goal (oh for the days when they were forever stuck around 30) but that Willie will instead be gone as leader by Christmas. Although Labor's primary has actually held up better to the One Nation surge than might have been expected, there seems to be an unusual level of Labor leadership chatter about.  It's hard to tell if it is serious or if a lot of people are just and quite rightly bored.  Some of it is connected to the issue that continues to dog (pun intended) the Opposition, with a Thick Of It style nadir when Willie was photographed defending Labor's unfashionable support for greyhound racing in front of a Dogs Prohibited sign. 

Ella Haddad has made it as clear as she's allowed to that she would put support for racing in the bin. Some may see her as the leader most likely to put the Rockliff Government in the bin via a mid-term transfer on the floor as well.   Willie took the leadership from Dean Winter by threatening to force a member ballot where being from the left to Winter's right would have greatly advantaged him.  If there were to be a challenge from the left the same logic does not apply.

On the right of the party Shane Broad has been talkative well beyond his podcast and was thought to be flying a flag of some sort with noises about another unfashionable policy, the long-proposed kunanyi/Mt Wellington (see what I did there) cable car.   Frankly if it was possible to build the thing viably in a way that is sensitive to the aesthetics of the mountain as judged by the residents of South Hobart and surrounds this would have happened in, oh, 1933, so he's clearly not playing to the New People's Republic of Clark.  The EMRS poll included a leadership question asking respondents to pick their preferred Labor leader out of Willie, Winter, Haddad, Broad, Janie Finlay and none of the above, but I suspect that one's been held back for the next round of Poll Position commentary.

In view of Willie's 30% target, it's amusing that he himself has jumped from 25 to 30 as Preferred Premier, with Jeremy Rockliff down seven points to 37.  37% is in fact Rockliff's lowest Preferred Premier score so far, though seven points is far from his smallest lead.  (He even trailed Rebecca White in one poll).   That really doesn't fit a picture in which voters see Willie's leadership as circling the drain and observers who were committed to that prior will probably now take it as saying something very bad about Rockliff.  But what if anything in particular, and why now?  Net favourability polls just suggest voters have seen too much at the moment of the lot of them, with Rockliff down 11 points to net -7, Willie down 10 to net -14 and Rosalie Woodruff down 11 to net -16.  The poll also asked about voter impressions of the competence of Liberal ministers Felix Ellis, Bridget Archer, Eric Abetz and Guy Barnett; these numbers too have yet to surface.

Seat projection

In my article on the recent DemosAU poll I attempted to project that poll to possible seat results under the now finalised new electorate boundaries.  The boundaries will be official for the next federal election after 9 October this year, but their use at state level is approved by special legislation that is likely to take well into next year.  So depending on when the parliament next collapses, we don't know for sure that the new boundaries will be in play, but I'm assuming for the moment that they will be.

By adjusting my modelling for the DemosAU poll I came up with this as a possible projection, noting that the Others vote of 1% in this EMRS is likely to be unrealistically low:

The only difference from my read of the Demos poll is that I now have the final seat in new Clark as in doubt between the Greens and the second Independent.  This is on account of Peter George intending to serve only one term though it's not impossible that much of his movement's support might transfer to a new independent.  Plus polls tend to overestimate Independent support anyway.  At the moment I suspect some of this independent vote would scatter and that the Greens' statewide strength in this poll is strong enough for two seats in neo-Clark, though they would have to work on the profile of their second candidate.  I'm also still not totally sold on One Nation being good for a seat in neo-Clark; if they run a bunch of no-names they could easily be destroyed by within-ticket leakage.

My Clark projections continue to highlight Labor's problem - they have Willie, Haddad and Winter all with territorial claims on the new Clark but it is such an awful seat for them at recent state level that they are at big risk of only returning one member.   This may well change by election time but it does add extra value to the leadership.  The other thing this model continues to point to is the potential for a combined if narrow Liberal/One Nation seat majority.  By the next election things may be extremely different but that is an interesting live prospect.  

Federal

The poll also released federal figures (last seen in February).  There was similarly not a lot of movement, with Labor on 29 (down 1), Liberals 17 (down 1), One Nation 26 (up two), Greens 15 and independents 13.  Respondent-allocated two-party matchups had Labor leading the Liberals 57-43 and One Nation 63-37.  81% of respondent One Nation preferences flowed to the Liberals vs Labor but only 53% of Liberal preferences flowed to One Nation vs Labor.  The latter is likely to be an underestimate because of Liberal how to vote cards (assuming the Liberals do preference One Nation), but in Tasmania this isn't as big a factor as elsewhere.  The podcast reports that ALP vs One Nation is neck and neck in Braddon and that both it and the classic 2PP are very close in Bass; my eyeballing of these statewide primaries is that One Nation could win both if it managed to keep its primary vote this high and found good candidates.  On the Senate front anything like these numbers would be a straight 2 Labor 1 Liberal 2 One Nation 1 Greens. 

