Pre And Post Budget Federal Poll Roundup

2PP Aggregate 52.4 to Labor vs Coalition (term low, -0.8 since last week)

Shadow-2PP 52.9 to Labor vs One Nation (-0.6 since last week)

Labor would win election"held now" but most likely with only a small majority

This is my usual annual post about federal voting intention polling after the Budget, plus a summary of what's been happening in the months leading up.

The briefest summary of what happened in the months leading up is "not much".  In terms of my Labor vs Coalition two-party preferred aggregate, Labor dipped down to the high 52s in mid-January (off not a lot of polling at the time) but got back above 54 during Coalition leadership tensions in early February.  Since Angus Taylor replaced Sussan Ley Labor's 2PP has bobbed around the 53s with no real evidence of signal.

At the time of my last federal poll roundup there had been an accelerating move to One Nation on my estimate of a Labor vs One Nation shadow-2PP, one which eerily paralleled the way support for the No campaign accelerated during the Voice.  However since the end of January that trend has stalled with Labor's average value from specific polls running generally around the mid 53s.  (There is a very slight downward slope in the graph but it's statistically insignificant and may be affected by the house effects of particular polls, which I haven't adjusted for).  

The static nature of both the 2PP and shadow 2PP is not surprising given that in primary vote polling between the start of February and the Budget there was basically no movement for anyone.  There was just the slightest hint in the Budget leadup that the One Nation primary vote surge might finally be deflating.  

However in the five polls out since the Budget (Freshwater, Resolve, Newspoll, Morgan, YouGov - I'm disregarding the immediate post-Budget Morgan SMS poll due to concerns about that polling method) One Nation has increased its primary vote compared to the previous readings by the same pollsters by 1,2,3, 3 and 1 points respectively.  This very probably isn't coincidence, but it's impossible to untangle whether this is a reaction to the Budget, a bounce for an impressive win in the Farrer by-election or both.  Only Newspoll had Labor's primary vote over 30.  

The post-Budget polls

Once again I have no intention of replicating exact primary voting poll numbers available elsewhere.  What is not available elsewhere (especially with several pollsters now declining to publish 2PP estimates, or using respondent preferences only) is my last-election-based 2PP conversions, for whatever use they may be if the current Coalition/One Nation standoff survives til the 2028 election.  In the post-Budget polls, my estimates have Labor down in all five polls compared to their previous readings, to 51.7 (-0.7) in Morgan, 54.0 (-0.7) in Newspoll which tends to be stronger than others for Labor lately, 52.7 (-1.8) in Resolve, 50.3 (-3.1) in Freshwater and 51.9 (-2.6) in YouGov.  Resolve is pretty bouncy and Freshwater is in the naughty corner after a poor performance at the 2025 federal election so I wouldn't take all these as evidence that Labor has necessarily taken a large immediate hit, but there strongly does appear to be something.  My aggregate has Labor down 0.8 points from last week to a term-low 52.4 so far (which will become 52.3 tomorrow if there are no more polls today).  This is possibly a little harsh as it's been going backwards and forwards on the question of whether to consider Freshwater to have a house effect, so there's a case for it being 52.5 instead.

 Either way, it's a position from which Labor would probably still win a narrow majority, but might fall short if the Coalition and One Nation's demographic strengths in different areas complemented each other enough instead of getting in each others' way.  At this stage this is of little significance given, eg, that Labor were trailing on 2PP in early 2025 yet went on to win very easily.  However it does at least show some question marks starting to appear about how easily Labor will necessarily dominate a fragmented Right.   I also have Labor's shadow-2PP vs One Nation down by a similar amount post-Budget to 52.8.  

At this stage neither the Coalition nor One Nation has beaten Labor on my estimates in a single poll all term but that will probably happen someday.  Labor has had three polls so far that I have got as between 50-51 in the last month or so (the above mentioned Freshwater and mid-April Spectre and DemosAU polls).  

