Not-A-Poll Reset 2 of 2026: Allan Resigns

It's another success for voters in the Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll as the outright majority favourite was indeed the next leader to depart, improving the record of Not-A-Poll to 8/15 including six of the last seven.

When I opened voting on 13 February there was a spirited initial battle between Jacinta Allan and Angus Taylor with the lead swapping a few times over several hours.  In following days Allan built a large lead with for some reason a lot of votes for her on 18 and 20 February.  Over time this grew into a majority.  Allan was a promising bet because her dire leadership ratings and her party's wobbly voting intention polling suggested there were two different ways she could go, and nobody else seemed especially likely to go before the Victorian election.

Allan formally resigned but was facing an active challenge that appeared very likely to succeed.  Had Allan resisted (assuming she had sufficient signatures) there would have been a member ballot in which she would have needed an overwhelming margin to defeat Ben Carroll.  

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.  

Brad Battin's Booting Is A Poll History Outlier

(Note for Tasmanian audiences: I will have the usual article about the latest EMRS poll up sometime tonight or tomorrow)

The last fortnight has seen the leaders of three of Australia's current crop of feeble oppositions displaced while a fourth, Sussan Ley, is precarious (especially after another shocker Newspoll).  First to go was ACT Liberal leader Leanne Castley, who after an irregular (by Liberal Party standards) attempt to kick backbenchers Elizabeth Lee and Peter Cain out of the party room for crossing the floor over parliamentary sitting hours, resigned suddenly on November 10.  Victorian leader Brad Battin didn't recontest after a spill motion was passed 19-13 on Nov 18, and NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman quit on Nov 21 facing the same fate.  In the ACT the leadership has passed to an old hand in third-term MLA Mark Parton, but both Victoria and NSW have gone for first-term female MPs, Jess Wilson and Kellie Sloane.  

The removal of Speakman requires no explanation following the NSW Liberals' run of poor polling and a terrible result in the Kiama by-election.  But the case of Battin is very unusual.  Since assuming the leadership in the final days of 2024, Brad Battin had led Jacinta Allan as better Premier in every single poll that asked such a question - eight in all by four different pollsters, with an average margin of 8.75%.  There have been occasional cases of Opposition Leaders being rolled who had sometimes led as better Premier (including Battin's predecessor John Pesutto who had led by a pyrrhic single point in his final Resolve sample) but an Opposition Leader who was leading solidly being removed is unprecedented, at least in the Newspoll era.

DemosAU: Liberals Increase Lead Ahead Of Budget

DemosAU: Lib 41 Labor 24 Green 15 IND 14 SFF 2 others 4
Liberals would be re-elected in minority, probably gaining one seat

A surprise DemosAU Tasmanian state poll has appeared.  The government will be grinning with a 17 point primary vote lead.  If there is a hostile reception to the coming interim Budget then the grin might not last too long.  That said, there have been some advance signs that the medicine won't be too harsh.  

This poll was self-initiated (not commissioned by anyone) and taken from Oct 16-27 with a sample size of 1021.  DemosAU scrubbed up pretty well in the state election, though not as well as EMRS.  They did significantly underestimate the Liberal primary and, like all pollsters, overestimate Independents, but their overall read of Labor's poor prospects in particular was on the money and their individual candidate breakdowns were very handy (for more detail on that see here). 

The Independent reading in this poll is noticeably lower than the c.19% readings seen before the election.  It's possible the use of both 2025 state and federal election voting as weightings will have toned down any impact of an overengaged sample on the previously over-polled independent vote, but I don't think that's the main reason why independent votes get overestimated in Tasmania anyway.  Rather I think some voters are looking for an independent but at state level never find the right one.  If that's so, this poll might be taken as pointing to some softening in independent support.  The August EMRS had found no such softening; the November EMRS will be interesting in this regard.

