Poll Roundup: Another Budget Rates Pretty Well As Early Election Talk Resumes

With the 2021 Budget now released it's time for this site's annual post-Budget federal polling roundup.  

Voting Intention

The current polling consensus is that Labor has a narrow (51-49ish) lead, though we should not be too confident Labor is ahead at all given the errors seen at the 2019 election.  We can hope that pollsters have successfully addressed the causes of the errors (and also not overcorrected, in which case Labor might in theory be ahead by more). YouGov at least has taken targeted action aimed at fixing the 2019 problems, but until we actually see a test at a federal election, we don't know.

The current Newspoll had Labor ahead 51-49 (unchanged) off primaries of Coalition 41 Labor 36 Greens 12 One Nation 2 others 9.  The second ever Resolve Political Monitor poll (link to my April discussion) has primaries of Coalition 39 Labor 35 Green 12 One Nation 2 Independent 8 Other 5.  Treating "independent" in this poll as generic "others", I get a 2PP of 51.1 to Labor (+1 since April).  If "independent" is carved out, I get 51.9 (+0.9), but I don't recommend this as there are plenty of low-information voters who use "independent" as a catch-all term for indies and minor crossbench parties such as KAP, Centre Alliance etc.   As noted in the initial article about this poll, using Independent as a standalone option can lead to inflated readings compared to actual Independent vote shares.  

Field Guide To Opinion Pollsters: 46th Parliament Edition

It's a tradition on this site to nearly always release something on Christmas Day, but for those who are done with polls after this year's failure, I realise this gift might fall under the heading of "worst present ever".

Just before the 2013 election I posted a Field Guide to Opinion Pollsters, which has become one of the more enduringly accessed pieces on this site.  However, over time parts of its content have become dated or specific to that election, and with more and more pollsters emerging as others disappear, the thing has got too long. So now I post a new edition early in the life of each parliament, editing it through that parliament as the need arises.  Pollsters not expected to be active in the life of the current parliament will be removed, but the old edition text will remain on the previous page.  For the 2016-2019 parliament see 45th Parliament Edition.

There are a lot of polls about in Australia these days.  But how do they all work, which ones have runs on the board and do any of them deserve our trust at all? This article describes what is known about each pollster and its strengths and weaknesses and includes extensive coverage of general polling issues.