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 Last Days Of The Yes Ascendancy?

TWO-ANSWER POLLING AVERAGE TREND: 50.1 TO YES (-3.9 in about a month)

(estimate updated 11 July, will be edited if more polls before next article)

(UPDATES ADDED: Notes rejecting the ACM reader survey, the Paterson Tele-Town Hall robopoll and the Australia Institute, plus Essential added 11 July)

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It's only three weeks since the last one, but this week's Newspoll (among other developments) merits another chapter in the story of the referendum Yes vote's decline.  Sure, maybe I should do a federal roundup sometime, but on the other hand there's still not much to see there.  I can do it in a paragraph: Labor is currently at about 55.8% 2PP as a cross-poll average. While Anthony Albanese himself is being quickly cut down to merely mild popularity, there is no end yet to honeymoon vote shares for his party.  Even this week's 54-46 Newspoll came off primaries that would normally be good for 55.  There are some signs of improvement for Peter Dutton, whose own ratings have gone up just a little and whose deficit on Newspoll Better PM (20 points) is now not much larger than that indicator historically skews by.  So there are a few signs that at least leadership polling has the potential to get more interesting, but for now at least the Voice is where it's at.

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. 

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

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

Voting Intention

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

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

Ditching Two-Party Preferred Won't Resolve Australia's Polling Problems

Resolve: Coalition 38 Labor 33 Green 12 One Nation 6 IND 8 Others 3.

My 2PP Estimate 50-50

Alternative Estimate 51-49 to ALP

A new federal polling series has been launched and what we have before us is a mixture of the good, the bad and the interesting.  Such is my initial reaction to the launch of Resolve Political Monitor, a new poll by Resolve Strategic for the SMH and The Age.  Many of the reporting decisions around this new poll appear intended to keep it on a similar footing to the Nine stable's former Nielsen and Ipsos polls.  The poll will run monthly, and excitingly will include bi-monthly state polling for NSW and Victoria, something there has been a deplorable lack of in recent years.