Queensland 2024: The Polls Aren't Getting Much Better For Labor

Recent polling LNP leads approx 55.5-44.5

Possible seat result of this 2PP LNP 56 ALP 29 Green 4 KAP 3 IND 1 

I last wrote about the Queensland polling leadup back five months ago - was it really that long? - in The Tide Is Going Out For Queensland Labor.  At that time, there had been a few polls out showing Labor trailing about 45-55 two-party preferred, which as I explained in the article is historically not surprising in the slightest.  Five months on and less than one to go til the election, they're still there.  

However it's not as if nothing at all has happened in the meantime.  Since my last article (which mentioned the 44-56 April YouGov and the 46-54 March Newspoll), things may have got worse and then got better for the Government.  There's no need for me to repeat all the details of polls that are recorded and linked to on Wikipedia but there was a string of shockers for the government through to early September.  On 2PP they had only 44.5% (est) in Resolve February to May, 43% (converted estimate) in Redbridge February+May (two waves, not a continuous sample), 43% in YouGov July 8-15, 45.5% in Redbridge May+August, 43% in Wolf + Smith 6-29 Aug (Wolf + Smith is a sort of Resolve spinoff), and 42% (est and possibly generous) in Resolve July through September.  

While the Resolve type polls in this mix have the Labor primary lower than others because of their handling of the independent vote, none of these six polls had the Labor primary with a 3 in front of it, and Redbridge's first sample had the LNP as high as 47.  The average major party primary gap across these polls was 17.5 points.

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)

Northern Territory Election 2024: Prospects and Polling

Welcome to my coverage of the Northern Territory 2024 election, which has snuck up on us all with just four weeks to go til polling day as I write.  NT politics often attracts derision among election-watchers for its tiny/barely inhabited electorates, crazy seat swings, frequent MP defections and elementary ethics fails.  Despite that though, I reject the view out there that NT elections deserve no more attention than a medium-large council.  NT elections are somewhat like state elections in their own unusual way, and are informative.  This one is something of a prelude to Queensland as the first chance for one of Labor's seven state and territory dominos to fall on PM Albanese's watch ... but will it, and how heavily if so?  Beyond this article, my coverage of NT 2024 will include a live article and a post-count piece (a la this, but they will be separate articles this year) and there may be prospects updates if there is anything to see.  

General properties of NT elections

The history of NT elections since self-determination splits neatly into two halves, 1974-1997 during which the CLP frequently changed Chief Ministers but invariably won, and 2001 onwards which, starting from Labor's first win under Clare Martin, has been a rollercoaster.  The 2020 election with a 2PP swing of 3.9% against the then Gunner Labor Government was in fact the most placid this century, with the five before it having swings (ALP) of 6.0, 11.1, -9.2, -5.1 and 13.3.  

The Northern Territory is affected (see bottom of article here), much as the states are, by what I call "federal drag" - all else being equal, incumbent governments are more likely to be whacked when the same party is in power federally.  2020 was one case where the swing went to the side in power federally, but that was off a ridiculously low base and still an easy win for Labor anyway.  

Tasmania 2024: Is This Hare-Clark's New Normal?

Before and after ...

TASMANIA 2024: LIB 14 ALP 10 GRN 5 JLN 3 IND 3
Changes from 2021-based notional result: LIB -3 ALP -1 GRN +1 JLN +3

(2021 election for 25 seats LIB 13 ALP 9 GRN 2 IND 1)

(Before 2024 election LIB 11 ALP 8 GRN 2 IND 4)

Counting is over for the remarkable 2024 Tasmanian election and now come the negotiations.  The Jacqui Lambie Network yesterday announced it was expecting to release a confidence and supply agreement within days and independents are also being consulted.  Premier Jeremy Rockliff has stated he intends to request to be sworn back in, agreement to which would be automatic by precedent just to give him a chance to test his numbers even if the Parliament did intend to remove him.  But with Labor seemingly not interested in governing if it relies on the Greens in any fashion, the remaining crossbenchers' choice is to find some way to back the Liberals (at least on confidence votes when they happen) or else back the sort of instability that could see them defending their seats again within months.  If what the crossbenchers actually extract from the government right away (if anything) seems modest or embarrassing, that is one of the reasons for that.

Tasmania 2024: Yet Another Mystery Poll

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage.  Click here for link to main page with links to effective voting advice and seat guides.

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UPDATE 22/3: The Mercury has revealed that this poll was by high-quality pollster Freshwater Strategy and taken about a fortnight ago, and the Fontcast has announced it was THA-commissioned,  New details are also that the Greens are on 13 and Independents 11 in Lyons, the Greens are on 10 in Bass (apparently leaving about 13.7 for independents and others), independents are on 10 in Braddon (leaving about 13.8 for Greens and others) and 28 in Clark (Greens on 20), and in Franklin the Greens are on 13 and independents on 17.  