Four Year Terms? Fixed Terms? Fixed Four Year Terms? Part One - Polling

This week there was an article regarding a report released by a lobby group called 4 Year Terms Australia, which supports "fixed" four year terms for federal parliament.  The SMH report contained this very brief comment regarding polling:

"Polling commissioned from JWS Research found just one in five Australians supported the current system of three-year terms and the prime minister choosing the election date."

Well, from that it may sound like Australians would strongly support "fixed" four year terms, right?  In fact the polling cited tells a rather different story.

I've decided to write one article on this subject dealing mainly with the polling, to be probably (subject to time) followed by another in the near future dealing with the (de)merits of the issue.  That said there will be few surprises on the latter front to anyone who's seen my article re fixed terms in Tasmania or my 2025 JSCEM submission.   To summarise my views, I'm totally against "fixed" federal terms, whether by legislation or referendum.  I think that fixed term laws either fail to genuinely secure fixed dates or else prevent Prime Ministers from calling elections in circumstances where they should be able to.  I'm also against four year federal terms if it means eight year Senators.   

I think it's worth considering the option that was smashed 32.9-67.1 at the 1988 referendum (unfixed four year terms with simultaneous all-in-all-out Senate elections) but that even that proposal has some balance, stability and manageability risks that are not immediately apparent to people who think it is a good idea.  Does our current system have some drawbacks?  Yes - though some of those are being overstated by those pushing for fixed and/or four year terms.  Is it so bad that we should rush into alternatives with serious problems because somebody thinks it will save money?  Hell no!  

I'm concerned that after decades without regular referendums, lobby groups in the 21st century seem not to have absorbed the lessons of the past as to how hard they are to win and we seem to be beset with a plague of bad inner-city-focused referendum campaigns that just have no idea.  "Yes 23", the current Australian Republican Movement (many would say they were already hopeless back in 1999) and now this lot.  The report the group has put out is riddled with bad arguments and errors that I expect to deal with in the sequel.

For now my focus is on the polling - which I'm confining to the last ten years (and will add others if I become aware of them).  What do the polls on this issue say, and how do they stack up compared to the claims being made for them, and do they offer hope for one or more successful referendums?  I will start with the polls mentioned by 4YTA.

* JWS (2026).  "Support for a fixed election date is consistently strong, and above that of four-year terms.Research by JWS Research for this report found 61 per cent supported fixed terms, compared to 22 per cent for the status quo"  This isn't surprising given that voters aren't familiar yet with the nuances of the fixed terms debate and don't necessarily understand that fixing parliamentary terms is easier said than done and that no fixed term system will guarantee the date of any future election.  But what is interesting is the breakdown:

That's 35% for fixed three year terms, 30% for fixed four years, 11% for unfixed three years, 11% for unfixed four years and 13% unsure/no preference.  So in this poll three years is more popular than four! (I add also that JWS was once a major seat pollster but in recent years its accuracy, frequency and relevance as a voting intention pollster have declined.)

There's also this "31 per cent would prefer a four-year term if it was paired with a long weekend for the election. This lifts support for four-year terms to 59 per cent".  Well of course it does.  Everybody wants a pony.  At this stage, no question wordings from any of this are available.  

* Newspoll (March 2024). "In 2024 Newspoll found 51 per cent supported a fixed, four-year term with 37 per cent opposed."  The question in the Newspoll was "On balance, and while you may have no strong feelings either way, would you be more inclined to say you are in favour of or against changing the term of Australia’s House of Representatives from the current three-year terms to four-year fixed terms?" The responses were 17% Strongly in favour, 34% Partly in favour, 21% Partly against, 16% Strongly against, 12% Don't know.  With two-thirds of the respondents who are "in favour" picking the very ambiguous option "partly in favour", this cannot be treated as unqualified support.  Personally I am not a fan of potentially yeah-nah type response options like "partly in favour" and "somewhat support", especially not for a question that could go to a referendum where a high share of "partly in favour"s are likely to end up as "no". I would suspect in this case a lot of the partly-in-favours liked the fixed bit but weren't so keen on the four years.