Poll Roundup: Liberal Crisis As Honeymoon 2.0 Rumbles On

 Cross-poll estimate 56.3 to Labor (+1.0 since election)

I'm some way off putting out a 2025-8 term polling aggregate, partly because I am hoping that when the dust settles from the Bradfield court challenge in coming months we might get revised 2PP flow figures for Bradfield to enable more exact 2025 election preference flow estimates.  And partly just for sheer lack of time.  But this week's federal polls have been notable and there are a number of themes I think are worth covering off on quickly to put what is going on in historic context.

Newspoll

This week's Newspoll came in at 58-42 to Labor off primaries of ALP 36 L-NP 27 Green 13 One Nation 10 others 14.  The Coalition primary is the worst in Newspoll history by two points.  The previous worst was two polls ago in July and it was then the worst in Newspoll history by two points.  The Coalition primary is now four points lower than it had been in any previous term.   

No Government has led 58-42 since Kevin Rudd's led 59-41 in October 2009, and the last Newspoll this lopsided was Julia Gillard's Labor trailing 42-58 shortly before Gillard was removed in June 2013.  No Government beyond its first term has ever led 58-42 in a released Newspoll 2PP.  I convert one poll in June 1987 as 58-42 to the Hawke Government, one in Sep 1994 as 57-43 to Keating and there was a published 57-43 to the Howard government in September 2001.  One of these was a rally round the flag for the government after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the other two were the opposition disasters that were the Joh for Canberra Coalition split and Alexander Downer.  

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).  

EMRS: Is Labor Finally Making Some Progress? / Hobart Poll Controversy

EMRS Lib 35 (-1) ALP 31 (+4) Greens 14 (=) JLN 6 (-2) IND 11 (-1) others 3 (=)
IND likely overstated, others likely understated
Liberals would be the largest party but Labor would make seat gains 
Possible seat estimate in election "held now" off this poll LIB 14 ALP 12 Green 5 IND 4

The final EMRS Tasmanian voting intention poll of the year is out and it provides some evidence that the Labor Opposition might be taking baby steps on the road back to government at last.  Labor is up four points, albeit from a poor base.  The Liberal government is at its lowest vote since it got down to 34% in December 2017 (a reading that I doubt was accurate given their rapid recovery months later) and the major party gap is also as low as it has been since then.  This said, Labor still hasn't been above 32% since the last "pre-COVID" poll back in March 2020 and if the ALP is going to make a serious push for government, at some point in the term it will need to break out of the very low 30s.  This is a movement in the right direction for once; let's see if it continues.  The poll comes following a quarter dominated by the Spirits of Tasmania fiasco that led to the forced resignation of Deputy Premier Michael Ferguson from Cabinet.  I suppose that yet again, as with bad polls following the 2023 defections, the Government might say that in it could have been worse.  

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.  

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.

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: Federal Hung Parliament Club Edition

CROSS-POLL AVERAGE 52.6 TO LABOR (-2.0 in two weeks)

Aggregate of recent polls assuming no overall house effects 53.2 to Labor

Recent Newspoll would not be likely to produce a hung parliament if replicated

Significant chance of hung parliament based not on most current polls, but rather on historic pattern of leads shrinking.  

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Welcome back to another edition of Poll Roundup.  At the time of the last edition the Labor Opposition was a very long way in front but things have since got a lot closer.  I covered some of this at the start of a more recent piece but following today's Newspoll, hung parliament talk has become widespread.  Sectors of the press gallery are embarrassing themselves more than usual, while sectors of the press gallery that always embarrass themselves are doing what they do best.  

"Hung parliament club" is my nickname for a circle of usual suspects in the Tasmanian left and commentariat who continually argue that hung parliaments in Tasmanian state elections are both extremely likely and uncontentiously desirable.  My view is that their constant public hankering after minority situations makes majority government more likely, not less.  Federally, there have been echoes of this in Adam Bandt's constant poll-spinning that uses various unsound arguments to claim a "power-sharing parliament" is highly likely.  However overall the federal variant of hung parliament club makes even weaker claims about the likelihood of a hung parliament than are seen in Tasmania, and then goes on to claim that a hung parliament could lead to crazy chaos and an immediate fresh election.  The main suspects here are innumerate types in the Canberra press gallery, who seem to have listened to each other too much (or perhaps to party hacks or low-grade pollsters) instead of seeking any kind of informed take on how to interpret the numbers. 

