TWO-ANSWER TREND ESTIMATE YES 47.8 (-2.8 in four weeks)
Aggregated polls have Yes losing in five states and trailing the national average in three (two narrowly)
(Above estimates may be updated if new polls are added in next few weeks)
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Greetings. I was going to call this article "Welcome to No" but thought of some wrong ways that that could be taken.
Four weeks ago my last Voice update still had Yes very slightly ahead but the lead was not long for this world. Unsurprisingly in this edition Yes is still going downhill rapidly and is now clearly behind in my aggregated estimate. The most recently added polls are Newspoll with a 46-54 result and Resolve with 48-52 (and an even worse 36-42-22 prior to the forced-choice question).
Summary
Fadden (LNP 10.6%), vacancy for resignation of Stuart Robert
CALLED (7:26 pm) Cameron Caldwell (LNP) retain
Small 2PP swing to LNP ( 2.72%), slightly above average for contested opposition vacancy
Poor result for Greens, One Nation and obscure independents, strong result for Legalise Cannabis
Live Comments (scrolls to top)
12 August: The final results have been published and the swing is 2.72%. Legalise Cannabis stayed ahead of the Greens, failing to overtake One Nation by just 31 votes. There are "swings" to both the LNP and Labor and away from One Nation at the 4CP stage, but this is not comparing like with like because Legalise Cannabis are the fourth party. The most striking result in the figures is that the flow of One Nation preferences to LNP jumped to 77.06%, which exceeds the flow in any classic-2PP seat in the entire 2022 election except Gippsland. In the Gippsland case One Nation were first on the ballot and the National's Darren Chester was second, so the flow included donkey and similar votes. I would take this as a sign that One Nation voters are pleased that Peter Dutton is LNP leader, although it may also be they are happier to have Stuart Robert gone and/or that they are displeased with Anthony Albanese, his government or its Voice proposal.
Friday 28th: The remaining postals count has gone to zero so the primary count is probably done now barring very minor corrections in the distribution of preferences. 88.5% of postals came back but 4.1% were disallowed, meaning 84.4% made the cut, a very common figure. Swing is now 2.72%, turnout is 72.54% and the Citizens Party is last by 19 votes. Next we get the distribution of preferences sometime next week maybe, which will yield some interesting order of exclusion and probably 3PP/4PP data involving One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and the Greens.
In recent weeks there has been a lot of speculation about a possible early federal double dissolution, after the Greens and Coalition deferred Labor's Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 until October. The Albanese government says that this deferral constitutes a first "failure to pass" the Bill for the purposes of Section 57 of the Constitution and that if the Senate were to block or defer the Bill again, then the Bill would become a trigger for an early double dissolution election whenever the government wished to call one. The Greens dispute that the deferral is a "failure to pass", but it would be a brave Governor-General who refused an election to a government that had an even arguable case that that box had been ticked, and in my view the government's case would be more than merely arguable. There are questions about the mechanics regarding whether the Bill needs to be withdrawn before the Senate could fail to pass it again, but in some form or another it seems to me the HAFF Bill could become a double dissolution trigger if it is not passed in October or shortly afterwards.
This article concerns not the mechanics of whether and how Labor can acquire an early double dissolution should it be unable to pass the HAFF Bill (though I am happy to have that discussed in comments), but whether it is a good idea strategically.
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.
Last week saw some late excitement for those of us interested in the entrails of the 2022 Victorian election with the release of 39 previously unavailable preference distributions, albeit officially unofficial and "indicative". These are the full preference distributions for the seats where previously there was either no distribution (because a candidate was elected on primary votes alone) or an incomplete distribution (because the winner crossed 50% against two or more non-excluded rivals). 36 of these were classic two-party preferred contests (mostly lopsided ones), the remainder being Narracan (a supplementary election that Labor didn't contest), Brunswick (Greens vs ALP) and, entertainingly, Mulgrave.
In the original postcount the VEC kept Mulgrave as a Labor vs Liberal seat although independent Ian Cook (of "Slug Gate" fame) held a narrow primary vote lead for second over the Liberals' Michael Piastrino. This led to complaints from the Cook camp seeking something they thought was called a "recount" (in fact what they wanted was a realignment). Cook claimed that "according to my scrutineers, it will bring Daniel Andrews down a few per cent to make the seat marginal".
It didn't (though it might have done the "down a few per cent" bit had Cook's primary lead over Piastrino stayed at 4%). Cook did in fact hold his eventual primary lead of just under 1% over Piastrino all the way to the final exclusion, but Andrews won the 2CP against Cook by a margin of 60.83% vs 39.17%. This was, in fact, more than Andrews won the 2PP quick throw vs Piastrino by (60.20-39.80).
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.
Roger Cook was elected unopposed as the new WA Labor leader today as expected and is about to be sworn in as the new WA Premier following the resignation of Mark McGowan. This means it's time to reset this site's Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll, voting for which is open in the sidebar.
McGowan resigned citing exhaustion after just over six years as Premier and almost eleven and a half years as party leader. His electoral legacy is a thumping win from Opposition in 2017 followed by turning WA for the time being into a one-party state in 2021. Influenced as the latter result was by COVID politics, federal drag with a potent sprinkling of Palmer dust and a remarkably hapless state Opposition, I don't expect to see a 69.7% 2PP in a state election again in my lifetime. It's surreal to realise that it was not always such - not only did Labor lose the 2013 election heavily (for which McGowan was generally not blamed) but in 2016 there was a semi-serious push to not have him as leader at all despite polling evidence showing that his numbers were such that few Opposition Leaders could even dream of.
