2025 Federal Election Pollster Performance Review

Oh no, not again ...

On the day after the 2019 federal election I did the most media interviews I have ever done in one day, eleven.  Eight of those were entirely about the same thing: the polls being wrong.  That day and in the coming days journos from as far afield as Japan and from vague memory Switzerland wanted to know how Australia had gone into an election with Labor unanimously ahead about 51.5-48.5 and come out with the Coalition winning by the same amount. Was this part of a global pattern of polls being increasingly broken and underestimating the right?  (Answers: no and no - it was just a shocker by Australia's high standards).  

The day after the 2025 federal election it was obvious something had gone astray with polling again, and by something near the same amount, but the media reception was muted.  I think I did only one interview where the polling was even part of the report's initial focus.  The ABC did an article about the polling, but it was so quarter-arsed that it omitted four final polls, initially got the 2PPs of four others wrong, and even when "corrected" continues to this day to contain errors about what the final poll 2PPs were.  There were a few other articles that were better.

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.