* Australian Election Study (2025).  "In 2025 it found that 42 per cent of voters prefer four-year parliamentary terms, compared with 30 per cent for three-year terms (28 per cent no preference)." The question was "The House of Representatives currently has a maximum term of three years. Some people think four-year parliaments are better to give governments more time to govern. Other people think three-year parliaments are better to hold governments accountable."  In this case the question and answer designs are fine, but the issue is the timing.  AES is taken in the wake of elections at a time when voters are likely to be suffering from election fatigue and to be more receptive to the idea of letting the government get on with it.  This is especially the case when the government is enjoying a honeymoon period, and the Albanese government had an unusually long second honeymoon.

* Resolve (2024). "A 2024 Resolve Strategic poll found 42 per cent support for moving to a fixed four-year term, compared to 23 per cent opposed."  This is cited as "unpublished research" so it is impossible for me to scrutinise the poll's wording, other than to note that Resolve issue polls published by Nine media frequently have wordings that I disagree with, often because the wordings are too complicated and likely to lead respondents astray.

* McKinnon (2025) "In 2025 McKinnon found 43 per cent support a four-year term compared to 28 per cent who oppose it. 57 per cent believed a four-year term would help government make decisions for the long term." This is again cited as "unpublished research" making it impossible to scrutinise any aspect of the poll (?) including the question wordings and answer choices.  It's also not clear what platform it was conducted through as McKinnon are not themselves regular pollsters but tend to conduct their polling through other pollsters, recently including JWS and Roy Morgan.  However given that there is no mention of this polling in McKinnon's own March 2025 report on the same issue, and given that there were two reported waves of McKinnon polling in 2025 in the months after the election, I suspect this has the same timing issue as Australian Election Study. Furthermore, McKinnon are not a source external to the four year terms push but are themselves a supporter of it, so this is basically no more than movement in-gossip without further evidence.  

* JWS (apparently March 2017 but reported in July 2017) Details of this poll are elusive; what I have found is that 22% supported fixed four-year terms, 20% supported unfixed three year terms, and 16% had no preference, leaving a 42% black hole because poll reporting in this country was as hopeless then as now (the culprit was of course the Herald-Sun).  I cannot find any reporting of what proportion preferred four year terms overall but when asked if eight year Senate terms were a drawback, 10% of those supporting four year terms apparently said change to a longer term (did they even read the question?), 69% still said four year terms were OK, 15% now said change to a shorter term, 2% didn't care and 4% didn't know.

Now for some polls not mentioned by 4YTA:

* Freshwater (April 2024) This one is one of the easiest to find so I suspect the reason it didn't get a mention is it doesn't support 4YTA's case.  When asked "Should the electoral term for the federal House of Representatives be extended from three years to four years?” 38% said Yes, 44% No and 18% were unsure.  This is only Freshwater, a poll that skewed to the Coalition at the 2025 election and was apparently doing something incorrect with Voice No support (but nobody seems to know what), but interestingly Greens voters were less supportive than Coalition supporters. 

* Essential (Aug 2017) Respondents were asked "In Australia, Federal elections are currently held every 3 years, although the Government can decide to hold an election earlier. Would you support or oppose changing to 4-year fixed terms so that elections are held every 4 years on the same date?"

Responses were Strongly support 18% Support 40% Oppose 15% Strongly Oppose 9%.  The question however is fool's gold since no fixed term system guarantees elections are held on the same date (or even, more accurately, the same weekend!) Also federal terms do sometimes run slightly longer than three years.  

What should we conclude from all this?

Polling on this issue is sparse and lacks consistency in question wording between polls.  Overall those polls that offer respondents a simple choice of fixed four year terms vs unfixed three year terms tend to find that respondents prefer the former.  But considering polls that offer options such as unfixed four vs unfixed three, or fixed four vs fixed three, it's clear that the superficial allure of fixed terms is doing the pulling here.  Respondents support fixed terms in isolation.  They probably don't support four year terms in isolation.  

A second thing about this is that the length and flexibility of parliamentary terms probably isn't something most voters think about often.  So the polls don't really capture the ongoing views of voters on the issue at any one time; rather they tend more to capture how voters respond when they are asked to think about these issues and give a first reaction.  And the third thing is that as we have seen before in referendum campaigns - most recently with the Voice - something that sounds nice in principle can start with high approval but the Yes vote can quickly decline as the issue is debated and complaints about the proposal build.  

