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: 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.  

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.

Media Fail Again Over MRP Reporting

Redbridge/Accent MRP model projects Coalition would be likely to have the most seats if the federal election was held now.  

It does not say Coalition would be likely to have a majority.

It does not predict the result of the election.

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I thought an article was in order to unpack some of what is going on with the recent Redbridge/Accent MRP model and the woeful reporting of it by pretty much every outlet that has so far mentioned it.

MRP models (stands for Multilevel Regression with Poststratification) are not the easiest to explain to lay readers at the best of times, but what we have seen from several media sources reporting on this one goes beyond understandable confusion and into the realms of reckless innumerate false reporting.

What a MRP model does is to build a picture of how certain types of seats are likely to vote based on small samples of all 150 electorates.  Although each seat's sample is uselessly tiny by itself, by assuming that seats that resemble each other in ways that affect voting intention will vote similarly, one can smooth out a lot of the rough edges in the sampling, and samples of a few dozen voters per electorate can build a model that's about as good on a seat-by-seat basis as if those samples were actually a few hundred.  That still isn't very good on a seat-by-seat basis, but on a nationwide basis, the model could capture some general trends about the kinds of seats where each party is likely to be doing well or badly, and about how a party might be going in converting vote share to expected seats.  

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.

2024 Tasmanian Polling Aggregate

Aggregate of all polls (not a prediction) Lib 36.9ALP 25.3 Green 13.2 JLN 9 IND 12.7 other 3

Seat estimate for this aggregate 15-10-4-3-3.

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This article is part of my Tasmania 2024 state polling coverage.  Click here for links to my main guide page which includes links to seat guides and effective voting advice.  

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An attempt at aggregating the 2024 Tasmanian polls has been long-coming amid a very distracting and busy campaign, but for what it's worth here goes.  For the second election running I have doubts about the value of this exercise, but for entirely different reasons.  In 2021 there was very little polling and the only campaign poll to be publicly released appeared to (and did) have large house effects, which I determined using EMRS as a benchmark.  Despite me talking them down, both my house-effects aggregate and my no-house-effects aggregate somehow worked, with the former nailing the seat estimate and the latter recording voting share misses of 0.5% or below on all four lines.   I don't expect to be that lucky this time, however I hope the journey of how I try to come up with a what the polls are saying number will make some sense.

If any more public polls are released before 8 am Saturday a fresh aggregate will be included in the article covering that poll, or in this one.

Redbridge Says It's A Multi-Party Mess As Voters Flee Liberals

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage - link to main page including links to electorate guides and effective voting advice

Redbridge Lib 33 ALP 29 Green 14 JLN 10 IND/Other 14
My estimate 13-14 Liberal 10-12 ALP 4-5 Green 2-3 JLN 2-6 IND

The second Tasmanian campaign poll by an established and known pollster is out, with Victorian-centred outfit Redbridge releasing its first ever public poll of Tasmanian voting intention.  The sample size is smallish (753 voters) and the sample is spread out over two weeks (Feb 14-28).  

They have also released these combined breakdowns: Bass/Braddon/Lyons Liberal 35 Labor 27 Green 11 JLN 14 Other 14, Clark/Franklin Liberal 30 Labor 31 Greens 18 JLN 4 (ie 8 in Franklin as not running in Clark) Other 17

There is more to come on this poll, including one of the most amusing crosstabs you will ever see, but for now just a quick note on the voting intention numbers.  The Redbridge numbers are significantly worse for the Liberals than both the EMRS public poll and the huge-sample mystery poll of unknown veracity and quality, and very similar to the YouGov poll from January, except that they have treated the Lambie and IND/others votes more normally.  (They've only listed parties in seats they are running in.)

Redbridge have released a seat estimate of 12 Liberal 11 Labor 6 Green 3 JLN 3 Independent based on modelling off mini-samples.  I would expect off these state primaries (based on testing them against my model of the recent EMRS breakdowns) that the Greens would not do quite so well; six seats off 14% would be very lucky.   I got estimates of 13-14 Liberal, 10-12 ALP, 4-5 Green, 2-3 JLN and 2-6 IND for these numbers.  

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. 

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 Polling: The Sleeping Double Majority Curse

Yes trails about 45.0-55.0 in aggregated public polling (as of 13 Aug, pending new data)

No now leading on aggregate in every state, but Yes still ahead of national total in four states

Time for another Voice polling roundup.  There has been relatively little new data in the four weeks since the last update and this article includes some historic analysis that suggests that the current state polling picture for the Voice is actually highly unusual.  At the moment the state polling picture is irrelevant because No is ahead nationwide, but a benign state distribution is one thing Yes does have going for it should the national picture improve or if polls are underestimating Yes for some unprecedented reason.  What I find here is that it is almost unprecedented historically for the state picture not to be a drag, so it will be interesting to see if that holds up.  Is the double majority a sleeping curse that will wake up in the months to come or in the final results, or is it really going to be a non-issue this time around?  It turns out that if it is a non-issue, there's a reason for it, and that reason is Queensland.

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".

Victoria Lower House 2022: Final Days Rolling Poll Roundup

2PP Polling Aggregate (not necessarily accurate) 55.0 to ALP (last-election preferences).

Aggregate of pollster-released 2PPs (ditto) 54.1 to ALP.

Labor appears overwhelmingly likely to win.

Labor majority more likely than not if past polling/results history holds up

This post will track polling for the Victorian election released in the final week of the campaign.  A section dealing with each new poll that I see will be added to the top of the post, however polls will not be added during the day on Thursday because of a field trip.  As I start there is only one poll two polls to discuss, following the common second-last-week drought in state elections, but I am sure more will be added in coming days minutes and that one poll is interesting enough to be worth putting out an article based on it alone.  

Until the release of this week's Resolve poll there had been nothing significant since my previous roundup.  There had been an odd Lonergan poll for the Victorian National Parks Association (incidentally the sponsors of the most accurate poll in 2018, a ReachTEL) but that poll with a Green vote of 19% cannot be taken seriously as a voting intention poll.  Firstly the poll did not ask voting intention questions first up but asked them "Immediately after main body questions", the main body questions covering a series of environmental issues and hence being very likely to skew the voting intention questions in favour of the Greens.  Secondly it is not clear whether the voting intention results reported are those weighted by "Age x Gender, Location" or were reported simply as sample size information.  

I have added a #pollshapedobjects section at the bottom to cover any even more useless offerings.