Governments falling slightly (on average about 0.4 points) in 2PP polling is the average response to a Budget, with the "Budget bounce" being an uncommon animal that is almost never reliably recorded outside Coalition government election years.  We'll need to wait a few weeks to see if this batch is the start of a more serious decline or if the damage from a Budget that's had some feisty reactions in polling is temporary.  I'll add in updates for any more polls that come out in the Budget cycle.

The Budget

This year's Budget is one of the more dramatic Budgets for a while, particularly because of the government doing what it said it would not do (ie anything) on negative gearing and capital gains tax.  This is especially sensitive because Labor is perceived (though the truth of it is debatable) to have lost the 2019 election by being upfront about its intentions and, unlike the Howard government with its change to supporting the GST, hasn't sought a mandate for changing its position.  At the same time, the Budget is being pitched as courageously tackling the damage that decades of perverse incentives have done to the housing market and the social rifts this has created, and making it easier for people under the age of 387 to buy their own house.  So what do voters make of all this?

Well if we judge it by the two leading Newspoll Budget questions, they think that it's a shocker!  On perceived impact on the economy, only 22% of Newspoll respondents rated it good, with 47% rating it bad, the net -25 rating being easily the second worst ever and the net -41 reading on perceived personal impact (11-52) being the third worst.   Graphically (on my increasingly scribbled over chart) it's not as out there as those famous (and also promise-breaking) stinkers in 1993 and 2014 but this is hardly what you'd expect from a dominant government.  And yet, of course, the Opposition is so struggling that voters dismiss (39-47) the idea that the Opposition would have done better.  

Digging into the other Newspoll questions voters also thought the Budget would make inflation worse (48-9), would have them paying more tax (39-7), was a step in the wrong direction for housing (38-27) and was "driving a wedge" between generations rather than "rebalancing the playing field" (47-26 with virtually no variation by age).  The same pattern repeats across all the polls; if you ask respondents what they think about the Budget overall or whether it will have a specific impact it gets the thumbs down.  

And yet, if you ask voters about what they think of the content of the Budget, as Resolve did, almost every measure included had a net positive rating, and in most cases a large one.  

This seems to be a standard feature of Budget polling, raising the question of whether many respondents actually have made any kind of broad attempt to think about the Budget or just use the questions to send signals about stuff they are grumpy about, including in this case politicians breaking promises.

Leaderships

This week Resolve had Angus Taylor ahead of Anthony Albanese as preferred/better (wording varies by poll) Prime Minister 33-30 and Freshwater had him ahead 41-40.   YouGov had Albanese ahead 41-38 and Newspoll 46-38.  Leadership satisfactions/approvals are uniformly quite bad for Albanese across the board: Resolve net -22, Freshwater net -19, Newspoll net -17, YouGov net -18.  Yet Resolve (net +8) and Freshwater (net +9) have Taylor quite well regarded while Newspoll has him at net -12.  Does anyone believe the strong ratings for Taylor from Resolve and Freshwater?  I don't; it reminds me too much of the previous term in which Peter Dutton frequently did quite well out of those two and we all saw how that ended.  

It's true that new and low profile Opposition Leaders have tended to historically do well on net satisfaction because they start with low negatives, but that tends to go with weak performances on Better Prime Minister unless the government is losing heavily (which this one clearly isn't).  I doubt that if voters really liked Taylor so much we would have seen so little recovery (maybe 2-3%) in the Coalition's primary vote from the worst end times of the Sussan Ley leadership.  Nor do I think the Coalition would have done so terribly badly in Farrer which is not so far from Hume.  For the moment I think that the methods decisions of some of the polls are unintentionally making one of the two party leaders look pretty good when the real public mood towards the majors and their leaders is a pox on both your houses.  

EMRS: The State Where No Party Has Votes

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.  

Stafford By-Election: Prospects and Live

Stafford (ALP 5.32%)

Luke Richmond (ALP) vs Fiona Hammond (LNP) and others

Cause of by-election: death of Jimmy Sullivan (ALP/IND)

ALP retain with c. 4.4% swing to LNP

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Monday:  Not much more to see

Casey Briggs has tweeted that he understands there are not more than (and probably less than) 2000 postals to come, so further changes to the current 51.2-48.8 margin will be in tenths of a percent if that.

