Four Year Terms? Fixed Terms? Fixed Four Year Terms? Part One - Polling

This week there was an article regarding a report released by a lobby group called 4 Year Terms Australia, which supports "fixed" four year terms for federal parliament.  The SMH report contained this very brief comment regarding polling:

"Polling commissioned from JWS Research found just one in five Australians supported the current system of three-year terms and the prime minister choosing the election date."

Well, from that it may sound like Australians would strongly support "fixed" four year terms, right?  In fact the polling cited tells a rather different story.

I've decided to write one article on this subject dealing mainly with the polling, to be probably (subject to time) followed by another in the near future dealing with the (de)merits of the issue.  That said there will be few surprises on the latter front to anyone who's seen my article re fixed terms in Tasmania or my 2025 JSCEM submission.   To summarise my views, I'm totally against "fixed" federal terms, whether by legislation or referendum.  I think that fixed term laws either fail to genuinely secure fixed dates or else prevent Prime Ministers from calling elections in circumstances where they should be able to.  I'm also against four year federal terms if it means eight year Senators.  

Essential Report Microblogging Disclaimers

Frequently I post federal polling results and calculations to the microblogging sites Twitter (X) and Bluesky (links to my accounts in sidebar); here is an example I posted today:

The standard items I include are the primary votes for all parties, any two-party preferred or Labor vs One Nation "shadow 2PP" issued by the pollster, and what I call "my conversion".  "My conversion" is a 2PP figure I get by applying my own estimate of 2025 election preference flows to the primary votes released by the pollster, and is the figure I use in my Labor vs Coalition 2PP aggregate and my Labor vs One Nation 2PP estimate, both of which can be seen on the sidebar together with a link to the methods page for them.   I have been including primary vote changes recently because of interest in whether One Nation is going up or down, but probably won't keep doing so for long.  (In fact the one shown has a typo in it, the Greens are down 1 not up 1).  

Poll Roundup: What Do We Do With A Split Coalition ... Or A Rampant One Nation?

2PP Aggregate 53.5-46.5 to ALP (-1.3 since end of 2025, +0.6 in two weeks)

Shadow-2PP Trend Estimate 54.3-45.7 to ALP vs One Nation.  One Nation has made accelerating gains.

Labor would easily win an election "held now", probably losing several seats

The last few weeks have been remarkably messy ones for Australian politics- and poll-watchers.  Following the Bondi massacre the Opposition pressured the Government to recall parliament as soon as possible to pass measures in response, only to end up wedging itself when it got what it asked for, with the result that the National Party has again broken away.  So should analysts and pollsters still treat these parties as the same entity, and if we don't, what especially do we do in the case of Queensland where Liberal and National party room members run in separate seats under the Liberal National banner?  In the meantime, One Nation has exceeded the ex-Coalition's total in three of the ten polls released so far this year and tied it in two others.  An election right now would make Queensland 1998 look somewhat orderly, with all manner of messy multi-way seats and probably One Nation making fifty or more 2CPs with perhaps something like twenty wins - though this stuff is very hard to model.  So is it time for a Labor vs One Nation "two party preferred" figure as well?

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.  

2025 Federal Election Pollster Performance Review

Oh no, not again ...

On the day after the 2019 federal election I did the most media interviews I have ever done in one day, eleven.  Eight of those were entirely about the same thing: the polls being wrong.  That day and in the coming days journos from as far afield as Japan and from vague memory Switzerland wanted to know how Australia had gone into an election with Labor unanimously ahead about 51.5-48.5 and come out with the Coalition winning by the same amount. Was this part of a global pattern of polls being increasingly broken and underestimating the right?  (Answers: no and no - it was just a shocker by Australia's high standards).  

The day after the 2025 federal election it was obvious something had gone astray with polling again, and by something near the same amount, but the media reception was muted.  I think I did only one interview where the polling was even part of the report's initial focus.  The ABC did an article about the polling, but it was so quarter-arsed that it omitted four final polls, initially got the 2PPs of four others wrong, and even when "corrected" continues to this day to contain errors about what the final poll 2PPs were.  There were a few other articles that were better.

Over The Horizons: 2025 Final Week Rolling Poll Roundup

 2PP Aggregate: 52.48 to ALP (-0.4 since Saturday)
With One Nation adjustment 51.85 to ALP
Rolling most recent released 2PP poll by each firm average 52.47 to ALP

All polls are believed to have released their final poll

If polls are accurate, Labor wins, probably with a modest majority (approx 80 seats)

If the normal range of polling to result relationships applies, Labor remains very likely to win, but majority status is touch and go

Historically, Labor has on average slightly underperformed when leading in final week polling

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Welcome to my rolling coverage of the final week of national polls.  I may write a separate article about seat polling if time permits though I'll mention some briefly in this piece.  The headline section will be continually updated with aggregate scores through to the end of the week, and the weekly reading graph will also be updated if anything much changes.  There will probaby be another roundup on Friday night or Saturday post the final Newspoll. On election night I will be doing live blogging at the Guardian and links will be posted here to the coverage when known.  

