2025 Polling Year In Review

2PP Average For Year 53.9 to ALP (+3.0)

At the end of each year I release a review of the year in federal polling.  See the 2024 article here (ah, those days when the Coalition still seemed competitive!) and/or click on the "annual poll review" tab for all articles back to 2014.  As usual if any late polls arrive I will edit this article to update the relevant statistics.  

2025 was overall not a good year for the Australian polling industry.  The year started well with good results for the two main pollsters in the field for the WA state election but this was followed by a rather serious federal election miss, where pollsters had the right winner but were almost as far off on the 2PP and primary votes as when they were wrong in 2019.  As they had the right winner anyway there was little media interest in the error; there has also been precious little visible introspection from the industry since and none of the attempts at review processes we saw following 2019.  The Tasmanian state election was then a mixed bag with a good result for local firm EMRS but a big shocker for YouGov.  On the plus side, we are seeing more diversity in Australian polling, but still the average transparency level is ordinary.

This year welcomed one new entrant, Spectre, and also saw a low-key and unsuccessful return from Ipsos and a great step up in activity from DemosAU.  

Not-A-Poll Reset 1 of 2025: Dutton Loses Seat

This morning Sussan Ley became the first female federal leader of the Liberal Party, elected 29-25 over Angus Taylor.  Taylor was running on a ticket that included the insane proposition that Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, a member of the Liberal partyroom for five earth minutes, should become deputy leader.  This was especially crazy because Price was such a totemic candidate for the toxic idea that the Coalition should be more Trumpy (making her a shadow minister for government efficiency when they already had one was one of the Coalition's many mistakes).  

All this is not to say I would have been remotely keen to vote for Ley if I was a Liberal party room member either, in fact, given this choice, I could not have possibly voted for either.  While Taylor generally seemed to be making very little effort in the previous term, Ley on the other side struck me as trying too hard and serially out of her depth.  Most notably so when she criticised the AEC over voting interpretation rules for the Voice Referendum during the ticks and crosses beatup, when the Coalition had not made any attempt to change the legislation, but there were many other examples.  

The good news for the Liberals is it probably doesn't matter.  If Ley is a success well and good, and if she fails they can tick and flick the box of having had a female leader and use it as an excuse to not do that again in a hurry.  Their two-term strategy for winning in 2028 is a crash scene (in part because they tried to turn it into a one-term strategy and wasted seats like Menzies in the process) and realistically this term is about rebuilding, trying to finish off the teals with help from the new donations regime (if it survives the High Court) and seeing how they go thereafter.  

Poll Roundup: Budget Does Nothing As Per Normal

2PP Aggregate 51.1 To ALP (2022 preferences) (-0.1 since end of last week)

With One Nation adjustment 50.5 to ALP
If polls are accurate, Labor would most likely win election "held now" (probably in minority but with a significant chance of majority)

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This was intended to be a rolling Budget week poll roundup but over the Budget poll release weekend I was in Melbourne and too busy to write much, so it will have to be a retro one instead.  I was in Melbourne for primarily non-election reasons, staying in the electorate of Deakin with trips to several surrounding electorates.  I didn't see quite as much electoral activity as I expected at this early stage, though while on a bus through Warrandyte I did happen to look out the window and see the Member for Menzies at a fair.  

It's becoming better known in media circles that the once much anticipated "budget bounce" in polling is an elusive beast that is seldom sighted outside Coalition government election years, and there was less speculation about it this year than usual.  My own aggregate has found very little movement in the post-Budget polls, and such overall movement as it has found (Labor losing 0.1% since the end of last week) is because of the way it is responding to Morgan's recent strong results for Labor.  

Poll Roundup: Coalition Support Slides In Pre-Budget Polling

2PP Aggregate (Last-Election Preferences) 51.1 to ALP (+1.5 in last four weeks)
With One Nation Adjustment (Recommended) 50.5 to ALP
If polls are on average accurate, Labor would almost certainly win election "held now", probably in minority

In the four weeks since my previous instalment there's been a substantial shift in national polling and Labor has recaptured the lead in both versions of my 2PP aggregate.  Although not every poll in that time has supported the shift, the trend is overall so well supported that when Morgan came out with a 54.5-45.5 to Labor outlier on Monday, the three polls later in the week did scarcely anything to peg back the gain in my aggregate that Morgan produced.  Looking at primary vote aggregates the culprit here is the Coalition primary.  Of the six polls that polled at least once both prior to 25 Feb and since 25 Feb, on average the Coalition primary is 1.6% lower since 25 Feb, though much of the gain went to independents and non-Green minor parties.  The most recent polls are carrying a heavy weighting in my aggregate because there are so many of them, and the suggestion for now is that Labor's lead is continuing to build. However it is Budget week, and these are not the best of times for trying to use a Budget to fuel electoral success as the Coalition has often done in the past. One of the reasons that I want to put this article out now (and update it with polls that come out entirely before the Budget) is to have a clear baseline for where things stood before the Budget did its thing.  (A brief refresher: Budget bounces in polls rarely happen - on average following a Budget a government goes slightly backwards).  