Psephology And The Palace Letters

It's a nearly annual tradition on this site to release something every Christmas Day.  (Click the Xmas tag for previous examples.) It's also an annual tradition when I write the annual review, to list pieces that languished in the draft section, some barely started, others more or less complete but never quite seeing the light of day.  When I did this last year there was an unusual level of interest (a whole three enthusiastic requests!) in one of the unreleased items, about "psephological themes in the Palace Letters" and I decided to make it this year's Christmas present to readers.  This article mostly focuses on the 1974-5 cycle although the letters cover the 1975-7 cycle as well.   By the way, I am not the only psephologist dropping down chimneys with offerings this year.

The Palace Letters are a series of correspondence (not all of it related to federal politics) between the Queen's Private Secretary Sir Martin Charteris and Governor-General Sir John Kerr in the leadup to and the aftermath of the November 11 1975 sacking of the Whitlam Government.  They also include a large number of media articles that are public documents but would not be well known to a modern audience and that are fun to read over.  The letters were released after a very prolonged legal stoush, especially thanks to the persistence of Whitlam biographer and political historian Jenny Hocking.  

Poll Roundup: Albanese Is Still Rating Below Morrison - Is That A Problem?

Since my last federal polling roundup, there has been quite a lot of new polling but the Morrison government's position doesn't seem to have improved.  We have seen:

* Newspoll (early October) 53-47 to Labor (Coalition 37 Labor 37 Green 11 One Nation 2 others 13)

* Newspoll (late October) 54-46 to Labor (Coalition 35 ALP 38 Green 11 One Nation 3 others 13)

* Essential (late October) 49-44 to Labor using Essential's 2PP+ method (Coalition 37 Labor 36 Greens 10 One Nation 3 others 8 undecided 6).  I get 52.2 to Labor by standard last-election preferences with undecided removed.

* Essential (early October) 46-45 to Labor using Essential's 2PP+ method (Coalition 36 Labor 34 Greens 9 One Nation 4 others 8 undecided 9.  I get 51.2 to Labor by standard last-election preferences with undecided removed.

* Morgan (mid-late Sept) 54-46 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 36 Labor 36 Greens 12.5 PHON 3.5 others 12).  This would be c. 53.1 to Labor by last-election preferences

* Morgan (early Oct) 53-47 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 37.5 Labor 36 Greens 11.5 PHON 3 others 12).  This would be c. 52.1 to Labor by last-election preferences

* Morgan (mid-late Oct) 54-46 to Labor (respondent preferences) (Coalition 36.5 Labor 35 Green 13.5 PHON 3.5 others 11.5.) This would be c. 52.7 to Labor by last-election preferences 

* Resolve (late October) Coalition 37 ALP 34 Green 11 PHON 3 IND 9 Others 5.  Resolve doesn't estimate a 2PP, and overestimates independents as discussed last time.  I estimate 52.1 to Labor by last-election preferences.

Poll Roundup: Lockdowns And Rollout Problems End Morrison's Net Rating Streak

It's been a while since my last federal polling roundup and in that time the government's troubled vaccine rollout and the challenges polled by the Delta strain of COVID-19 seem to have put paid to government optimism about rushing off to an early election this spring.  Indeed, recent weeks have seen the government record its worst 2PP polling of the term so far, though by historic standards it is not yet in severe poll-based trouble.  

