Poll Roundup: This Is The Way The Honeymoon Ended

 2PP Aggregated Estimate: 52.9 To ALP (-1.4 since mid-August)

ALP would still win election "held now", probably with increased majority

Time for another federal voting intention poll roundup as there have been several noteable results in recent weeks.  In a previous edition I reported that while the end of the Albanese Government's polling honeymoon had been declared by many hasty false prophets, we weren't quite there yet ... but we could be soon.  My standard for the honeymoon phase still existing had been a 54-46 estimated aggregated polling lead for the government, but in the event of the government falling slightly below that level I would want to see at least a month of evidence that that was the case.  (It is somewhat like how a single quarter of negative growth does not count as a recession).  

Anyway I can now report that on my estimates the rear-vision window shows that it's been two months.  The Albanese Government's polling honeymoon ended not with a bang but with a gradual slip into the twilight zone of not-quite-enough-ahead in early September.  There were several individual poll results better than 54-46 since then but on a weekly rolling basis I have had Labor in the 53s ever since.  Furthermore following this week's Newspoll the Government dipped just below an aggregated (and Newspoll!) 53% for the first time.  

The latter may or may not stay the case for any longer than it takes Morgan to issue its next result, but two whole months below 54-46 is more than enough to declare that the Albanese Government's honeymoon polling phase has finished, lasting just over 15 months after the 2022 election.  If it now goes over 54-46 again then that will be a separate resurgence.  That doesn't mean the government isn't winning and it doesn't mean that it will lose, it just means that polling is competitive again - somewhat.  This has been the second-longest clearly defined honeymoon Australia has seen (marginally beating John Howard's in 1996-7), but the longest was Kevin Rudd's, and that one didn't end well at all.  

An aggregated estimate is not a straight polling average and takes into account apparent house effects relative to others, which were discussed in the previous article in the case of Resolve, but also appear to a lesser degree and with much less evidence in the cases of Redbridge (to Labor) and Freshwater (to Coalition).  Taking into account numbers from seven polling series (Pyxis Newspoll, Morgan, Essential, Resolve, YouGov, Redbridge and Freshwater) the graph below shows my 2PP aggregate estimates for the past few months:

You will find similar with a longer-term trendline at Bludgertrack, which is including Morgan in its data tab but not in the actual aggregate.  (At the time of writing Bludgertrack has 52.8 and has a similar net rate of recent decline.)  Note that my aggregate uses my own 2PP estimates off the published primaries only; where a pollster uses respondent preferences I ignore those completely (see Morgan section below).  

There have been a number of specific results of interest:

Newspoll

This week's Newspoll came out 52-48 to Labor off primaries of ALP 35 L-NP 37 Green 12 One Nation 6 others 12.  This was the second time the new Pyxis Newspoll had had the primaries at 35-37, but the previous such case in early September had the Greens at 13, which could alone be enough to explain why the September poll was 53-47 after rounding and this one was 52.  This was Labor's weakest 2PP in Newspoll for the term so far, and the first one notionally below the 2022 election result of 52.13, but the difference is of course trivial given the use of rounding and also sample size.  

The leadership numbers suggested Anthony Albanese had copped a whacking over something or somethings, though whether it was necessarily just the defeat of the Voice referendum was not obvious.  Albanese was down 10 points on net satisfaction to -10 (42-52), while Peter Dutton rose five points to -13 (37-50).  Notably Dutton halved the Better Prime Minister gap to just ten points (46-36), which is below the historic average lead for an incumbent PM.  

These shifts have not set any historic records and it will be interesting to see whether they are temporary blowback or the start of a run of poor personal ratings for PM Albanese.  I don't actually regard net -10 as all that bad in this day and age and wouldn't describe a leader polling it as "unpopular" as such, but if the PM falls below that into the -15/-20 zone it will be clear voters are asking more serious questions about him.  

Albanese has had a good run; the following is a list of how many months new Prime Ministers have taken to first poll a Newspoll net satisfaction rating in negative double figures:

Keating 1
Abbott 5.5
Turnbull 6.5
Gillard 8.5
Howard 14.5
Morrison 16.5
Albanese 17.5
Rudd 29

Bob Hawke did not poll one until he had been in office for an incredible 75 months, but that said Newspoll did not exist in his first 34 months as Prime Minister.   The longest spell without one is also 75 months and belonged to John Howard, who polled his last -10 or worse in August 2001 and then stayed above that level all the way to his defeat by Kevin Rudd in November 2007.  

Morgan

Morgan's result the week before last was a 50.5-49.5 Coalition lead, the first Coalition lead released by a pollster for the term.  However, it was apparently a result of a rogue sample of respondent preferences that just happened to come out immediately after the Voice loss.  (This result produced much excitement at Australia's worst journal of polling and electoral record the AFR, from which were heard only crickets when Morgan went back to normal with a 53-47 the next week.)