Poll Roundup: Coalition In Freefall

2PP Aggregate: 52.3 to ALP (+1.2 in two weeks)
With One Nation adjustment (optional) 51.7 to ALP
If polls are accurate, Labor would win if everyone voted now, with a slim majority or close to it

(Figures above updated for YouGov)

The election has started already (people are now voting by post, even if the Greens HTV website doesn't seem aware of that) and the Coalition campaign appears to be in big trouble.  The polling swing back to Labor that started in late January and became more noticeable in late February has accelerated in the past two weeks and Labor is now polling majority government numbers from several pollsters.  It's too early to be confident that that will be the result, since elections are on average closer than even the final polls have it, but what we are seeing at the moment is a polling meltdown.  The Coalition primary vote is plummeting, and while this may yet turn around or be underestimated they now face the reverse version of Labor's problem during Labor's long decline last year.  There will be a bottom to this somewhere but no-one yet knows if this is it or where it might be.  By the time an underdog effect kicks in (if it does) will it be too late?

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: Outliers At Thirty Paces

2PP Aggregate (Last-Election Preferences) 50.4 to Coalition (-0.2 in last four weeks)

With One Nation Adjustment (recommended) 50.9 to Coalition
If polls are accurate, either side could win election "held now", probably well into minority

It was just about time for another one of these articles anyway but we've had some extra fun in the last few days with something we've not had for a while, big outliers!  Firstly a 55-45 to Coalition by respondent preferences from Resolve (52-48 last election) and secondly a 51-49 to Labor by respondent preferences from Morgan (53-47 last election). Resolve was the worst headline 2PP of the term for Labor by far, while Morgan was Labor's first headline 2PP lead from anyone since late November, and their first lead from anyone who wasn't Morgan since early October.   Morgan of course put it down to the interest rates cut.  Who to believe?  My aggregate says neither. The net impact of these two plus Freshwater was that Labor improved its standing in my estimate by 0.001%.  

Resolve had Labor on 25 Coalition 39 Greens 13 One Nation 9 Independent 9 others 4.  Resolve has typically had the Labor vote lower than other pollsters lately and this reading is the lowest I'm aware of Labor ever recording from anyone in a federal poll.  The primary vote gap of 14% is the largest of the term from anyone.  Resolve offers a generic Independent option everywhere between campaigns which tends to inflate the independent vote compared to what they'd actually get at an election, until we know who is actually on the ballot papers.  This probably affects their estimate of the ALP primary.  Resolve's One Nation estimate of 9% on the same basis may seem very large, but don't adjust your set, this is One Nation's third 9% in recent weeks, discussed further below.  

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.

Poll Roundup: Labor Loses The Lead!

 

All things must pass.

2PP Aggregate (Last Election Preferences) 50.1-49.9 to Coalition (+0.4, first Coalition lead of term)
With One Nation adjustment 50.6-49.4 to Coalition

Election "held now" could leave Labor with about 70 seats

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It finally happened!  After endless months of Labor's 2PP lead being painfully whittled towards zero, last weekend's Newspoll finally put the Coalition into the lead on my last-election 2PP aggregate.  It is true that I said they were eight weeks away from breaking Kevin Rudd's record for the longest aggregated 2PP lead since there was nothing much to aggregate, and they actually lasted nine.  So there is that, but it's not much consolation, and a lot of the other aggregates flipped two or three months back anyway.

Historically, it's no big deal, and perhaps not even a medium one.  Almost every government falls behind in polling at some stage in every term, except the first Hawke government which went to an election not long after the half-time siren.  Governments, albeit the other side's are better at it, have frequently recovered from being well behind and tend to poll badly in the last year before elections.  Labor has the benefit of a friendly pendulum from last time and the Coalition needs to win a lot of seats in some very different places to get another sniff at government in 2025.  

Poll Roundup: 50.5 Is The New 51

2PP Aggregate 50.6 to ALP (-0.1 since end of last week)
Aggregate has changed little since loss of about half a point in mid-July
Election "held now" would probably produce minority Labor government

I haven't done a federal poll roundup for a while and today is a randomly opportune time to do one following the second straight 50-50 Newspoll and mention some general themes in recent 2PP polling.  In the last week we have had:

* Newspoll at 50-50 (ALP 32 L-NP 38 Green 12 ON 7 others 11)

* Redbridge at 50.5-49.5 to ALP (ALP 32 L-NP 38 and the rest not published yet, but I'm expecting Greens either 10 or 11)

* YouGov at 50-50 (ALP 32 L-NP 37 Green 13 ON 8 others 10) (Note: normally the 2PP for these primaries would be 51-49 to Labor, though it is possible to get 50 from these primaries sometimes because of rounding and perhaps also the makeup of others.).  