Poll Roundup: The Long Slow Slide Continues

2PP Aggregate (Last-Election Preferences) 50.6 to Coalition (+0.3 this year)
With One Nation Adjustment 51.1 to Coalition

If polls are accurate, either side could win election "held now", most likely well into minority

We've had quite a few pollsters out early with 2025 being an election year and the nine federal polls so far provide plenty to talk about for a roundup piece.  There have been four weekly Morgans plus one each from Newspoll, YouGov, Freshwater, Resolve and Essential.  All nine have had the Coalition ahead on their headline 2PP measure, and six have had the Coalition ahead on my estimate of respondent preferences.  Nonetheless my own estimate still has the last-election 2PP rather close.  

Voting Intention Fine Details

This section has a little more wonky detail than usual, mainly to explain the ins and outs of why my aggregate is better for Labor than the headline preferences in the current batch of polls, but also to explain why it could easily be a bit worse.  While I have Labor on 49.4 by last-election preferences, it could arguably be 49.2.  

2024 Federal Polling Year In Review

 2PP Aggregate Average For 2024: 50.9 To Labor (-3.9)
Labor lost aggregate lead late in the year

It's the time of the year when most busy pollsters take a few weeks off and I bring out an annual feature, a review of the year in federal polling.  Click here for last year's edition and for articles back to 2014 click on the "annual poll review" tab at the bottom of this one.  As usual if any late polls come out I will edit this article to update the relevant numbers.

2024 was another strong year in results terms for the Australian polling industry.  Pollsters came out in good numbers for the early 2024 Tasmanian election and did pretty well in a very hard to poll election, although the lobby group(s) that commissioned two Freshwater polls contemptibly failed to ensure the release of definitive results of either, leaving poll-watchers to play jigsaw puzzles with incomplete media reports. Polling for the Queensland election was mostly excellent though no one pollster nailed the result, and a mini-cluster of close-ish polls at the end led to some misreads of what in the end was not a close election.   Despite this there are storm clouds about in federal polling in the form of inadequate transparency from several pollsters and a somewhat suspicious level of clustering of results, especially at a stage in the cycle where that doesn't usually happen.  (More on the latter later).  US polling this year wasn't as bad as 2020, but didn't quite get the real story in part because of the latter issue.

Budget Week Rolling Poll Roundup

2PP Aggregate 51.2-48.8 to ALP (last election preferences)

Pre-Budget aggregate was 51.0-49.0 

(Topline number for this article frozen as of 28 May, Budget week now being well and truly over.)

Note: False claims have been published by The Australian, Sky News and others about Newspoll, see the Newspoll section below.  

Can Twitter "Polls" Predict Newspoll Changes? (Interim Results)

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 a very low-key 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 niche meta-psephology?  Therefore, the campaign against compulsory Christmasing brings you ... whatever this is.  

Over the past few years I've been running opt-in Twitter "polls" for the amusement of my followers there, similar to the Not-A-Polls in this site's sidebar. 

This started with the October 2020 Budget, because Budgets attract speculation about Budget bounces in party polling, but these bounces only rarely actually occur.  

The "poll" got this one wrong.  The Morrison government's 2PP rose by one point from 51 to 52.  

2023 Federal Polling Year In Review

2PP Aggregate Average For 2023: 54.8 To Labor (2022 Preferences)
Labor won almost every poll this year
Labor's lead declined in second half

What I think may well be the last federal voting intention polls of the year have come out and at this point it's time for a regular site feature, my annual review of federal polling.  The 2022 article was here and for earlier articles back to 2014 click on the annual poll review tab.  If any more polls come out I will update this piece accordingly, but perhaps not very quickly.  

2023 was another successful year for the Australian polling industry.  Final polls were rather good (if mostly a bit light on for Labor) in the NSW state election but the biggest test came in the October Voice referendum.  In the face of poll denial levels so out of control that I wrote an article about it, the industry recorded an outstanding result (especially by referendum standards), although a minority of polls had big misses on the Yes side.  