Voting Intention

Three weeks ago, four polls came out in quick succession:

* A Newspoll Coalition 39 Labor 39 Greens 10 One Nation 3 Others 9.  The published 2PP was 53-47 to Labor but Labor probably got lucky on the rounding here.  The average last-election 2PP for these primaries would be 52.5-47.5, and indeed when exactly the same primaries came out in early March, the 2PP was 52-48.  Given that this one rounded to 53, it must have been at least 52.5 prior to rounding.

* Essential Coalition 37 Labor 36 Greens 10 One Nation 4 Others 6.  After rescaling to remove undecided and get sum to 100, Coalition 39.8 Labor 38.7 Greens 10.8 One Nation 4.3 Others 6.5.  The published 2PP is 47-45 (=51-49) to Labor under Essential's 2PP Plus method using (mostly) respondent preferences, but by last-election preferences I get 52.1 to Labor.  

* Resolve Political Monitor Coalition 38 Labor 35 Greens 12 One Nation 4 "Independents" 7 Others 5.  Resolve does not publish a 2PP.  By last-election preferences these numbers come to about 52.0 to Labor if taken as published, but Resolve overestimates independents.

* Roy Morgan Coalition 39 Labor 37 Greens 11.5 One Nation 3 Others 9.5.  Morgan's published 2PP was 52.5 (respondent preferences); I get 52.0 (last election).  

In the last week two fresher polls have arrived:

* Another Newspoll with a 53-47 2PP to Labor, but this time with the Greens on 11 and Others on 8, which all else being equal suggests the 2PP this time was probably close to 53 prior to rounding.

* A Morgan with a 53.5% 2PP to Labor off primaries of Coalition 37 Labor 37 Green 12.5 One Nation 3 others 10.5.  I get 53.3 (last election).  This is the highest 2PP poll for Labor of the term except for some bushfire-era Morgans for which only 2PPs were back-released. 

2020 Federal Polling Year In Review

 At this time I normally release a review of the year in federal polling that, among other things, states the number of federal polls released that year.  See the 2019 review here. Things have got so weird in Essentialville and Morganland that for 2020 I can only report on how many have been released so far (since others with 2020 data are likely to belatedly appear next year), and in both cases, "released" becomes a stretch in the case of 2PP readings that have no public existence beyond a dot point on a badly labelled graph.  Such is life in the days after the 2019 polling failure.

How many polls?

This year saw 16 federal Newspolls released, the fewest since 1991.  Essential released 13 "2PP+" results (see my comments on this method here) as figures, and a further sixteen as dots on a graph. Morgan provided this mess:

* five polls for which it issued polling reports

* two further polls on its voting intention table

* at least one further poll result where the poll was not published but the 2PP can be inferred based on the stated poll to poll changes

* fourteen graph dot points (giving the impression of being weekly breakdowns from fortnightly polls) that include:

- eight readings that align exactly in time with four polls for which fortnightly 2PPs were public

- two consecutive readings that are out of whack with one of the public 2PPs by a week

- four readings that don't align with any of the otherwise public polls. 

Thus the total number of Morgan 2PP readings of which some kind of evidence was available publicly is at least 22 (to date) but this includes at least four double-counts.  

Applying a minimum standard that a pollster must publish a 2PP (and not just by reference to changes from a previous poll) to be included, there were 16 Newspolls, 13 Essentials and seven Morgans, for a total of 36 polls.  If this figure is used it continues the downward trend in the number of published polls per year.  However the number of 2PP readings compiled by the pollsters but not published other than as dot points is considerably higher; there might be as many as 63 independent readings, with others still to be (maybe) retro-released.

The mess created by Morgan in particular does no favours for the image of polling and I hope the new Australian Polling Council will recommend to its members standards that will avoid and discourage ad hoc decisions about when to retro-release polling data.  If a pollster wants to release voting intention polls in batches, as Essential are doing, that is one thing, but the pollster should then at least be transparent about when they will poll and ensure that all the readings are retro-released, not just some.