The primaries for that poll were Labor 32 Coalition 36 Greens 14 others 18, numbers that are very similar to the 2022 election except for the higher Greens vote (my 2PP estimate for the full primaries which I have seen is 53.2 to Labor).  There is no way that Labor would get under 55% of preferences, especially with so many preferences coming from the Greens, and no reason for Green or Independent voters to respond to the Voice defeat by deciding they would preference the Coalition.

As noted above Labor jumped back to 53-47 the next week, off primaries of 32.5-35-15-17.5 with an implied 63% preference flow (my 2PP estimate for that one is 54.2, given the very high Green vote). 

UPDATE: This week's Morgan is 52-48 off primaries of 31.5 (term low) - 35 - 13.5 - 20. 2PP estimate by last-election preferences is 53.4 but that's based on having seen the breakdown of IND/other; without that it would be 52.5.   

Essential

Essential and Morgan are licking their wounds after an October 14 shocker where both bombed out on the Voice referendum and were near the tail end for New Zealand.  (Essential had Labour 3.4% too high and National 4% too low, while Morgan had National 7.6% too low - most other NZ polls did well, with the best of them Talbot Mills, followed by Freshwater, with Curia and Verian also good.) However, Essential at least has done something about it by adding education to its weighting frame.   The first Essential result following this change was in one respect striking, with Essential's "2PP+" in from 50-45 to Labor to 48-46, off raw primaries of Labor 32 (-1), Coalition 34 (+2), Greens 10 (-4), others 9 (+2), One Nation 7 (+1), UAP 3 (+1), undecided 6 (+1).  Yes, it's Essential, so it can sum to 99 one week and 101 another if it wants to.

The four-point drop in the Green primary attracted several responses on social media that tried to pin it on the Greens' positions regarding the current Israel-Hamas war.  The Greens opposed Israel's counter-invasion of Gaza and are continuing to call for a ceasefire, but are also attracting criticism from pro-Israel posters for supporting pro-Palestine rallies, including those that appear to call for the entirity of Israel to be become one Palestinian nation.  However, it's most likely that the drop in the Greens' primary has little or nothing to do with this and is mostly a result of Essential's methods change.  There is no evidence of the Green vote changing for the worse in recent weeks in any other polls.  Every now and then there is some issue that is supposed to be doing the party serious damage - the last one was the since-resolved housing futures fund impass with Labor.  In my experience the Greens vote tends to stay stable over a long time, driven by climate change concern and popularity in certain demographics, and I doubt anyone much will find the Greens' position a surprise.  

Likewise I have seen a poll in the field that seeks to establish whether Labor's support will be affected by whether or not it calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.  Such polls asked about any single issue are at all times useless, and I don't think the major parties' reluctance to jump in would surprise anyone who has followed Australia's responses over time.

Redbridge

This week's Redbridge poll with Labor leading 53.5 off primaries of Labor 34 Coalition 35 Greens 14 others 17 was mainly notable for the write-up in the Murdoch tabloids.  The writeup declared a 4% primary vote loss since August to be a "huge swing" even though it was only 2.1% on Redbridge's two-party estimates and 1.8% on mine.  

The poll displayed strong Piketty realignment vibes in the demographic shift away from Labor among voters with a Year 12 or a trade certificate education.  A couple of nuances have been overlooked here.  Firstly while Labor's primary vote improvement in the tertiary-educated subsample was minor, Labor was actually up 6% on two-party preferred in the tertiary subsample, and the reason for this was that the August tertiary subsample had an implausibly low Green vote of 8% (doubtless a result of small sample size).  Also the revolution hasn't really flowed through to the sub-year-12 educated section, with a swing of only 1% 2PP against Labor since August.  Overall while 53.5 is not great for Labor from a poll that has been fairly friendly to it, votes add up whoever you get them from, and Labor would still win easily on those numbers ... for now.

The poll tested the usual pox-on-both-your-houses narrative combo that emerges at times like these, that the government is getting things wrong but the opposition isn't up to replacing it.  Respondents disagreed that the Albanese Government is focused on the right priorities (36-50, with Labor voters saying it is by 71-20) and that the Dutton-led Coalition is ready to govern (30-50, with Coalition voters saying bring it on by 63-18).  

There is also no shortage of Voice-determinism going around, in which changes in voting intention are assumed to be caused by the Voice referendum even though the last few months have seen continual cost of living pressures, general economic pessimism, Qantas issues and yes even wars.  The Newspoll leadership numbers at least looked like a response to the Voice result but it's too easy to pin polling changes on one thing and ignore everything else.  (And even if Labor is copping a whacking for the Voice specifically, is it for giving it too much attention or too little?  It was hardly the most determined of attempts by a Government to get a referendum over the line.)

That's probably enough comments for one edition.  In terms of projecting polling to results we're in a holding pattern at the moment, waiting to see what happens when the redistribution silly season ends and we have at least draft proposals on the table that will affect teal, potential Green and outer suburban seats in NSW and Victoria.  For the time being, Labor is still well ahead, but it's no longer a thumping lead, and it will be interesting especially early next year to see if the Coalition can become more competitive.