Seat estimate for this poll Lib 13 ALP 11-12 Green 6 IND 4-5
Thankfully a final YouGov public poll has appeared for the fairly sparsely polled Tasmanian state election, albeit unfortunately without seat breakdowns, and if it is to be believed then Labor are doing better than the recent DemosAU and Liberal EMRS internals have suggested, and the Liberals are doing much worse than the latter. I was hoping we would get a poll today and suspecting it might pull my aggregate in line with the widespread view that Labor has run a poor campaign and is at risk of losing vote share, but it's actually better for Labor than the polls since the last YouGov have been. This would find the Liberals with a measly one-point lead which would give them no possible path to government assuming that Labor is willing to take it and the Greens to help Labor do so. Indeed it's not impossible if this poll's true that Labor and the Greens could get a majority together (a Labor/IND combined majority would be unlikely). It's always possible that YouGov's polling of the state has a house effect, but this could also be true of the DemosAU polls. (There is some history of Labor often doing badly in robopolls for state elections, and DemosAU is primarily a robopoll, albeit one that weights for education, which should help).
Anyway, we have two main final polls with a very different take on where Labor will land but it remains the case that no poll has given the Liberals more than a remote path to government if the forces that voted for the no-confidence motion work together. And it would be pretty silly for Labor and the Greens at least not to - by working together here I just mean being willing to kick the Liberals out in another no confidence motion if needs be and then at least have some minimal arrangement to satisfy the Governor that Dean Winter can be Premier. While there's no poll that gives the Liberals a clear path, the better polls for them wouldn't have to be too far wrong for them to get 15 seats with three they might work with (say Rebekah Pentland, David O'Byrne and John Tucker ... hmmm I'm not really sure Jeremy Rockliff and Tucker can work together ...) But at this stage that would be fairly surprising.
Poll Design Wonkery
I've seen the Clark readout for this poll which offered respondents the choice of the three big parties (without candidate names) and the five independents running for Clark, named, and asked the respondent to rank all these in order. I am not sure what the exact method was for Braddon where there are five parties and 14 independents! Whatever, I feel that all else being equal naming independents but not naming party candidates must result in some voters picking an independent who would not do so if they saw which party candidates were running in their seat. The "oh I've heard of and like ..." factor. We need to bear in mind here that many voters don't really know who the MPs for their seat are until they come to prepare their vote, which is why profile is so important in Hare-Clark. It might be that independents really do get the 20% that polls have them on but if so I'd suspect it would be because there was some other issue cancelling out the one I've raised.
The other thing here is that YouGov have published a 2PP based on this which is 55-45 to Labor. But the YouGov method is based on greatly underestimating the level of exhaust. Voters had to pick at least seven independent or party options before they were able to exhaust. In reality, Hare-Clark is a form of optional preferencing at party level and a voter could select one party running seven candidates and stop (in Clark where there were only eight options this amounted to effective full preferencing but in other divisions depending on the number of options it would not). What is interesting here is that 55-45 is about what I would expect for as near a thing as can be estimated to a real Hare-Clark 2PP for this poll (compared to about 50.5 to Labor in 2024), and so this 2PP might be pointing to weak preference flows to Labor from Green and independent voters. 64% of forced preferences from a voter pool that's mostly Green and IND voters seems really low even allowing for a degree of exhaust, and might suggest some blowback for Labor's me-toos on the stadium and salmon. The flow of Green preferences in Tasmanian elections is much more volatile than federal elections, though they don't have nearly as much influence. It could also be that this is a result of YouGov's ballot method (the private uComms had an 81% flow to Labor which sounds a bit much!)
[EDIT: The above paragraph has been edited on account of YouGov allowing for a degree of exhaust at least in some divisions. Previously I assumed that it did not allow for any.]
Leaderships
The YouGov finds Jeremy Rockliff with a really bad net satisfaction rating of -19 (34-53). This is quite a contrast with EMRS's net favourability ratings, which have generally showed him neutral to somewhat positive, but satisfaction with performance and favourability are not always the same thing. Dean Winter also fails to delight the YouGov survey junkies with a net rating of -13 (27-40). Winter's name recognition is still low here but the instant notoriety of being blamed for yet another election seems to have across other polling I have seen moved the needle to "Who is this guy?" to "Oh that guy who caused the bloody election!" If he gets elected and goes well then it will pass.
