Pre And Post Budget Federal Poll Roundup

2PP Aggregate 52.4 to Labor vs Coalition (term low, -0.8 since last week)

Shadow-2PP 52.9 to Labor vs One Nation (-0.6 since last week)

Labor would win election"held now" but most likely with only a small majority

This is my usual annual post about federal voting intention polling after the Budget, plus a summary of what's been happening in the months leading up.

The briefest summary of what happened in the months leading up is "not much".  In terms of my Labor vs Coalition two-party preferred aggregate, Labor dipped down to the high 52s in mid-January (off not a lot of polling at the time) but got back above 54 during Coalition leadership tensions in early February.  Since Angus Taylor replaced Sussan Ley Labor's 2PP has bobbed around the 53s with no real evidence of signal.

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.  

2025-2028 2PP Aggregate Methods Page

Because I have way too many things to do right now I decided in my usual fashion to do one more that isn't any of them!  Introducing my 2025-2028 federal 2PP polling aggregate, which at this very early stage sits at 56.3 to Labor, with an overall pattern of basically no 2PP movement since it had enough data to wake up on 29 June.  The above is a 7-day smoothed aggregate though it has been as high as 57.2 on individual daily readings, and as low (a 0.8 point outlier lasting one day only!) as 55.5.  By the end of the term who knows if 2PP will even still exist the way the Australian right are going after this year's drubbing, but for the meantime, here we are.  Differences will be detected with aggregates that use pollster-released 2PPs (these tend to have Labor losing support more quickly) and also my estimate is currently running about a point below Bludger Track but with a similarly flat trajectory.  

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. 

This aggregate works quite differently from previous aggregates that had a simple 5-3-2-1 week of release formula, and does so mainly because of the increasing frequency of polls with long in field periods or late releases.  The mathematics are kept simple enough that I should be able to understand if something is going wrong (edit: indeed I fixed one glitch overnight after two August polls were found to have been entered as July; it made very little difference), but are no longer readily hand calculable to make my treatment of data less chunky and arbitrary.  The working of this year's aggregate is below:

Tasmania 2025: YouGov Has Majors Much Closer

 

Live coverage at this link on election night

This article is part of my Tasmanian 2025 election coverage.  Click here for link to main guide page including links to effective voting advice and seat guides.

YOUGOV Lib 31 ALP 30 Green 16 IND 20* Nat 2 SF+F 1

* could be overstated through poll design issues
Seat estimate for this poll Lib 13 ALP 11-12 Green 6 IND 4-5

Thankfully a final YouGov public poll has appeared for the fairly sparsely polled Tasmanian state election, albeit unfortunately without seat breakdowns, and if it is to be believed then Labor are doing better than the recent DemosAU and Liberal EMRS internals have suggested, and the Liberals are doing much worse than the latter.  I was hoping we would get a poll today and suspecting it might pull my aggregate in line with the widespread view that Labor has run a poor campaign and is at risk of losing vote share, but it's actually better for Labor than the polls since the last YouGov have been.  This would find the Liberals with a measly one-point lead which would give them no possible path to government assuming that Labor is willing to take it and the Greens to help Labor do so.  Indeed it's not impossible if this poll's true that Labor and the Greens could get a majority together (a Labor/IND combined majority would be unlikely).  It's always possible that YouGov's polling of the state has a house effect, but this could also be true of the DemosAU polls.  (There is some history of Labor often doing badly in robopolls for state elections, and DemosAU is primarily a robopoll, albeit one that weights for education, which should help).  

Anyway, we have two main final polls with a very different take on where Labor will land but it remains the case that no poll has given the Liberals more than a remote path to government if the forces that voted for the no-confidence motion work together.  And it would be pretty silly for Labor and the Greens at least not to - by working together here I just mean being willing to kick the Liberals out in another no confidence motion if needs be and then at least have some minimal arrangement to satisfy the Governor that Dean Winter can be Premier.   While there's no poll that gives the Liberals a clear path, the better polls for them wouldn't have to be too far wrong for them to get 15 seats with three they might work with (say Rebekah Pentland, David O'Byrne and John Tucker ... hmmm I'm not really sure Jeremy Rockliff and Tucker can work together ...)  But at this stage that would be fairly surprising.

2025 Tasmanian Polling Aggregate V1

Live coverage on election night on Pulse Tasmania - Link will be posted here when known - No paywall!

TASMANIA 2025 POLLING AGGREGATE (NOT A PREDICTION) Lib 35.0 ALP 30.3 GRN 15.3 IND 14.9 NAT 2.5 SF+F 1.9

IND adjusted for design issues with polling independents

Seat Estimate for this aggregate (total of electorate estimates in brackets) Lib 13-14 (13) ALP 10-12 (12) GRN 5-7 (6) IND 4 (4) NAT 0-1 (0) SFF 0-1 (0)

This article is part of my 2025 Tasmanian election coverage. Click here for link to main guide page including links to seat guides and voting advice.  

(18 July: Aggregate has been updated here, with minimal changes.)

This article is not a prediction

Just wanted to make that extra clear!  Some people cannot read.  

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

-------------------------------------------------------------------

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: 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)

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Donations welcome!

If you find my coverage useful please consider donating to support the large amount of time I spend working on this site.  The sidebar (scroll down and click on "view web version" if viewing via mobile) has Paypal or PayID instructions or email me via the address in my profile for my account details.  Please only donate if you are sure you can afford to do so.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

--

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.  

Queensland Polling Narrows Further In The Final Days

LAST-ELECTION PREFS AGGREGATE: 52.4-47.6 TO LNP 

SEAT PROJECTION OFF STATE POLLS IF THIS 2PP IS ACCURATE: LNP 48 ALP 37 GRN 4 KAP 3 IND 1

(AVERAGE OF FINAL POLLS BY RELEASED 2PP: 53.5-46.5 TO LNP, PROJECTION FOR THAT 2PP IS 51-34-4-3-1).  

As the final polls come out, we seem on for a closer Queensland election than earlier this year looked the case.  For much of the year the Miles Government has had classic hallmarks of a doomed state government - almost ten years in power, federally dragged, beset by crime complaints, and polling terribly.  Even four weeks ago there were signs of some recovery, but nothing that looked like life.  Now in the final week the LNP has recorded a couple of polls based off which it would be only slightly more likely than not to get a majority.  As the pendulum slightly favours Labor, it's even still plausible that if there is a modest polling error, Labor could scrape home.  Equally it's still plausible that the LNP could outdo the polls or get a good seat distribution and get a very solid majority.  But the very heavy drubbing that for so long looked so likely now seems a much more remote prospect.  If the late polls are spot on, Labor will almost certainly still lose, but they won't have trouble with saving the furniture.  Not that they needed the furniture the last time they were voted out.  

This has been accompanied by some remarkable changes in leadership ratings.  In the final Newspoll, Steven Miles has recorded a Better Premier lead, albeit of 3%, which is typically nowhere near enough because preferred leader polling skews to incumbents.  But such as it was, that was his first Better Premier lead ever, and the first for a Labor Premier since April 2023, snapping a run of 17 losses from various pollsters.  Crisafulli has gone from a personal rating of net +12 at the start of this campaign to net -3, his first negative rating of the term that I can find after at least 19 positives.  This sort of recovery by a state government that has started losing heavily in polling is very uncommon.

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.  

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.

--

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.  

--

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.

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.