Among the many drawbacks of the latest 4YTA report is they are confused about what their model for change actually is, in one paragraph talking about legislating fixed terms first then holding a referendum afterwards so that voters can see that one change has worked before they move on to the second.  That is optimistic since it would take at least a few election cycles for any sensible person to draw a conclusion about whether introducing fixed terms by legislation had "worked", especially given we have had few early elections recently.  Then in the next paragraph they are talking about having referendums on both fixed terms and four year terms and talking about whether they should be sequential or simultaneous!  This is all a major issue for a movement for fixed four year terms because if fixed terms were legislated then it looks like an uphill battle to get voters to accept four year terms.  On the other hand if both are taken to a referendum at once there is more to attack.

There is also a lot of discussion about bipartisanship as a road to success and trying to smuggle the referendum into the election season to maximise chances of success.  Hello, we are in an environment where the major parties are now frequently getting below 50% of the vote combined in national polls and we are not even sure if we actually have a two-party system anymore.  The way things are at present if a referendum was supported by the current major parties but opposed by One Nation I would not like its prospects of success, especially if it was on a theme that allowed One Nation to attack it as the major parties voting more priveleges and less scrutiny for themselves.  (On the other hand it is always possible that if One Nation feared losing support over an election cycle they too might get on board).  

None of this suggests that a referendum on four year terms (fixed or otherwise) has much hope of surviving the dynamics we have seen in other referendum campaigns.  "Politicians are bad at what they do and the answer is to give them more time in office" will always be a challenging sell.  

Group Ticket Voting In Victoria Is Finally Gone!

Today is Victoria's first day since the mid-2000s without Group Ticket Voting in state elections.  Legislation to abolish the system received Royal Assent yesterday.  It could still in theory be challenged in court but I doubt that would go too well for the challenger after the failed Bob Day federal challenge.

There's a saying that success has many fathers while failure is an orphan.  Meaning that when something good happens a lot of people suddenly want to claim the credit.  

Since group ticket voting was abolished in Victoria we've seen, for instance, GetUp! claiming partial credit for their petition which highlighted the recent attempt by Avi Yemini and others to register fake parties.  Yemini's defenders (including Topher Field in a ridiculous video where he abusively misunderstands comments to the Guardian by yours truly) have been out saying GetUp! and others who reacted were just "useful idiots" and their tactic with the fake parties was to generate exactly such outrage against group ticket voting to increase the chance of it being scrapped.  Well, to be useful idiots you firstly have to be useful so this suggests that GetUp! actually did do something after all.  I will say here that at least GetUp! only claimed partial credit while Yemini and co have had no compunction about claiming the lot.  But I'm not sure GetUp!'s petition with 22000+ "signatures" was ever even presented to anybody! I am nonetheless glad that they raised awareness of the issue.

Group Ticket Voting: Going, Going ... ? (Rolling Thread)

GTV repeal has passed Assembly unanimously and Legislative Council with a handful of votes against.

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There is more encouraging news on the Group Ticket Voting front today with the Allan Carroll Government finally amid the chaos introducing a Bill to scrap group ticket voting in the Victorian Legislative Council, called the Electoral Amendment (Miscellaneous Matters) Bill 2026.  This rolling thread will follow what happens with this Bill during the week and what is in it.  (A note that I am tracking the registration of deceptively named parties for the Victorian election in this prior post.)

What is known so far is that the Bill will "remove group voting tickets from Legislative Council elections and prescribe a new method for voting above the line, requiring electors to number at least five groups in order of preference. The bill will also make other consequential and miscellaneous amendments to clarify and improve the operation of the Electoral Act and the electoral system in Victoria."

This establishes that the Bill will support a semi-optional Senate-style preferential system (possibly the simple "five above or five below" option), presumably with savings provisions for voters who number fewer above the line boxes.  This is the sensible choice as it encourages preference flows compared to a fully optional preferencing version as in states with lower quotas.

Not-A-Poll Reset 2 of 2026: Allan Resigns

It's another success for voters in the Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll as the outright majority favourite was indeed the next leader to depart, improving the record of Not-A-Poll to 8/15 including six of the last seven.

When I opened voting on 13 February there was a spirited initial battle between Jacinta Allan and Angus Taylor with the lead swapping a few times over several hours.  In following days Allan built a large lead with for some reason a lot of votes for her on 18 and 20 February.  Over time this grew into a majority.  Allan was a promising bet because her dire leadership ratings and her party's wobbly voting intention polling suggested there were two different ways she could go, and nobody else seemed especially likely to go before the Victorian election.

