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.  

Poll Roundup: The Honeymoon Still Isn't Over But Could It Be Check-Out Time Pretty Soon?

Federal cross-poll average 55.2% to Labor

(Cross-poll average expected to overestimate Labor's actual standing by c.1%)

It's been a long time since I released a federal polling roundup (several attempts have been commenced then lost in the longer weeds of why Resolve gets such different results from other pollsters) but I thought this would be an appropriately random time to put one out.  A new Voice roundup is also likely in the next week or two, but to save the suspense, the No lead is continuing to build (Yes is now behind about 45-55 on cross-poll aggregate).  There are weak signs that the rate of decline may have stopped accelerating and might even be slowing but that's not enough for Yes which unless the polls are very wrong needs to start making real gains.  

Poll Roundup: No, Labor's Honeymoon Is Not Over Or Anything Like It

2PP Cross-Poll Average 56.1% To Labor
Labor would win an election "held now" with an increased majority (approx 92 seats)

Today's quick Poll Roundup is provoked by one of the more curious and spurious interpretations by an actual pollster that I've seen.  Today's Resolve poll had Labor leading 40-31 on primary votes, which while down on December and January is still the same 9-point lead they held in September and twice in October and off a one point higher primary vote than those.  It would come out to a 2PP of around 58-42 to Labor*, which if repeated at an election would result in Labor gaining about 20 seats from the Coalition and winning in one of the biggest landslides ever seen with about 97 seats to the Coalition's 38.  Yet Resolve's Jim Reed was quoted as declaring that “It looks like Albanese and Labor’s election honeymoon is over,”.  The main justification for this was that Labor had come down slightly from even greater highs in polls taken over the holiday season.  The other was movements of a few points from Labor and unsure to the Coalition across a raft of attribute and leadership polling measures, many of which were within the poll's in-theory margin of error and many of which still showed Labor way ahead anyway.  (The accompanying article says jobs was one of Labor's biggest setback areas, but on jobs the Coalition's gains came entirely from "someone else" and "undecided").  

2022 Federal Polling Year In Review

2PP average for year 54.9 to Labor.
Labor led on 2PP in all 87 polls released this year.

At the end of each year I release an annual review of federal polling. See the 2021 edition here and/or click the annual poll review tab for articles back to 2014.

I'll start by saying this was a great year for polling generally with a good industry result in the federal election (after a famous failure in 2019), a very good result for final polls in the Victorian state election, and YouGov/Newspoll performing very well in South Australia.

How many polls?

Once again the business of counting how many polls there have been is complicated by Morgan's habit of often releasing only the 2PP from a poll sample.  In all I count 87 readings, the most since 2017, from what I consider to be mainline pollsters: 

* 12 Newspolls before the election and four after.  The dramatic slowing in release of Newspoll post-election makes me suspect YouGov had a contract for sixteen (the same number as 2021).

* Six Resolves before the election and five after, however only two of the pre-election polls and none since had a pollster-derived 2PP (I've calculated last-election preferences for those that didn't)

* 14 Morgans before the election and 30 Morgan readings post-election, however nearly all the Morgans since the election have been 2PP only.

* Nine Essential readings before the election and two afterwards.

* Four Ipsos polls before the election

* One Freshwater Strategy poll this month

There may be more pre-election Morgan readings that I missed. I have not included Dynata (lobby group poll) or anything from KORE (panel survey with numerous red flags) or ANUPoll (wildly inaccurate with incomplete data).

Victorian Lower House 2022: Labor Well On Track Despite Federal Drag

Yesterday saw the release of the first Newspoll for Victorian state voting intention this year.  This is the first new public polling voting intention data for the state for over four months with the exception of a couple of Morgan SMS offerings, on which I can't place a lot of weight.  The release of a Newspoll with about three months til the election is a good time to launch my coverage of the Victorian lower house election, having not covered the Victorian lower house contest since the last Newspoll late last year.

The new Newspoll estimates Labor leading 56-44 (an effective 1.6% swing from the last election after accounting for the Liberals not contesting Richmond in 2018) off primary votes of Labor 41 Coalition 36 Greens 13 others 10.  These results are not wildly different to the 2018 election, with Labor down 1.9%, the Greens up 2.3% and the Coalition up negligibly.  For all the hype from some on the right about how hated he supposedly is, Daniel Andrews polls a rather strong +13 net rating (54-41) with the artist now known as Matt Guy on a not so flashy -17 (32-49).  A modest Better Premier lead for Andrews given the other scores and the way preferred leader scores skew to incumbents (51-34) does provide some support for the idea that Andrews is a polarising figure and the minority who dislike him tend to do so strongly.

Seat Model

What might this poll look like if realised on election day?  By uniform swing Labor would drop four of its 58 notional seats to the Liberals and Northcote (just) to the Greens, coming out just two down on its 2018 election result, but the uniform swing model is if anything potentially unkind to Labor's chances vs the Liberals in the 2PP seats.  There are two major reasons for this: firstly, personal vote effects from the 2018 massacre will make it hard for the Liberals to pick off Labor marginals, and secondly the Liberals have a lot of ultramarginals that are at risk from random variation unless they can get a more substantial swing.  They have nine seats on 1.5% or less (including occupied notional Labor seats) to Labor's four.  

Poll Roundup: Albanese Honeymoon Phase Polling

Enough polls have now appeared for the new Albanese Labor government that I think it is worthwhile summarising where things are at.  The limited polling data available is all over the place but on average points to a substantial honeymoon boost in favour of the new Albanese Labor government.  

