Brad Battin's Booting Is A Poll History Outlier

(Note for Tasmanian audiences: I will have the usual article about the latest EMRS poll up sometime tonight or tomorrow)

The last fortnight has seen the leaders of three of Australia's current crop of feeble oppositions displaced while a fourth, Sussan Ley, is precarious (especially after another shocker Newspoll).  First to go was ACT Liberal leader Leanne Castley, who after an irregular (by Liberal Party standards) attempt to kick backbenchers Elizabeth Lee and Peter Cain out of the party room for crossing the floor over parliamentary sitting hours, resigned suddenly on November 10.  Victorian leader Brad Battin didn't recontest after a spill motion was passed 19-13 on Nov 18, and NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman quit on Nov 21 facing the same fate.  In the ACT the leadership has passed to an old hand in third-term MLA Mark Parton, but both Victoria and NSW have gone for first-term female MPs, Jess Wilson and Kellie Sloane.  

The removal of Speakman requires no explanation following the NSW Liberals' run of poor polling and a terrible result in the Kiama by-election.  But the case of Battin is very unusual.  Since assuming the leadership in the final days of 2024, Brad Battin had led Jacinta Allan as better Premier in every single poll that asked such a question - eight in all by four different pollsters, with an average margin of 8.75%.  There have been occasional cases of Opposition Leaders being rolled who had sometimes led as better Premier (including Battin's predecessor John Pesutto who had led by a pyrrhic single point in his final Resolve sample) but an Opposition Leader who was leading solidly being removed is unprecedented, at least in the Newspoll era.

Normally, two things are more or less the death rattle for incumbent Premiers - personal netsats in negative double digits and trailing as better Premier when not facing a previous Premier as Opposition Leader.   And Jacinta Allan's personal ratings are not just run of the mill bad; in four polls taken while opposite Battin she averaged net -31.8.  Sure, Labor could replace her with Ben Carroll, but that would make them a three-leader government, and those have a poor past record with four losses from five attempts at state and territory level in the last fifty years, three of those heavy.  So there's an argument that Battin has been removed while he still had a very good chance of winning.

That is not to say that the Liberals were polling in an election-winning position at the time.  Prior to Battin's removal, the Victorian Coalition in the last six months had led 51-49 in two DemosAU polls and one Freshwater, and trailed 52-48 in two Redbridges and 51.5-48.5 in an earlier Redbridge, trailed 53-47 in the June Newspoll and trailed by my estimates 53-47 then 52.7-47.3 in two Resolves (Resolve doesn't reliably publish 2PP estimates).  All these 2PPs are rubbery because nobody really knows what the field will be and most importantly whether One Nation (currently polling through the roof federally) will run a serious statewide lower house campaign in the state election.  But even at the better end of the spectrum, 51-49 for the Coalition is probably not enough - though it's closer to enough than I realised before modelling it in detail.  

The reason for this lies in Victoria's tilted pendulum.  The 2022 election saw a shovelling of Labor seats from both the 2PP-marginal and 2PP-safe categories into the moderately safe range, meaning that by uniform swing the Coalition needs to poll into the 52s to take government (assuming that such Greens as win will not assist them).  Indeed a uniform swing of 6% would only yield eight seats, leaving Labor in majority government with about 48 seats (assuming the recaptures of Ringwood and South Barwon) to 37 for the Coalition and 3 for the Greens.  

Things are different on a probabilistic assessment because Labor holds a massive 18 seats on margins between 6% and 9% and on a swing around 6% the Coalition would, through variable swing, be bound to jag at least a few of those.  My usual model estimates 12-13 gains rather than the uniform swing gain of 8 seats, but that's only enough to put Labor into minority. For 16 gains and outright victory the Coalition probably needs more like 52-48 - though even if one or two seats short of that there always might be some independent or ALP discard who might help the Coalition into government. And one of these days Victoria, which alone of the states and territories has an even number of lower house seats, might get a deadlocked parliament (that would be interesting!)

Even so, the fact that the existing 51-49 readings came from Freshwater (the reputation of which took a serious knock at the 2025 federal election) and DemosAU (which is a relatively new pollster) probably meant that even these readings were treated with some scepticism.

Does it matter if an opposition is merely competitive and not actually winning against an unpopular Premier?  History suggests not really - unpopular Premiers find ways to get removed or lose, even if the 2PP polling is OK some time out.  Governments that appear to be polling OK also often nosedive in the final year if they are "federally dragged", meaning that the same party is in power federally (which is in general a large disadvantage at elections).  It can also be argued that the state Coalition parties have taken brand damage from the 2025 federal election, and that once the Albanese Government's federal honeymoon tapers off we could see a return to politics as normal - on which basis the Allan Government is very beatable.