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Original article

After a reasonably polling-rich start to the 2024 Tasmanian campaign, little polling has been seen recently, with the youngest public poll 16 days out of the field as I write.  This creates a fair amount of uncertainty regarding whether anything has happened with voting intention in what has been a noisy and bumpy campaign.  In particular, has the fact that the Liberals are ahead and are the only party that any poll has had within, say, 5% of a plausible majority result, caused any late bandwagon effect to their side?  (I should note that bandwagons to a party capable of forming majority government don't always happen.  The two elections where conspicuous bandwagons did occur were 2006 and 2018 but for both these elections other factors could be cited.)

Today Sky News has released some figures from a poll by an unnamed pollster and source and have said they have been asked not to name.  As is too often the case Sky have failed to report on the polling dates.  What we have is a purported seat breakdown probably by someone with not much of a clue about how Hare-Clark works (14-9-4-4-4) and primary votes for the majors and JLN only.

The primary votes reported are:

Bass Lib 40.28 ALP 25.87 JLN 10.2 (leaving 23.68)

Braddon Lib 49.24 ALP 14.65 JLN 12.28 (leaving 23.83)

Clark Lib 25.35 ALP 21.37 (leaving an enormous 53.28)

Franklin Lib 33.23 ALP 27.4 JLN 8 (leaving 31.39)

Lyons Lib 38.46 ALP 23.26 JLN 11.2 (leaving 27.18)

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: How Low Can Yes Go?

Two-answer estimate Yes trails 42.3-57.7 (as of last data September 8)

Yes still behind in every state.  Fourth state now behind national average

(Update added at bottom for Resolve September 11)

 

Key to colours: Green  - Newspoll, Magenta - Resolve, Yellow - Essential, Dark blue - JWS, Light blue - Freshwater, Black - Morgan, Red - Redbridge.  

Time for another Voice roundup following a flurry of polls in the past week.  In the three weeks since the previous edition there's been another chance for the trend line to do something, anything, other than simple accelerating decline, and again this hasn't happened.  

This week's offerings have been the first Pyxis Newspoll at 38-53-9 (yes-no-undecided), a Redbridge forced choice at 39-61, a Freshwater poll at 35-50-15 and 41-59 forced choice, and Essential at 42-48-10.  The field dates for Freshwater were Sep 2-5.  

Voice Referendum Polling: The Yes Vote Keeps On Falling

Current estimate of national Yes vote (two-answer basis): 54%

(Note added 12 June: an update on the Resolve poll has been added at the bottom of the article.)

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Two months after my first article on Voice referendum polling, it's time for a second.  This week saw the release of a new Newspoll with the worst result for Yes of any reputable poll so far, though Yes was still ahead nationally, just, 46-43.  The poll lead to a spectacular display of unhinging on Twitter from the usual army of drips, megaphones and rusted-ons. Many of these responded by posting completely and obviously false claims about Newspoll's track record, including falsely claiming it had failed to predict Labor victories in recent elections.  I even saw one tweet that claimed Newspoll had wrongly forecast Liberal wins in all state and federal elections in the last three years.  In fact the final Newspolls in every relevant case had Labor winning (with 2PPs in chronological order of 51.5, 66, 53, 54, 54.5 and 54.5) and Labor duly won the lot (with 2PPs of 53.1, 69.7, 52.1, 54.6, 55.0 and 54.3).

One can only wonder what these people will do if, or looking more likely at the moment when, the first poll with No ahead pokes its head above the parapet.  At the current rate of progress, that day might not be far away.  The Yes vote is tanking according to polls.  While it does depend to some degree on which poll one examines and poll wording, the overall downhill trend I highlighted in early April has shown no sign of stopping in the last two months. 

New South Wales 2023: Final Results, Poll Accuracy And 2PP Pendulum

It's been a long time coming because of other work but here finally is my wrapup piece for the 2023 New South Wales lower house election.  The twelve-year old Coalition led by its fourth Premier Dominic Perrottet was sent packing by the Labor opposition under its fifth leader Chris Minns, but optional preferencing and some luck in the close seats cushioned the blow and the Coalition managed to retain 36 seats.  Labor after looking almost sure to get a majority on counting night (more of that later) ended up with just 45 but no trouble at all forming government given that the crossbench held three Greens and nine independents.  The result snapped a 15-election streak at state and federal level since the last case of a non-majority outcome.

Vote Share, 2PP and Preference Change

The election saw a further slight fall in the major party primary votes.  The primary votes were 36.97% Labor, 35.37% Coalition, 9.70% Greens, 8.76% independents, with the rest led by 2.23% Sustainable Australia, 1.8% One Nation, 1.56% Shooters Fishers and Farmers and 1.28% Legalise Cannabis.  The 2PP was 54.27% to Labor, a swing of 6.29%.  

There was a slight increase in preferencing at this election with 35.2% of non-major party (or minor Coalition partner in three-cornered seats) preferences reaching Labor on a 2PP basis (+2.2%), 16.1% reaching Coalition (+2.1%) and 48.7% (-4.3%) exhausting.  However these figures include many Independent and Green preferences that were not actually distributed in many seats.  The Greens' share of all non-major votes dropped slightly from 38% to 35%.  