Sunday: Excuses excuses...

Steven Miles has been quoted offering a bizarre excuse for his party's poor result, claiming it was due to One Nation not running and saying "We will never know what the result would have been if they had run and not directed their supporters to vote for the LNP,".  Stafford is one of One Nation's worst seats in the state, had they run I estimate they would have got about 8%.  Most of their voters would have preferenced the LNP anyway.  Care of the 2017 election we have a window on what happens when One Nation recommends preferences to the LNP in some seats and Labor in others - the flow difference was around 10-12%.  So for an open ticket, half that.  This argument if it works at all isn't worth half a percent, it might be worth a tenth of the swing if that.  In fact not all One Nation voters would have even been aware that their party recommended (not "directed") its voters to vote for the LNP, so probably even less.  And some of those who were aware would not have obeyed.

Miles has also referred to Fiona Hammond's local profile, but that was already present in the baseline since she was the candidate last time.  Indeed her time as a councillor was more recent then.  

Another excuse quoted by The Australian is “Right-of-centre voters, after the deal with One Nation, weren’t left with many alternatives in a field of nine candidates, and so we have seen a splintering of the vote amongst other left-of-centre parties.’’  But in fact there were four right wing candidates (up one from 2024) and the three minor righties between them got a 0.3% swing on the combined One Nation and Family First primary from 2024.  It is true that Labor's primary suffered from the extra competition on the left - but that does not explain half of the primary vote swing against Labor flowing through to 2PP swing as well.  

Farrer By-Election Live

Farrer (Lib vs IND 6.2%, Lib vs ALP 12.9%)

Raissa Butkowski (Lib) vs Michelle Milthorpe (IND), David Farley (ON) and others
Cause of by-election resignation of Sussan Ley (Lib)

CALLED (7:46 pm) Farley (One Nation) gain from Liberal

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Live comments will appear here from 6 pm - once counting gets going from around 7, refresh every 10 minutes or so for latest comments.

Monday 11th: We don't quite know the flows by party yet but what we can track is the proportion of Coalition voters whose votes would need to be switched by a different HTV recommendation for the Coalition parties' decision to preference One Nation to have decided the seat. Currently that number runs at 33.6% (this is Liberal and National combined).  As noted below, while normally it's quite feasible that an HTV decision would carry that much weight, in this case I think probably not.

Although David Farley has obviously won Farrer very easily the mathematical proof that he has done so will require a distribution of preferences meaning he's a fortnight or so from taking his seat.  See here.

The Urban Myth That "Sack Dan Andrews" Was A Labor Front

Does this look like a Labor front to you?

Group ticket voting in Victoria has again been in the news a lot lately - see my latest article about whether abolishing it would assist One Nation.  With this latest discussion has come a resurgence of a longrunning online urban myth concerning the shortlived Sack Dan Andrews party (or more formally Restore Democracy: Sack Dan Andrews Party) in the 2022 Victorian election.  The myth is that this party was set up to harvest the votes of people who hated former Victorian Premier Andrews and channel these votes back to Labor.  The reality is that while there is a disputed claim that Sack Dan Andrews (SDA) was a siphoning attempt of some sort, Labor gained no benefit from it anyway, and it had nothing to do with the party.  This article explores the reality of this short-lived party's preferences and its actual impact on the election in detail.  For those on twitter I also have a shorter version of events on a thread here.

Would Scrapping Group Ticket Voting In Victoria Help One Nation?

On this website I have frequently covered Victoria's ongoing failure to repeal the use of Group Ticket Voting in state Legislative Council elections.  Victoria is now the last state that still has this system, which has been scrapped everywhere else after being gamed by preference-harvesting.  In the current cycle the Electoral Matters committee in an outstanding report recommended the scrapping of Group Ticket Voting way back in July 2024, and the government has still not responded officially to that recommendation.  The clock is ticking in terms of time for the Victorian Electoral Commission to implement the changes required to move to a different system, and the Commission has said the decision must be made by August.  After recent issues involving service delivery by state electoral commissions I suggest the sooner the better.

