Australia's Worst Oppositions: Phase 2 Not-A-Poll Results

 Secular seasons greetings and goodwill to all readers.  As noted almost every year it's an almost annual tradition on this site to release something every Christmas Day.  Click the Xmas tag for previous random examples.  Why do I do this?  Partly it's a present for those who like Christmas, which in an often lethargic and non-religious fashion includes your host, but it's also a present for those who don't want to deal with this particular Christmas or even generally cannot stand Christmas and just wish it was a normal day when normal things happened.  And what could be more normal than the results of a Not-A-Poll in this website's sidebar?  Therefore, the campaign against compulsory Christmasing brings you again ... whatever this is.  

This one is a very token present to you all and I can report that there is something far more thoroughly wonky and distinctive re the 2025 federal election and other recent elections in the pipeline, but it's not ready yet.  In truth, I've spent the whole year trying to recover my spare time and the volume of 2025 election detail I'd like to be posting on here from that moment when just as I was getting other things back on track after the federal election came the initially bold and exciting news that Dean Winter had placed a no-confidence motion against the Rockliff Liberal Government on the notice-paper.  

Running against an 11-year old state government that had been knocked into minority by its pursuit of an unpopular stadium then spent much of its short 2024-5 term mired in scandal over a droppingly inept ferry birthing fiasco, Tasmanian Labor somehow contrived to lose primary support and not gain any seats, oh and the stadium ended up passing parliament!  However they were far from unusual round the country in being an Opposition who endured a lousy 2025, and reflection on the sad state of Oppositions round the country caused me to write this.  I also ran two Not-A-Polls, one to vote on who actually was the country's worst Opposition (a plurality win for the Victorian Liberals, then still led by Brad Battin) and the current round which very conveniently expired about 9:30 am today.  Amazingly, two voters actually voted today, one at about 2am presumably while stuck in a chimney somewhere and the other about 7, presumably looking too early for the Christmas article. 

I am impressed by the original Worst Oppositions article's kill rate!  Of course I didn't really do it but since I declared Australia to be living in a golden age of terrible Oppositions, a whole four of them have realised it is true and disposed of their leaders!  This has led to an amazing situation in which Selena Uibo, NT Opposition leader since her party were turfed and rendered leaderless last August, is Australia's most senior Opposition Leader!  Steven Miles is the only other survivor of 2024 vintage and the other seven, amazingly, were all installed this year.  This included one forced change after Peter Dutton lost his seat in May, and two others that followed election defeats.  Of the more recent four, those in Victoria and the ACT can be seen as significantly inflicted by internal decisions that backfired against the incumbent leader.  The other two, NSW and SA, mainly reflect that the party was polling awfully at a time when that really should not be the case.  In SA, the factional inability of the party to present itself as politically mainstream is a very big part of the problem.  

Remarkably, three of the state Liberal Oppositions are now led by first-term female MPs, two of whom were born in the 1990s.  History will tell whether these were inspired choices or the party's last desperate attempt to save itself from terminal brand damage.  Perhaps both.  SA will be the first test for this concept, but one where expectations are so low that anything but the Liberal Party being turned into rubble will be seen as okay.  

Anyway, the Not-A-Poll results:

The most popular prediction overall was that precisely one of the current nine oppositions would win; 53.8% had this. 25.4% had more than one (usually two) saluting with 20.8% predicting that the lot would lose.  

Because one is such an easy pick I made it harder for those picking one by asking them which one.  Here Queensland was by far the most popular choice making 1 (Qld) the plurality winner of the options chosen.  My view on this is that there is a difference between how terrible an Opposition is and its chances of winning. Qld Labor has a strong claim to be the least bad state Opposition around, but it's up against a government that is in its first term and that is likely to have federal drag on its side when it goes to the polls in late 2028.  It's true that the last two conservative governments in Queensland were one-termers, but this was extremely self-inflicted in Campbell Newman's case (with a large assist from Tony Abbott as well), while the Borbidge government never won an election in its own right anyway, and so far I think the LNP are doing "don't be Campbell Newman" reasonably well.  They even may be resisting the One Nation polling surge that is happening in most other places.  

Conversely while the Victorian Liberals' squalid reputation is particularly well deserved, they have by far the strongest historical hand - up against a government that will be 12 years old at next year's election, that is federally dragged and that has a Premier polling appallingly - I discussed this further here.  The WA Liberals are not polling well but also have time on their side in that they will be up against a 12 year old government that could well also be federally dragged, and that's still over three years away.  But do the normal rules apply or are there parts of the country under Labor hegemony where the Coalition brand is now too dead to take advantage of them?  My aim is to revisit this article when all of these oppositions have been to an election (I think that's,er, March 2029) and check how many succeeded and why.

Secular season's greetings and Happy New Year to all readers!  As usual my next scheduled event is my annual site review that typically appears on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day and there are, as noted, other goodies being worked on.