Allan formally resigned but was facing an active challenge that appeared very likely to succeed.  Had Allan resisted (assuming she had sufficient signatures) there would have been a member ballot in which she would have needed an overwhelming margin to defeat Ben Carroll.  

Tasmania Redistribution: The Franklin Renaming Fiasco

In 1984 there was a proposal to rename the electorate that is now called Lyons (and was then called Wilmot) "Truganini".  For a little while this was being reported and discussed in papers, there was widespread opposition and the change was withdrawn.  Wilmot became Lyons instead.  I was twelve years old at the time and I remember this in broad outline.  But I wonder if the Augmented Electoral Commission's corporate memory goes back this far.  

Unfortunately we yet again have had a redistribution proposal for a Tasmanian electorate to have an Aboriginal name where that proposal has been supported out of pretty much nowhere and sparked significant opposition.  Last week's boundary announcement has seen 272 written submissions, most of them opposing the proposed replacement of the name Franklin with Tongerlongeter.

I want to contrast this with the process that led to the replacement of the name Denison with Clark.  By the time this change was made in the 2017 redistribution, there was a very well organised movement to change Denison to Clark.  This proposal had been active in the previous cycle and by the 2017 cycle its adherents included several prominent Tasmanians, judges, current and former politicians and there was even a petition supporting it.  It is true that the new name was not endorsed until the Augmented Electoral Commission stage but by that stage the proposal was so well known that anyone with anything to say had said it, and the change of name attracted only three further objections, I don't think any of them from Tasmanians.  People might have agreed or disagreed with the change but people knew why the change was being proposed, why Clark if there was a new name, and why there were objections to Denison.

Victoria 2026: The Election Where All Sorts Of Things Can Happen!

Victoria Aggregate Labor 26.0 Coalition 27.3 Green 12.8 One Nation 23.7 others 10.3
(polls are probably underestimating "others" vote)
2PP estimate 52.0 to Coalition vs ALP, shadow-2PP ALP 50.1 vs One Nation

Currently Coalition would be likely to govern in minority with One Nation support, with One Nation seat tally around the mid-teens

One Nation and Labor seat numbers are highly dependent on Coalition preferencing decisions

Both major parties are still capable of majority government with a modest swing from current primaries

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It's been forever - largely because of the amount of work I had on in the first half of the year - since the last time I looked at Victorian state polling in the leadup to this year's election in any depth but finally a good time to do so has arrived.  What I see, at the moment, is a picture with a lot of possibilities.  Arguments can be made on current polling that the Allan Labor Government, while currently behind, is not far from surviving.  Arguments can also be made that it is not far from losing the election so badly that it may not even be the second party.  For now this is a really difficult election to model - much harder than South Australia - but perhaps by polling day things will get a lot clearer.  This one is a rather mathsy modelling article that has been rated 3/5 on the Wonk Factor scale.  

Is Group Ticket Voting Really On The Way Out In Victoria?

The last week has brought the encouraging news via both The Age and The Herald-Sun that Victorian Labor is preparing legislation to scrap Group Ticket Voting at the last possible chance before this year's election. According to the reports, the legislation will be brought in in the sitting week starting July 28, and would presumably pass both houses quickly in order to meet the VEC's August deadline.  

Let's hope this is finally it for all this nonsense!  I understand the smaller parties may be reluctant to vote for a new system under which their chances of winning any seats are greatly reduced for now thanks to the Bracks Government's entrenchment blunders, so I'll cut them slack so long as they refrain from making false claims in defence of their position.  But if any major party stands in the way or does nothing this time then there is no excuse for them not caring about democracy.  

Tasmania Redistribution: Announcement Day Live Thread

Today could be a momentous day in the history of Tasmanian electoral boundaries!  Or it could be a nothing-ever-happens.  Around mid-morning today there will be a boundary announcement.  If the announcement is either the same as the draft boundaries or only slightly different then that's it and the new boundaries will be official for federal elections after 8 October.  It usually takes several months for them to then be adopted at state level via legislation, so an early state election before, say, mid-2027 would not necessarily be on the new boundaries.  

Alternatively the Augmented Electoral Commission could recommend substantively different boundaries, which would result in further rounds of consultation.  I have seen no variations from process that would suggest there is any intent to do this so far, but I am not sure if that should be taken as a sign that it's not happening.  

My previous articles are here:

Clark Must Expand But Where?

Draft Scraps The Franklin Divide

The Reaction

Once the announcement is up I will be posting details of what has been decided.  I'm not Ben Raue or William Bowe so please do not expect new margin calculations from this source.  However I will have summaries and comments about the decision, whatever it is.