Overall by historic standards there's a strong polling case that Battin still had a good chance of winning.  Why then was he removed?

The leadership change can be sourced to some obvious factors.  While Battin's personal polling was generally good (a minor exception being a net -5 satisfaction in the June Newspoll, though that was far from terrible) the Victorian Liberals had remained a mess on his watch.  A very poorly internally received reshuffle was a factor here.  There was also a perception that Battin's leadership style was too limited with too much of a focus on crime.  Law and order campaigning doesn't tend to win Australian elections by itself - even when crime is being talked about an unusual amount it tends to be only very salient for a few to several percent of voters.  It's also too easy for state governments to take action on compared to the economy and cost of living.  There was some perception hence that Battin wasn't up to winning an election.  Historically it was way short of a clearcut case.  The risk is that if the partyroom waited for clearer evidence to emerge, it could be too late for a new leader (especially a young new leader) to get a sufficient run in to the next election.

The leadership change might also be seen as running up the white flag on an outer suburbs dominated strategy.  In the leadup to the federal election we were bombarded with arguments that federal Labor was on the way out in the outer suburbs and if the Coalition focused there it could get large swings and win many seats.  In fact federal Labor wasn't on the way out anywhere, but despite the Coalition under Peter Dutton relentlessly focusing on such seats (egged on by internal polls that were wrong), they didn't get anywhere near winning most of them and would not have done so even had there not been a national swing against them.  Uniformly removing Labor's 2PP swing from the federal election would have gained the Coalition only Bullwinkel, Solomon and Bendigo and the Coalition would have still lost Dickson, Petrie, Leichhardt, Sturt, Bass and Braddon.

A few years back the theory was that Australia was realigning with higher educated inner suburbs moving to Labor and lower educated working class areas moving to the Coalition but with the current splintering of vote share on the right and following Labor's stellar performance in northern Tasmania in the federal election all that Piketty 101 stuff is feeling very 2022.  The Coalition won't win elections just in the outer suburbs, but leaders who are seen as too inner city might still play badly there, and this is a risk factor with Wilson.  Overall of the eighteen seats in the critical 6-9% range eight are outer suburban with four in the west (where Labor did badly in swing terms last time) and four in the east (where Labor held up well) but there was a lot of COVID issue overlay in the 2022 state and federal spatial vote patterns.  

The latest Newspoll

The first Newspoll of Jess Wilson's career was very quick out of the blocks and this makes it somewhat difficult to compare it with past first Newspolls for state Opposition Leaders.  Pre-2015 state Newspolls outside of campaign periods were aggregates taken from two or three months of polling (similar to Resolve now).  The most notable things in the new Newspoll are firstly Jacinta Allan's terrible -42 net satisfaction and secondly Wilson's 47-33 lead as Better Premier.  Allan's rating is nearly the worst for a Premier in Newspoll history (only John Cain and Anna Bligh at net -43 have been below it).  The only new Opposition Leaders who had not previously led their parties to jump to comparable leads in their first poll were Dean Brown in SA (19% lead) and Campbell Newman in Queensland (12%), and those were polls taken over longer periods.  Both went on to win elections.  

Frequently new Opposition Leaders are slow to get on the board as Better Premier because they are still building their profile.  On this basis a 14% lead after only a few days looks stellar, but because we don't often see such a quick poll after a change, we need to see more over coming weeks and months to be sure this isn't just some instant sugar hit for changing leader against a disliked government.  The other thing that was surprising here was Wilson's personal ratings at 33% satisfied 31% dissatisfied - the latter seems like a high figure for a new Opposition Leader who is also a first termer.  

History suggests it doesn't really matter if state Oppositions are a mess through their term so long as they can get their act together by election day.  The classic case was the WA Liberals in the 2005-8 term where after churning through four leadership changes in a term they had no-one left but to go back to Colin Barnett who had lost the previous election.  Barnett was however able to win (very narrowly).  

Heading into election year 2026 both sides in Victoria have reason to be nervous.  Labor has a Premier way underwater by historic standards and the government will be twelve years old and federally dragged.  The Coalition however faces federal brand damage, the splintering of the right-wing vote and the possibility that federal drag is not going to be such a big thing - as well as its own form for chaos.