Even without the very richly polled referendum, there was a lot going on in Australian polling this year.  The most dramatic event was the YouGov breakup in which Campbell White and Simon Levy left and started Pyxis Polling and Insights, with the former YouGov continuing with Newspoll for just one poll before it was transferred to Pyxis.  Both Pyxis and YouGov were able through the chaos to be among the best pollsters on the Voice, and polling has been bolstered for now by the addition of a YouGov series that is a Newspoll clone in wording but uses an increasingly different weighting and targeting structure (now even including Voice vote).  

There was also a change at Essential, which belatedly added education to its weighting frame after big misses in the Voice and New Zealand.  This appeared to have quite an impact in the first poll after it happened, but less so since.

Does Losing Mid-Term Referendums Help Australian Governments To Win The Next Election?

Short answer: there is no evidence it does.  

During the Voice referendum campaign a common view has emerged that a success for the No campaign will be bad news for the federal Opposition and its leader Peter Dutton for the next federal election.  The theory is that the Coalition's opposition to the Voice is already tying it to some strident political positions and that it will wear the blame for the defeat.  An example of this was a recent George Megalogenis article that initially claimed there was no precedent for an opposition leader taking down a referendum and winning the next election or the one after (which was edited after I and perhaps others pointed out Menzies winning in 1949 after defeating the Rents and Prices referendum in 1948).   Similar themes have also been present in the commentary of Professor Matt Qvortrup (who has incidentally long predicted that the Voice would lose, albeit recently with what looks like an optimistic Yes vote of 48 +/- 2.5%). Prof Qvortrup, who has great experience with overseas referendums, may well have evidence that referendum-defeat boost is a big trend overseas, though at a quick look I did not find any study to this effect.  

So, is there anything in this for Australia?  The paradigm case is supposed to be the 1951 defeat of the Communist Party ban referendum, in which Labor won the battle but lost the war: things said on the referendum trail made it easy for Prime Minister Menzies to tie them to Communism for many years after.  This narrative, however, seems simplistic to me, because the Opposition Leader (Evatt) not only said and did things on the referendum trail that made it easy to tie Labor to communism for campaigning purposes, but kept saying and doing such things forever after.

Voice Referendum Ticks And Crosses Beatup

I thought I should make some quick comments on the matter breaking yesterday (following a Sky News interview) regarding the use of ticks and crosses in the Voice referendum.  There was sudden outrage on various right-leaning outlets and from politicians including the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party when it was noticed that the AEC's ballot formality guidelines advise that ticks in referendums are treated as formal votes for Yes while crosses are treated as informal.  This has led to a fairly large outbreak of clueless wheel-reinvention and simple-minded outrage on social media.  It is doubtless worse on talkback.

I should note clearly near the top that the ballot paper will instruct voters to vote "Yes" or "No", and they will also be instructed thusly verbally if they are voting in a booth.  This debate only concerns the tiny minority who fail to follow the instructions.

Poll Roundup: The Honeymoon Still Isn't Over But Could It Be Check-Out Time Pretty Soon?

Federal cross-poll average 55.2% to Labor

(Cross-poll average expected to overestimate Labor's actual standing by c.1%)

It's been a long time since I released a federal polling roundup (several attempts have been commenced then lost in the longer weeds of why Resolve gets such different results from other pollsters) but I thought this would be an appropriately random time to put one out.  A new Voice roundup is also likely in the next week or two, but to save the suspense, the No lead is continuing to build (Yes is now behind about 45-55 on cross-poll aggregate).  There are weak signs that the rate of decline may have stopped accelerating and might even be slowing but that's not enough for Yes which unless the polls are very wrong needs to start making real gains.  

Poll Roundup: No, Labor's Honeymoon Is Not Over Or Anything Like It

2PP Cross-Poll Average 56.1% To Labor
Labor would win an election "held now" with an increased majority (approx 92 seats)

Today's quick Poll Roundup is provoked by one of the more curious and spurious interpretations by an actual pollster that I've seen.  Today's Resolve poll had Labor leading 40-31 on primary votes, which while down on December and January is still the same 9-point lead they held in September and twice in October and off a one point higher primary vote than those.  It would come out to a 2PP of around 58-42 to Labor*, which if repeated at an election would result in Labor gaining about 20 seats from the Coalition and winning in one of the biggest landslides ever seen with about 97 seats to the Coalition's 38.  Yet Resolve's Jim Reed was quoted as declaring that “It looks like Albanese and Labor’s election honeymoon is over,”.  The main justification for this was that Labor had come down slightly from even greater highs in polls taken over the holiday season.  The other was movements of a few points from Labor and unsure to the Coalition across a raft of attribute and leadership polling measures, many of which were within the poll's in-theory margin of error and many of which still showed Labor way ahead anyway.  (The accompanying article says jobs was one of Labor's biggest setback areas, but on jobs the Coalition's gains came entirely from "someone else" and "undecided").  