There is also a question about who the voter would like to be Premier on the premise that no party has a majority. Here Dean Winter has a 55-45 lead on a forced choice; I have heard that prior to forcing it was 41-37. Not surprising given the "2PP" result.
There is also a question about the government's TasInsure proposal. The question was: "Do you support or oppose the Tasmanian government setting up its own state-owned insurance company to tackle soaring premiums?" While I'm sure no bias was intended, I don't like this question wording. "To tackle soaring premiums" is an argument for the proposal and can also imply that the policy would be effective, I would have omitted the last four words, and I don't think the 41-29 positive response can be read too rosily in light of that issue. If one is going to talk about what the policy does then maybe one should talk about what it would cost, perhaps using information derived from the business case ... oh hang on there isn't one. I am not saying TasInsure is a tactically dumb policy, by the way - for a voter affected by the cost of insurance the government comes across as at least caring and listening however ineffectually, and hey it got the stadium out of the news cycle for most of the week.
Aggregate V2 (Not a prediction)
I plugged this poll into my aggregate and changes were minor with no change in the overall outlook, where based on the very few seat polling subsamples available Labor would have a good chance to win 12 seats. I'm not sure I believe that but the YouGov at least says it's not as out-there as people were telling me when I put it out. Once again the aggregate is not a prediction - it's something I offer as a view of what the polls collectively should be taken as pointing to after adjusting for any obvious issues. That said, while Labor feels high in general I find it hard to be confident it is wrong about any seat.
The concern I mentioned about the IND vote apply to a lesser degree to name recognition within parties - it's a good reason to suspect some of these samples could be off even if the overall voting intentions aren't. The Liberals have a couple of big hitters in Bridget Archer and Gavin Pearce in the northern seats, which can push them towards four in Braddon and take votes off the depleted Labor ticket in Bass. But this stuff only goes so far and unless there is really strong anti-stadium cross-preferencing in Bass, Labor can actually benefit from not having a clear second candidate.
I do wonder about the Nationals polling and whether it's a bit low because the sort of person who might vote for the Nationals might not be a big online survey taker or phone answerer. As silly as their campaign has been, they might do a bit more in Lyons. A question here is whether the anti-stadium preference flows will be strong enough or will preferences from conservative INDs scatter to the Liberals and the more centre-left INDs scatter to Labor over the Nats. We do need to keep in mind here that the stadium isn't everything - it's a high salience issue for a substantial minority of voters but a lot won't shift their vote on it. Is opposition to the stadium really salient for conservative voters, or is it more the left-leaning voters for whom stadium support is a dealbreaker?
Note in the following table that "unclear possible seats" refers only to if the aggregate's numbers are exactly right. It does not take much variation for the Liberals to potentially win four in Braddon or for Labor to not win in Lyons, for example.
In 2024 we saw preference flow drama with Craig Garland winning from about 5%. This was a scenario I had modelled in advance though I thought it was unlikely to play out on election night and for a few days thereafter. (Garland even claims I wrote him off! I never did!) In 2025 the possible scenarios for someone dislodging a major party candidate from way behind are much more difficult to model in advance. It's worth bearing in mind that preference flows in Hare-Clark are almost never all that strong. When an indie is excluded with several other groups in the hunt their vote will always scatter, though it will help some candidates more than others.
I should say that anecdotally it's easy to find claims that voters are completely fed up with the majors to the point we could get an outcome far more radically anti-majors than 2024. That sort of outcome, where there's a blowout in the indie vote and a greatly increased crossbench, shouldn't be written off entirely. But I don't think the polls are supporting it, and it's easy for people who move in politically engaged circles (or do vox pops in the middle of the PRC*) to see this stuff everywhere.
Roll on a fascinating election night, I'll have an election watching tips post up tomorrow.
Oh and at some stage I suppose I have to vote!
Thanks for this Kevin, you`re a natural to take over from Antony Green.
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