Voice Referendum Polling: Yes Is Well Ahead But It Is Getting Closer

I've been meaning for some time to put up an article about the already very often polled issue that is the upcoming Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, not so much to talk about results of specific polls but to cover general issues that are important in framing discussion of the polling and the outlook for the first referendum since 1999.  Following the release of the question wording and the Coalition's announcement that it will support a No vote to the current wording, now seems as good a time as any (the truth being up til now I simply haven't had the time!)

Some basics: referendums in Australia have a well-known record of mostly failing (8 successes out of 44) but as noted by Peter Brent the record is even worse if introduced by Labor (1 out of 25).  Referendums introduced mid-term are especially prone to being treated like by-elections and thus drubbed.  A mid-term referendum introduced by Labor and lacking bipartisan support is historically the kind of horse whose prospects are summarised in form guides with the word "No."  Can the Voice referendum defy these odds?  

A general trend in polling of referendum-type measures is underestimation of the No vote in final polls, and we saw this most recently here with the same sex marriage postal survey.  But not only can final polls underestimate the No vote, it is also the case that support for referendum measures can decline, sometimes very dramatically, over the course of the debate.

NSW 2023: New Polls Say Labor Majority More Difficult

NSW Aggregate: 53.0 (+5.0 since 2019, -0.9 since January) to Labor
Most likely result if election "held now" is Labor minority government (approx 44-45 seats)
All four results are still plausible, though Coalition majority appears the least likely

With the overnight release of new polling by Newspoll and Freshwater Strategy, it's time for another NSW polling roundup; I originally set the scene for NSW in my 2022 Christmas Day offering to the masses.  

What we have had this year so far of significance is five major polls, that can be divided into a January wave and a February wave.  The January wave consisted of YouGov, Resolve and Roy Morgan and the February wave is the two released overnight.  However, the Morgan was not released until 21 February.  Because the YouGov and Resolve polls were very strong for Labor, the release of the Morgan was wrongly seen as evidence of narrowing in actual voting intention.  In fact its average data age was similar to YouGov and Resolve and what it really showed was that once the three were taken together there had not been a blowout (my aggregated estimate as at Christmas was about 54-46 to Labor, and following the January polls I get 53.9).

NSW 2023 Lower House Preview: Is Dom Doomed?

It's an almost annual tradition on this site to release something every Christmas Day. Click the Xmas tag for previous examples. As there is considerable interest in the NSW election I've decided, as in 2019, to go with the NSW leadup.  It helps that there has been a larger volume of lead-up polling in the last few months of 2022 than in 2018. Hopefully this continues during February and the early to mid campaign.

State and territory conservative governments haven't had a great run of it in elections in the last several years.  Of those that were either in power when Tony Abbott's Coalition won the 2013 federal election or came to power not long after, four (Queensland, Victoria, NT and South Australia) were kicked out after a single term and one (Western Australia) lasted two terms before being drubbed (with the remains of it obliterated four years later).  We are left with the almost twelve year old Perrottet-led Coalition in NSW, on to its fourth Premier, and the almost nine year old Rockliff Liberal Government in Tasmania, on to its third.  Both benefited at their most recent re-elections from weak Labor opposition, but the current NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns seems to be a sharper customer so far than his predecessors.  

Victoria 2022: Lower House Results, Poll Performance And Pendulum Tilt

 LABOR 56 (+1) COALITION 28* (+1*) GREENS 4 (+1) IND 0 (-3)

(Changes are compared to last election)

(* Assuming Narracan is retained)
Current 2PP excluding Narracan 55.00 to ALP 

Projected 2PP treating Narracan as uniform swing 54.83 to ALP
Current 2PP swing accounting for 2PP-uncontested seats 2.70% to Coalition

Following the fast release of 2PP results for every seat it's time to do my usual wrapup of the Victorian lower house election.  The election isn't actually over yet, because of the supplementary election in Narracan to be held early in the new year (and in case there are any further minor changes to the figures), but I think it's best to put it out now with the obligatory cautions.  Throughout this article any use of an asterisk (*) means "subject to Narracan".

Victorian Lower House: Not All That Much Narrowing Here

POLLING AGGREGATE 55.8 TO ALP (not necessarily accurate)

Labor currently appears overwhelmingly likely to win, most likely in majority with low but realistic chance of hung parliament

A roundup of Victorian lower house polling themes is about a week overdue, but before I start this one, a big shout out especially to Ben Raue at The Tally Room for his coverage of this election.  While I've been appallingly busy (not to mention busily appalled) Ben has issued a remarkable total of twelve articles about the Victorian election since October 29, a rate of just about an article per day!

As of my last article on Victorian lower house voting intention back in late August, Daniel Andrews' Labor government was polling far better than a government of its age should be doing, now that it no longer has the Morrison Coalition government to rail against.  I expected that things would get a little closer and that by this time we'd probably no longer be seeing 56-44s, but thus far only Newspoll has been consistent with that expectation.  And even then, Newspoll was still pretty lopsided.