Aston By-Election 2023

ASTON (VIC, LIB 2.81%)  April 1 by-election

Liberal to be announced vs Mary Doyle (ALP) and others
Cause of by-election: Resignation of Alan Tudge

Outlook: On historical patterns Liberals should retain - but it may not be easy

Yesterday what looks like a quiet electoral year was enlivened just a little by the news that there will be a by-election for the Liberal seat of Aston following the resignation of Alan Tudge, MP since 2010 and Minister between 2016-2022.  Tudge was once a minor star of the Coalition government but his rise was tarnished from late 2020 onwards by an extramarital affair with staffer Rachelle Miller, who accused him of harassment and abuse.  Tudge denies the accusations, which led to a substantial payout.  In recent weeks Tudge has been under the spotlight for his actions surrounding the illegal, disgraceful and barbaric "robodebt" scheme as Social Services Minister in 2016-7.  Tudge has cited family and health reasons in his resignation, having flagged his intentions with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in early January after his father passed away. 

This thread will follow the by-election campaign though I will lose interest in it and stop updating the thread if Labor doesn't run and there is no other serious challenger.  [Update 17/2 Labor is running and has re-endorsed Mary Doyle.]

2022 Federal Polling Year In Review

2PP average for year 54.9 to Labor.
Labor led on 2PP in all 87 polls released this year.

At the end of each year I release an annual review of federal polling. See the 2021 edition here and/or click the annual poll review tab for articles back to 2014.

I'll start by saying this was a great year for polling generally with a good industry result in the federal election (after a famous failure in 2019), a very good result for final polls in the Victorian state election, and YouGov/Newspoll performing very well in South Australia.

How many polls?

Once again the business of counting how many polls there have been is complicated by Morgan's habit of often releasing only the 2PP from a poll sample.  In all I count 87 readings, the most since 2017, from what I consider to be mainline pollsters: 

* 12 Newspolls before the election and four after.  The dramatic slowing in release of Newspoll post-election makes me suspect YouGov had a contract for sixteen (the same number as 2021).

* Six Resolves before the election and five after, however only two of the pre-election polls and none since had a pollster-derived 2PP (I've calculated last-election preferences for those that didn't)

* 14 Morgans before the election and 30 Morgan readings post-election, however nearly all the Morgans since the election have been 2PP only.

* Nine Essential readings before the election and two afterwards.

* Four Ipsos polls before the election

* One Freshwater Strategy poll this month

There may be more pre-election Morgan readings that I missed. I have not included Dynata (lobby group poll) or anything from KORE (panel survey with numerous red flags) or ANUPoll (wildly inaccurate with incomplete data).

Poll Roundup: Albanese Honeymoon Phase Polling

Enough polls have now appeared for the new Albanese Labor government that I think it is worthwhile summarising where things are at.  The limited polling data available is all over the place but on average points to a substantial honeymoon boost in favour of the new Albanese Labor government.  

While we haven't seen this kind of honeymoon polling for a while, it has been historically normal for governments elected from opposition.  A phase with a new government averaging above 54-46 occurred for six of the previous seven new governments, the exception being the Abbott government which never got above about 53% on aggregation in its early months and hence never matched the 53.5% 2PP it had been elected with.  (This indicates the extent to which the election of the Abbott government was a repudiation of Labor's Rudd/Gillard/Rudd shambles rather than a positive endorsement of the alternative.)  

Lopsided honeymoon polls get a lot of attention but whether we are still seeing them in twelve months, six months or even three months remains to be seen.  The longest runs of mostly 54+ 2PP polling were for the Rudd government elected in 2007 (just over two years), the Howard government elected in 1996 (14 months) and the Hawke government elected in 1983 (most of the next two years though with a brief spell below after about five months).  The Menzies government's post-1949 phase lasted about eight months while the Whitlam 1972 and Fraser 1975 victories were good for about four months of basking on laurels.  (The difference is that Fraser's government then mostly kept the polling lead until a year and a half in, while Whitlam's soon lost the lead altogether.)  