* Essential at 48-46 to ALP, equivalent to 51.1-48.9 (raw primaries ALP 29 Coalition 33 Greens 13 ON 7 UAP 1 others 11 undecided 6 - meaning the major party primaries are effectively more like 31-35)

* Morgan at 50.5-49.5 to Coalition by respondent preferences (50-50 last election) (ALP 29.5 L-NP 39.5 Green 13 ON 4 IND 9 others 5 - Morgan has a standalone IND option on the ballot everywhere, which is likely to be overstated)

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.  

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.

2PP Federal Polling Aggregate Relaunched

Introduction (December 2023)

In recent weeks I've relaunched the 2PP aggregate on the sidebar that was a feature here between mid-2013 and the 2019 federal election.  The aim of the aggregate is to present a frequently updated figure for what the current polls should be taken as saying collectively about the state of the two-party preferred contest.  This is never a prediction or a statement that the polls are right, it is just putting a number on where they're at.  A couple of things encouraged me to do this and the first one was a desire to have an up-to-date figure readily available to media now that things are actually happening (my 52.9 estimate from this article was being quoted after my estimate had fallen below 52.)  

Poll Roundup: This Is The Way The Honeymoon Ended

 2PP Aggregated Estimate: 52.9 To ALP (-1.4 since mid-August)

ALP would still win election "held now", probably with increased majority

Time for another federal voting intention poll roundup as there have been several noteable results in recent weeks.  In a previous edition I reported that while the end of the Albanese Government's polling honeymoon had been declared by many hasty false prophets, we weren't quite there yet ... but we could be soon.  My standard for the honeymoon phase still existing had been a 54-46 estimated aggregated polling lead for the government, but in the event of the government falling slightly below that level I would want to see at least a month of evidence that that was the case.  (It is somewhat like how a single quarter of negative growth does not count as a recession).  

Anyway I can now report that on my estimates the rear-vision window shows that it's been two months.  The Albanese Government's polling honeymoon ended not with a bang but with a gradual slip into the twilight zone of not-quite-enough-ahead in early September.  There were several individual poll results better than 54-46 since then but on a weekly rolling basis I have had Labor in the 53s ever since.  Furthermore following this week's Newspoll the Government dipped just below an aggregated (and Newspoll!) 53% for the first time.  

Voice Referendum Polling Accuracy

The 2023 Voice referendum was a triumph for Australian (and in one case UK) opinion polling.  With all votes counted apart from a few dozen that may or may not exist, here is my assessment of the accuracy of the final polls, and of the polling overall.  

Before I start a few words about the late count: firstly the Yes vote rebounded after the first night of counting from projecting to the low 39s to finishing up at very nearly 40 (39.94 pending any late corrections, which would appear unlikely at this stage).  The main causes of this were: a strong performance by Yes on absents, a relatively strong performance on out-of-division prepolls (which were intermediate between absents and in-division prepolls) and both these forms of votes being substantially more common than in 2022 (29% and 22% more common respectively).  The latter also pushed the turnout up from the initial mid-to-high 80s range to more or less 90%, with it finishing at 89.92% (up 0.1% on the 2022 Reps election, but also up over 400,000 voters because of increased enrolment).   That said because it is harder to get one's vote rejected over enrolment issues, a better comparison might be the 2022 Senate turnout of 90.47%, on which turnout was slightly down.  

34 divisions voted Yes, including all in doubt after the night except for No's closest victory in Hotham, and 117 voted No.  Tasmania pipped NSW for second highest state Yes vote by 0.02%.

The polls overall

The Voice referendum was among the most heavily polled electoral events in Australian history, and the single most diversely polled with at least 22 different pollsters releasing some kind of result on the Voice since the 2022 federal election.  The polling was characterised by a refreshing lack of herding and saw a range of approaches taken in terms of headline figures (these could be broken broadly into one-pass, two-pass and forced choice approaches).  The major national polls towards the end were in general exclusively online, the main variation being that DemosAU used device engagement whereas the others employed panel polling.  This lack of method diversity turned out not to be a problem.  

Voice Referendum Polling: Nothing Has Stopped This Trendline

Two-answer estimate Yes trails 41.7-58.3 (rate of decline is slowing)
No still leads in every state in model but leads in Tasmania in recent tiny breakdowns
Estimate includes data to October 1

Major updates added at bottom: Morgan (Sep 25), DemosAU (Sep 28), Essential (Oct 3), YouGov (Oct 4), Morgan (Oct 5)

Key to colours: Green  - Newspoll, Dark Green - YouGov, Magenta - Resolve, Grey - Essential, Dark blue - JWS, Light blue - Freshwater, Black - Morgan, Red - Redbridge, Orange - DemosAU

This is my seventh Voice polling roundup; I expect there will be one more in the final week, but if polls are sparse over the next fortnight I will probably just add those that do arrive in that time to this article.  We have only three weeks to go til referendum day and remote voting has started as I write.