While we haven't seen this kind of honeymoon polling for a while, it has been historically normal for governments elected from opposition.  A phase with a new government averaging above 54-46 occurred for six of the previous seven new governments, the exception being the Abbott government which never got above about 53% on aggregation in its early months and hence never matched the 53.5% 2PP it had been elected with.  (This indicates the extent to which the election of the Abbott government was a repudiation of Labor's Rudd/Gillard/Rudd shambles rather than a positive endorsement of the alternative.)  

Lopsided honeymoon polls get a lot of attention but whether we are still seeing them in twelve months, six months or even three months remains to be seen.  The longest runs of mostly 54+ 2PP polling were for the Rudd government elected in 2007 (just over two years), the Howard government elected in 1996 (14 months) and the Hawke government elected in 1983 (most of the next two years though with a brief spell below after about five months).  The Menzies government's post-1949 phase lasted about eight months while the Whitlam 1972 and Fraser 1975 victories were good for about four months of basking on laurels.  (The difference is that Fraser's government then mostly kept the polling lead until a year and a half in, while Whitlam's soon lost the lead altogether.)  

Poll Roundup: Well That Wasn't Much Of A Honeymoon

2PP Aggregate: 54.8 to Labor (+0.8 since last week) by 2016 preferences
54.2 to Labor with One Nation adjustment
Labor would win election "held now" with a very large majority 

It's been a while since my last federal poll roundup.  At that time the Coalition's polling was recovering from the shock caused by the messy and (to the public) inexplicable coup that deposed Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister, and it was too soon to read anything into what we were seeing.  Because the Coalition's polling was in recovery mode but the new Prime Minister was still in a polling honeymoon period it was a matter of waiting for things to settle down to get a feeling for how competitive the Coalition really was.

On my aggregate, the recovery from a post-coup low of 43.9% peaked at 46.7% after seven weeks, and since then things have been getting worse rather than better.  Furthermore, since the defeat in Wentworth, they have been getting worse faster, at least if this week's shocker Newspoll is anything to go by.  The Coalition's current position is worse than at any time with Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister, and also worse than all but the worst few weeks under Tony Abbott.

Poll Roundup: The Current Polls Aren't All That Meaningful

2PP Aggregate: 54.2 to Labor (-0.6 since last week) by 2016 election preferences
53.6 to Labor with One Nation preference adjustment 
Labor would win election "held now" with a large majority
(scores and text, but not graph, updated for Essential)

This week Newspoll, which has so far produced the worst readings for the Coalition since Malcolm Turnbull was replaced by Scott Morrison, came down two points on the two-party preferred vote from 56-44 to Labor to 54-46.  Taking into account the primary votes, the Coalition's gain was probably slightly greater.  Indeed this Newspoll had a slightly smaller gap (0.7 points) between the expected last-election preferences off the primaries and the published 2PP with Newspoll's adjustments of One Nation preferences than has usually been the case lately.

Poll Roundup: Bad Start For The Second Turnbull Government

It's early days, but here we go again ...

2PP Aggregate: 51.5 to Labor (+0.6)
Labor has led since aggregate resumed

Welcome back to Poll Roundup, a series which looks at the aggregated state of the federal polls, leadership ratings and polling snippets of interest.  Nearly three months after a narrow victory in the 2016 federal election, the Turnbull government's progress has now been measured in three Newspolls and eleven weekly Essential Research readings.  It's not a great start for the returned regime.  It hasn't been ahead in even one of those, and is now clearly behind.  Indeed, when the primaries from the early polls are converted using 2016 preferences, a case can be made that Labor has been leading in the lot.

If we look at the two-party-preferred votes for the newly returned government, the Newspoll sequence of 50-50-48 is exactly the same as what the Gillard government received in 2010, in its first three polls after an even narrower escape, on its way to three years of generally wretched polling and, eventually, a heavy defeat.

Poll Roundup and Seat Betting Watch - July 9-10

2PP Aggregate (Tuesday 9 July): 50.2 (-0.2 since last week) for Coalition 
Individual Seat Betting: Labor favourites in 61 seats (+3 - Page, Eden-Monaro, Moreton)
Seat Total Market: Labor 65 seats (+7)

Last week I introduced a Seat Betting Favourites Watch series in which I intend to monitor the performance of seat betting markets in predicting results for specific seats in an election that is difficult to model.  The reinstatement of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister has resulted in a massive poll jump for a government that was clearly doomed under ex-PM Gillard, and nobody really knows whether the bounce will amplify before it declines.  It is a good test for whether the markets can out-predict the polls at a time when the polls have good reason to be suspect as predictors, or merely follow them.  I am personally sceptical of the reliability of betting as a predictive method.

This Week's Polls

This week we've had three national polls so far.  Essential Report showed no change on last-week's one-week-sample 52-48 to Coalition.  Newspoll was up one point for Labor to 50-50 and Morgan produced a generally dismissed headline figure of 54.5-45.5 to Labor.  As is sometimes the case Morgan's use of respondent-allocated preferences was creating an out-of-whack result, and when preferences were allocated following the more reliable last-election model, the result was 52.5-47.5 to Labor.

Taken together these polls are slightly better for Labor than the post-change polls of the last two weeks and my own rough aggregate has moved from 50.4 to 50.2 for the Coalition.  Mark the Ballot has Labor 50.5-49.5 ahead and a Bludgertrack update is expected tomorrow. (Update: Bludgettrack is at 50.5 for Labor as well.)