Newspoll: The Sound Of Narratives Dying

 This week's Newspoll results have included fresh approval ratings for Labor Premiers Daniel Andrews (Vic) and Annastacia Palaszczuk (Qld), along with a number of issues questions regarding handling of COVID-19.  These are well worthy of comment - Victoria especially - along with some brief comments on less striking results (but strikingly if typically bad reporting) in federal Newspoll land.

Victoria

A widespread narrative in Victoria has been that Premier Daniel Andrews is severely on the nose and his Premiership is in crisis, either because of the second wave of COVID-19 in the state that resulted from avoidable quarantine failures on his watch, or from the severity of lockdowns deployed in response to (so far successfully) bring new case numbers down.  

Victoria has recently seen public voting intention polling, finally, via a 51.5-48.5 lead in Roy Morgan Research's SMS polling.  I am not a fan of SMS polls as a method (I think they are too prone to motivated response), and Morgan's recent state polls have a history of volatility and being rather inaccurate, but at least this is something.  Also, ALP-linked campaigning firm Red Bridge has issued a 53.5-46.5 result for Labor.  These results followed Liberal Party MediaReach polling that had the Liberals picking up massive swings in a group of Labor-held seats (which if applied statewide would see Labor losing), but this is the same firm that, for instance, had the Territory Alliance on course to be the largest party in the NT parliament (it won a single seat very narrowly).  The internal poll also showed a rather heavy fall in the Greens vote, which seemed unlikely in the absence of anything that would cause it and given the general resilience of the Greens vote in recent elections (OK, except for Eden-Monaro.)  

Unpopular State Premiers Still Have Dire Historic Fates

It's been over a month since I posted a new article on this page, though updates to previous articles have continued, especially Eden-Monaro.  I have some vague idea where that time went (a number of distractions from psephology lately) but there hasn't been a huge amount going on lately and I tend not to write just for the sake of having something up.  There will always be something new here eventually!

This article is another piece where I update a previously published article from some time ago and see whether the pattern described in it is still holding up.  Today's target for an update is Unpopular State Premiers Have Dire Historic Fates, from 2013.  This article was inspired by a bad Newspoll for then Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett.  Barnett had been re-elected with a 57.3% 2PP nine months earlier so it probably seemed adventurous to see a single Newspoll still showing his government in a narrow lead as the first of the circling vultures.  But it was - Barnett survived a leadership challenge in 2016 but was dumped by the voters in 2017 with an enormous 12.8% swing.

He wasn't alone.  Since I released the original article, Campbell Newman was dumped by voters with a massive swing, as was Lara Giddings. Jay Weatherill also lost (albeit with a 2PP swing to him) and Mike Baird, who had been very popular in his first term, became somewhat unpopular in his second and resigned.  The four election defeats for unpopular Premiers helped beef up the evidence that it is the voters, and not just the parties, who tend to show them the door.  In the same time, Premiers who had not polled such bad ratings in their terms were re-elected twice in NSW and once each in Queensland, SA, Victoria and Tasmania, with Victoria's Dennis Napthine (worst netsat -4) the sole casualty to not poll a bad rating.  The chart below (click for larger clearer version) shows the fates of every state Premier who has polled a netsat worse than -10 in Newspoll history (which starts in 1985).  Premiers are sorted by the worst netsat they polled during the term.

Newspoll: Record Premier Ratings And A Very Strange Federal Poll

This week Newspoll polled state Premier approval ratings, but not voting intentions (perhaps because samples by state would have been too small for voting intention sampling).  It was to be expected that several state Premiers would have very high approval ratings given their handling of the coronavirus crisis, but perhaps not that the figures would be quite so spectacular:

Prev = previous poll.  *= As opposition leader.  #=YouGov poll not branded as Newspoll.

As high as Scott Morrison's current net rating of +40 is (more on that later), all the Premiers except Palaszczuk have beaten it.  None of them were coming off a particularly high base, though the most recent polling for Victoria and WA is ancient.  For Tasmania this is the first Newspoll of Premier satisfaction since the 2014 state election.