Coronavirus And Australian Politicians And Elections

Just a post to comment on some aspects of interest regarding the current COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak and its impacts on Australian politicians and elections.  (Note added April: this article is being updated continually but no further politicians have been diagnosed for a while.)

Politicians

In the last week three federal Coalition MPs (Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, Senator Susan McDonald and Senator Andrew Bragg) have tested positive to COVID-19.  Dutton is believed to have caught the disease in the USA, Bragg at a wedding in Australia and McDonald via unknown community transmission.  No state politicians have been reported as testing positive, but that's surely just a matter of time.

Politicians represent a tiny percentage of the world population, yet there have been many cases of them testing positive, a fact already attracting much attention.

A rough and doubtless incomplete tally of politicians who have tested positive, culled mostly from this Wikipedia page, accepting their description of "politician" status blindly but excluding those who I could quickly and clearly see were only former politicians, is as follows:

The table shows that countries that have politicians who have tested positive usually have more than one.  Of the 13 countries with more than one known infected politician, Australia has the fourth lowest ratio of total cases to political cases, currently above only Brazil, Romania and Iran.  Some countries with high coronavirus counts have none so far (such as South Korea and Switzerland) while China has relatively few.

Australia - So What The Bloody Hell Was That?

For the fourth term in a row, the Australian Prime Minister following the previous election has failed to survive the term without being removed by their own party.  This is quite a streak given that in the previous 41 terms only two PMs have been deposed in the same way.   However this week's removal of Malcolm Turnbull has had a novel outcome, with the PM replaced not by his initial challenger Peter Dutton, but by a supporter, Scott Morrison.

Among the many takes that I think needs more careful analysis is the claim that Dutton failed to become Prime Minister just because that side of his coup attempt was tactically botched.  For sure, the Dutton camp frequently seemed to have a bad grasp of both numbers and tactics, whinged when faced with a reasonable request to prove support for another meeting so soon after the first, and were not helped by their man's recycled 17-year-old ALP thought-bubble of removing the GST from electricity.  Dutton's erratic demeanour didn't help either.  But I think there has been too much attention on how badly the Dutton plotters played their hand and too little on it being a weak hand to begin with.  It was a weak hand on two fronts: parliamentary stability and potential electoral impact.  

Spill!

(This article will serve as rolling coverage of spill-related polling and other items.)

Tuesday morning

It's on! Turnbull vs Dutton.  Unfortunately because they are already in the party room, we don't get the wonderful drama of retinues of supporters walking the corridors behind their leader and so on.

Turnbull has defeated Dutton 48-35 but generally a margin that small is not sufficient to ward off a future challenge, which in this case could well happen soon.

Julie Bishop has been retained unopposed as Deputy Leader.

It is worth bearing in mind that with the exception of Malcolm Fraser (who was unsuccessfully challenged by Andrew Peacock) no Prime Minister who has faced a spill has remained in the job until the next election.  (Fraser lost).  Other PMs who have been challenged have all failed to make it to the next election: Gorton, Hawke, Rudd, Gillard and Abbott.  In four of these five cases it took two goes to get rid of the incumbent (it is little-known that Gorton was unsuccessfully challenged after winning the 1969 election with a disappointing margin).

Poll Roundup: Here We Go Again?

2PP Aggregate: 52.8 to Labor (+1.2 since last week) by last election preferences
52.2 to Labor with One Nation adjustment
Labor would comfortably win election held "right now"

That escalated quickly ...

Last night's Ipsos poll has produced a big blowout in my polling aggregate, wiping out all the Coalition's gains since June. However, Labor had already made modest gains in the wake of the Super Saturday results even before that.

Normally I put out a Poll Roundup every second Newspoll.  Last week's Newspoll had some points well worthy of comment so I was considering bringing this one forward (but got distracted by another issue).  Now with this extreme Ipsos result hitting the stands, I think it's worthwhile going one week early - especially with the noises being made in media and a feeling about that leadership problems could blow up into a challenge quickly.  Whether or not that happens, at the least we have another round of serious leadership speculation, and even if the Ipsos was twaddle it will probably turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Events have developed quickly, with the PM shelving emissions targets in the National Energy Guarantee on Monday followed by news of possible Section 44 issues for Peter Dutton, which it seems the Dutton backers are intent on ignoring.  As I write the word is that Dutton backers think they have enough support and are deciding whether to go right away or wait until September.  In the past these things have often come to a head very quickly.