YouGov Liberal 31 Labor 34 Green 13 IND 18 other 4
DemosAU Liberal 34 Labor 27.3 Green 15.1 IND 19.3
IND vote likely overstated in both polls
This article is part of my 2025 Tasmanian election coverage. Link to main guide page containing link to other articles including electorate guides.
A new election offers the prospect that someone might break through and we might have some sort of a normal government - if not a majority (which needs a very hefty swing) then at least a stable minority government needing the support of two or three crossbenchers and able to find such numbers that they can work with. But also, the quagmire might continue. If neither major party appeals then we could even end up with a parliament where neither major party can govern without the Greens. What happens if Labor wins the most seats but needs the Greens or needs, say, all of five other crossbenchers three of whom may as well be Greens? What happens if we end up more or less back where we were? (Only one state government in Australian history has ever pulled that off after losing a no-confidence vote).
Tonight we got some public results from two polls, from YouGov and DemosAU. The YouGov one is the more positive for Labor (the DemosAU one is horrible for them in the circustances) but at this stage neither shows either major party close to getting us out of the mess.
YouGov
This poll was taken online from 12-24 June with a sample size of 1287 (Bass 253, Braddon 250, Clark 251, Franklin 266, Lyons 267). Respondents were offered the choice of Liberal, Labor, Greens, Independent, or an Other (specify) option which I hear drew some predictably unavailable responses.
These are the results from the YouGov website:
The individual electorate samples of c. 250 shouldn't be taken very seriously. Aside from them having a notional margin of error of over 6%, the real error margin is likely to be much higher because of weighting, targeting and sample pool effects (as with all single seat polling). Nobody should believe the Greens with Rosalie Woodruff on top of the ticket are on only 9% in Franklin after polling 10.5% in the federal election with an ineligible candidate who had withdrawn from campaigning. 30% independent in Clark is also a major stretch.
At the 2024 election pollsters generally overestimated the independent vote despite the number and diversity of indies on offer. It's not easy to put a number on this because some polls lumped independents and others or did other unusual things, and because full details of two media-reported Freshwater polls were frustratingly never obtained. Polls with independent broken out averaged nearly 14% but independents only actually got 9.6%. This is a problem with offering independent as a generic option - some voters think that Andrew Wilkie will be running in their state electorate and some also seem to confuse minor parties and independents. There could well be a swing to independents this election with JLN not running, at least one new independent who could poll heftily (Peter George) and so on but 18% seems unlikely.
Taking the poll numbers literally and assuming a fair degree of scatter in the independent vote, Bass would be 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 Independent (or 3-3-1-0), Braddon probably 3-3-0-1 though with some potential for a second independent, Clark 2-2-1-2, Franklin 2-3-1-1, Lyons 3-3-1-0. That would be something like 13-13-4-5 (the scenario where either party needs the whole crossbench to get around the Greens) though there's a fair chance that Labor's 3% statewide primary vote lead would in reality be good for an extra seat somewhere. Factor in the independent vote being likely to be overestimated and something like 13-14-4-4 looks like a better read. I don't personally think the Greens are going to lose their second seat to an independent anything like as easily as in this sample (if at all, which is not to say they won't lose it to Labor) but the numbers are the numbers and it's difficult to read this poll as "saying" anything different.
Other stuff in this poll includes a 43-36 lead for Jeremy Rockliff over Dean Winter as Preferred Premier. Of course, I always prefer to see approval rating polling. Preferred Premier polling skews to incumbents but this is at least hardly emphatic rejection territory for Rockliff. The poll includes issue findings where voters are asked to choose between issues of health, debt, privatisation, the stadium and salmon farming. Health comes out on top among these issues, especially in the north, and while voters tend to be against the stadium and privatisation, in neither case is this overwhelming. Accounting especially for the cancelling out of for and against views, the stadium is significant, but its salience can be overestimated. The government is running very hard on health announcements.
DemosAU
I hope we see a lot more results from this poll, which was widely reported in field by people taking it via the EMRS survey portal. At the moment what we have is a report in The Advocate regarding a poll taken for an "unnamed peak body" by a mix of robocall and panel methods and a very large sample size (4289) between June 19 and 26. The poll has results of Liberal 34 Labor 27.3 Green 15.1 and "independents" 19.3, leaving 4.7 for presumably others. The Advocate has published the Braddon figures which are 44-25.2-9.3-15.6 leaving 5.9 for others. The Advocate has interpreted these numbers as either 3-2-1-1 or perhaps 3-2-0-2 but a 15.6% independent vote in Braddon would most likely scatter between a number of candidates with only one (presumably Craig Garland) competitive. Actually given their potential ability to spread votes between Gavin Pearce, Felix Ellis and Roger Jaensch, these numbers are not far short of four Liberals at the expense of the Greens or maybe Garland. This makes sense given the Liberals almost got four last time with JLN taking a seat.
Neither poll shows anything promising for Tasmanian Nationals, but I am unsure if they were named in the DemosAU poll.
I have seen some of the text of this poll and it tried to avoid the problem with generic independents by naming specific independents, however it did include some that are not running (eg Ben Lohberger was available as an option in Clark). Even when knowing the candidates, naming the independents can also overestimate their vote in Hare-Clark because it means they are named while the major party candidates are not - this is one of the reasons Hare-Clark is so difficult to poll!
While this poll may be dismissable if there's a suggestion that the "peak body" was somebody adverse to Labor's interests, overall Labor would not want to see polls like this being talked about at all! Polls that show them going backwards or even not going anywhere play into the government's narrative that Labor caused the election without knowing what they are doing and are still not ready to govern. The YouGov poll on the other hand is more positive for them.
It's very difficult to interpret the DemosAU numbers in seat tally terms because of the very high independent vote, and for now without full breakdowns, but if Labor are going backwards on primary votes then even after accounting for the Independent overestimate they're probably not gaining many or perhaps any seats. For the majors it seems something like the status quo. Let's make it the status quo and say for now 14-10-5-6, with reservations about whether the 6 are independents, something else or maybe some don't even exist.
I am aware of a third (private) poll which I may say more about that falls somewhere between these two, with a far lower but still quite high independent vote (around 12%) and the Liberals slightly ahead, with both majors in the low 30s. Nobody anywhere near a majority in any of these, indeed no poll yet with a major party over 35.
At some stage before the election I will again do the best I can to aggregate all these polls and others still to come. I think it's a bit too early right now with the potential for more detail to emerge re DemosAU especially, and it would be nice to see something that includes the Nationals explicitly.