Last week there was reporting by the Guardian this week that one Labor MP had said current Premier Jacinta Allan "had appeared reluctant to [scrap GTV] as it would benefit One Nation."  Separately I understand that the view that scrapping GTV would benefit One Nation is also espoused by some Labor lower house MPs.  Irrespective of who actually holds that view, this article is to explore this claim.  

The Guardian's article does not say why anyone holding this concern might hold it, and in the absence of any actual claimed mechanism it is not that easy to counter.  However there are at least three well known myths about how Group Ticket Voting is supposedly bad for One Nation in the modern age.  Here they are and here is why they are wrong.

Legislative Council 2026: Huon and Rosevears Live And Post-Count (Plus Nepean!)

Huon: Clare Glade-Wright (IND) elected, gain from Dean Harriss (IND)

Rosevears: Jo Palmer (Lib) retain. 

NEPEAN (VIC): CALLED 8:30 pm Marsh (Lib) retain

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All numbers here are unofficial, check the TEC and VEC sites for official numbers

Refresh every 10 mins or so after 6:30 for latest updates

3:03 All over, Palmer wins 52.8-47.2 after a 79-21 split to Labor on the Greens exclusion. A very respectable result for Labor in the north despite losing.

12:00 Palmer didn't cross off Monson but needs a trivial 7.8% of Greens preferences. Based on the scrutineering estimates she will probably end up with a 52-54 2CP which is reasonably close. Maybe at or above the higher end because the Monson-McLennan prefs will be weaker for Labor.

The Amazing 2026 South Australian Election: Final Lower House Results And Poll Performance

SA 2026 ALP 34 (+5) Lib 5 (-9) ON 4 (+4) IND 4 (-)
(Changes from pre-election/notional; Labor gained two seats from Liberal during 2022-6 term)

Estimated 2PP ALP 57.89 vs Liberal (+3.3)

Estimated "Shadow 2PP" ALP 58.19 vs One Nation

The 2026 South Australian lower house was remarkable in so many ways.  It makes Queensland 1998 seem almost boring by comparison, except that Queensland 1998 was there first.  Maybe all elections are going to be like this now and this soon will not seem so unusual but if that's so my colleagues and I are going to have a very busy time in the future!

All manner of curious things happened here.  Finally, someone (Lou Nicholson in Finniss) won a state or federal seat from fourth on primaries; hooray we have lived to see it.  Both majors missed the 2CP in Stuart and Mount Gambier in the first such cases since Nicklin 2001.  The Liberal Opposition missed more 2CPs (29) than they made (18) and were outpolled by One Nation (unprecedented) but are still the Opposition.  Worse than that they missed nine 3CPs as well and even managed to finish fifth in Port Adelaide and Black - Black being a seat they won at the previous election!  And so on.  It was obvious this was going to be a very messy election - a little while out I thought how on earth will we ever make a pendulum from THIS - but aspects of it were even more unique than I saw coming.

Legislative Council 2026: Rosevears

ROSEVEARS (2020 margin Lib vs IND 0.57%)

This is my second guide to the Legislative Council this year.  My guide for Huon is here and my latest guide to voting patterns in the upper house is up.   

I expect to be doing live coverage of the Legislative Council elections on this site on election night, scheduled for Saturday May 2.  However, updates to this page in the lead-up will probably be less frequent than normal. 

The current numbers in the Council are three Liberal, three Labor, one Green and eight independents, with the independents ranging fairly evenly across the Green to Liberal spectrum.  Labor gives up one vote on the floor and in the committee stages because it holds the Presidency.  As the major parties frequently vote together, the Government has not had an especially difficult time of it in the upper chamber lately, most notably getting the hugely controversial Macquarie Point stadium through 9 votes to 5.  But that is not to say the Liberals get everything their own way, for instance having their legislation to wind up greyhound racing referred to an inquiry.

This year sees just two Legislative Council contests, being the first defence for independent Dean Harriss in Huon and likewise for Liberal Jo Palmer in Rosevears.