Voice Referendum Polling: The Last Days Of The Yes Ascendancy?

TWO-ANSWER POLLING AVERAGE TREND: 50.1 TO YES (-3.9 in about a month)

(estimate updated 11 July, will be edited if more polls before next article)

(UPDATES ADDED: Notes rejecting the ACM reader survey, the Paterson Tele-Town Hall robopoll and the Australia Institute, plus Essential added 11 July)

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It's only three weeks since the last one, but this week's Newspoll (among other developments) merits another chapter in the story of the referendum Yes vote's decline.  Sure, maybe I should do a federal roundup sometime, but on the other hand there's still not much to see there.  I can do it in a paragraph: Labor is currently at about 55.8% 2PP as a cross-poll average. While Anthony Albanese himself is being quickly cut down to merely mild popularity, there is no end yet to honeymoon vote shares for his party.  Even this week's 54-46 Newspoll came off primaries that would normally be good for 55.  There are some signs of improvement for Peter Dutton, whose own ratings have gone up just a little and whose deficit on Newspoll Better PM (20 points) is now not much larger than that indicator historically skews by.  So there are a few signs that at least leadership polling has the potential to get more interesting, but for now at least the Voice is where it's at.

Victoria 2022: New Lower House Distributions And 2PP Pendulum

Last week saw some late excitement for those of us interested in the entrails of the 2022 Victorian election with the release of 39 previously unavailable preference distributions, albeit officially unofficial and "indicative".   These are the full preference distributions for the seats where previously there was either no distribution (because a candidate was elected on primary votes alone) or an incomplete distribution (because the winner crossed 50% against two or more non-excluded rivals).  36 of these were classic two-party preferred contests (mostly lopsided ones), the remainder being Narracan (a supplementary election that Labor didn't contest), Brunswick (Greens vs ALP) and, entertainingly, Mulgrave.

In the original postcount the VEC kept Mulgrave as a Labor vs Liberal seat although independent Ian Cook (of "Slug Gate" fame) held a narrow primary vote lead for second over the Liberals' Michael Piastrino.  This led to complaints from the Cook camp seeking something they thought was called a "recount" (in fact what they wanted was a realignment).  Cook claimed that "according to my scrutineers, it will bring Daniel Andrews down a few per cent to make the seat marginal".

It didn't (though it might have done the "down a few per cent" bit had Cook's primary lead over Piastrino stayed at 4%).  Cook did in fact hold his eventual primary lead of just under 1% over Piastrino all the way to the final exclusion, but Andrews won the 2CP against Cook by a margin of 60.83% vs 39.17%.  This was, in fact, more than Andrews won the 2PP quick throw vs Piastrino by (60.20-39.80).  

Voice Referendum Polling: The Yes Vote Keeps On Falling

Current estimate of national Yes vote (two-answer basis): 54%

(Note added 12 June: an update on the Resolve poll has been added at the bottom of the article.)

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Two months after my first article on Voice referendum polling, it's time for a second.  This week saw the release of a new Newspoll with the worst result for Yes of any reputable poll so far, though Yes was still ahead nationally, just, 46-43.  The poll lead to a spectacular display of unhinging on Twitter from the usual army of drips, megaphones and rusted-ons. Many of these responded by posting completely and obviously false claims about Newspoll's track record, including falsely claiming it had failed to predict Labor victories in recent elections.  I even saw one tweet that claimed Newspoll had wrongly forecast Liberal wins in all state and federal elections in the last three years.  In fact the final Newspolls in every relevant case had Labor winning (with 2PPs in chronological order of 51.5, 66, 53, 54, 54.5 and 54.5) and Labor duly won the lot (with 2PPs of 53.1, 69.7, 52.1, 54.6, 55.0 and 54.3).

One can only wonder what these people will do if, or looking more likely at the moment when, the first poll with No ahead pokes its head above the parapet.  At the current rate of progress, that day might not be far away.  The Yes vote is tanking according to polls.  While it does depend to some degree on which poll one examines and poll wording, the overall downhill trend I highlighted in early April has shown no sign of stopping in the last two months. 

Not-A-Poll Reset: McGowan Resigns

Roger Cook was elected unopposed as the new WA Labor leader today as expected and is about to be sworn in as the new WA Premier following the resignation of Mark McGowan.  This means it's time to reset this site's Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll, voting for which is open in the sidebar.

McGowan resigned citing exhaustion after just over six years as Premier and almost eleven and a half years as party leader.  His electoral legacy is a thumping win from Opposition in 2017 followed by turning WA for the time being into a one-party state in 2021.  Influenced as the latter result was by COVID politics, federal drag with a potent sprinkling of Palmer dust and a remarkably hapless state Opposition, I don't expect to see a 69.7% 2PP in a state election again in my lifetime.  It's surreal to realise that it was not always such - not only did Labor lose the 2013 election heavily (for which McGowan was generally not blamed) but in 2016 there was a semi-serious push to not have him as leader at all despite polling evidence showing that his numbers were such that few Opposition Leaders could even dream of.