EMRS: Liberals Slip But Labor Again Doesn't Pick Up The Scraps

EMRS Lib 34 ALP 25 Green 17 IND 19 others 5

Seat estimate off this poll if election "held now" Lib 13 (-1) ALP 10 Green 6 (+1) IND 5 SFF 1

Highest Green primary since November 2017

Another EMRS poll is out though at this stage the online documentation seems a little sparser than the usual.  I've seen a tweet and various secondary reporting, but not yet the usual poll report [EDIT 25/11: it is up now]. The poll is also missing the usual preferred Premier figure as a result of a "coding error".  My understanding is the error was the inclusion of Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff in at least the online component of the poll.  (EMRS used to do three-way preferred Premier up til 2014 but it tended to be misleading because of splitting of left respondents between the Labor and Green leaders, making it hard to compare to similar polls interstate).  

After pretty good numbers in the previous EMRS and the recent DemosAU this one would come as a bit of a downer for the government.  But in a movie we've seen quite a few times before, when the government takes a hit in the polls it's mostly not the Labor Opposition that mops up the slops, instead it is somebody else.  In this case it's the Greens, and I was surprised to find that the last time EMRS had the Greens on 17 or above was in November 2017.   In those days EMRS tended to overestimate the Greens at election time, something that became less apparent following significant methods changes in 2017.  The poll also has a high, though probably inflated, independent vote (we saw at the state election that 19% independent in generic polling is worth about 15 at the ballot box).  

With the splintered state of Tasmania's non-government forces at the moment we're increasingly seeing a broad green left (Greens plus greenish independents, who are most of the "independent" vote) outpolling the official Labor opposition.  

This poll also includes net likeability scores, in which Premier Rockliff has taken a tumble back to net -1 from net +18 three months ago.  Josh Willie has also dropped, from net +4 to net -4.  I don't at this stage have more detailed breakdowns.  

As a seat projection, in an election "held now" if this poll was accurate, the Greens would gain a seat from the Liberals in Braddon.  I wouldn't expect any change elsewhere as the Liberals were not far from winning in most of the remaining seats.  In Bass, the swing from the Liberals to the Greens would significantly change the exclusion order, pushing the second Green above George Razay at the point where they were excluded, but I suspect that Razay would overhaul them on preferences from fellow Independents and SF+F then go on to win anyway.  (If one allows for the Independent vote being overstated then Labor has slightly more votes than at the state election, but the Greens have significantly more, which also helps Razay if he is over them.)

What has happened here?  The changes from the last poll aren't massive, only just outside the in-theory "margin of error" and maybe the high Green vote is a blip.  But this poll does tie in with something seen in the state election campaign, that when the Macquarie Point stadium proposal dominates the news cycle, the government's polling tanked.  Whenever the government was talking about anything else, yes even TasInsure, things got better.  There might also be some sense of anticlimax that the Budget isn't any different on the debt front than its maligned predecessor, and the government did also encounter what should have been a scandal last week, but I am doubtful these were major factors.  

There's also still the possibility that EMRS's new half-online half-phone methods could have some impact on their results.  The EMRS online panel is opt-in and probably has a lot of politically engaged voters.  However the dual method was also used in their internal Liberal polling for the state election, which was accurate.  So I'm going with stadium fatigue as my primary hypothesis for this one!

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.

Normally, two things are more or less the death rattle for incumbent Premiers - personal netsats in negative double digits and trailing as better Premier when not facing a previous Premier as Opposition Leader.   And Jacinta Allan's personal ratings are not just run of the mill bad; in four polls taken while opposite Battin she averaged net -31.8.  Sure, Labor could replace her with Ben Carroll, but that would make them a three-leader government, and those have a poor past record with four losses from five attempts at state and territory level in the last fifty years, three of those heavy.  So there's an argument that Battin has been removed while he still had a very good chance of winning.

That is not to say that the Liberals were polling in an election-winning position at the time.  Prior to Battin's removal, the Victorian Coalition in the last six months had led 51-49 in two DemosAU polls and one Freshwater, and trailed 52-48 in two Redbridges and 51.5-48.5 in an earlier Redbridge, trailed 53-47 in the June Newspoll and trailed by my estimates 53-47 then 52.7-47.3 in two Resolves (Resolve doesn't reliably publish 2PP estimates).  All these 2PPs are rubbery because nobody really knows what the field will be and most importantly whether One Nation (currently polling through the roof federally) will run a serious statewide lower house campaign in the state election.  But even at the better end of the spectrum, 51-49 for the Coalition is probably not enough - though it's closer to enough than I realised before modelling it in detail.  

The reason for this lies in Victoria's tilted pendulum.  The 2022 election saw a shovelling of Labor seats from both the 2PP-marginal and 2PP-safe categories into the moderately safe range, meaning that by uniform swing the Coalition needs to poll into the 52s to take government (assuming that such Greens as win will not assist them).  Indeed a uniform swing of 6% would only yield eight seats, leaving Labor in majority government with about 48 seats (assuming the recaptures of Ringwood and South Barwon) to 37 for the Coalition and 3 for the Greens.  

Things are different on a probabilistic assessment because Labor holds a massive 18 seats on margins between 6% and 9% and on a swing around 6% the Coalition would, through variable swing, be bound to jag at least a few of those.  My usual model estimates 12-13 gains rather than the uniform swing gain of 8 seats, but that's only enough to put Labor into minority. For 16 gains and outright victory the Coalition probably needs more like 52-48 - though even if one or two seats short of that there always might be some independent or ALP discard who might help the Coalition into government. And one of these days Victoria, which alone of the states and territories has an even number of lower house seats, might get a deadlocked parliament (that would be interesting!)

Even so, the fact that the existing 51-49 readings came from Freshwater (the reputation of which took a serious knock at the 2025 federal election) and DemosAU (which is a relatively new pollster) probably meant that even these readings were treated with some scepticism.

Does it matter if an opposition is merely competitive and not actually winning against an unpopular Premier?  History suggests not really - unpopular Premiers find ways to get removed or lose, even if the 2PP polling is OK some time out.  Governments that appear to be polling OK also often nosedive in the final year if they are "federally dragged", meaning that the same party is in power federally (which is in general a large disadvantage at elections).  It can also be argued that the state Coalition parties have taken brand damage from the 2025 federal election, and that once the Albanese Government's federal honeymoon tapers off we could see a return to politics as normal - on which basis the Allan Government is very beatable.

Overall by historic standards there's a strong polling case that Battin still had a good chance of winning.  Why then was he removed?

The leadership change can be sourced to some obvious factors.  While Battin's personal polling was generally good (a minor exception being a net -5 satisfaction in the June Newspoll, though that was far from terrible) the Victorian Liberals had remained a mess on his watch.  A very poorly internally received reshuffle was a factor here.  There was also a perception that Battin's leadership style was too limited with too much of a focus on crime.  Law and order campaigning doesn't tend to win Australian elections by itself - even when crime is being talked about an unusual amount it tends to be only very salient for a few to several percent of voters.  It's also too easy for state governments to take action on compared to the economy and cost of living.  There was some perception hence that Battin wasn't up to winning an election.  Historically it was way short of a clearcut case.  The risk is that if the partyroom waited for clearer evidence to emerge, it could be too late for a new leader (especially a young new leader) to get a sufficient run in to the next election.

The leadership change might also be seen as running up the white flag on an outer suburbs dominated strategy.  In the leadup to the federal election we were bombarded with arguments that federal Labor was on the way out in the outer suburbs and if the Coalition focused there it could get large swings and win many seats.  In fact federal Labor wasn't on the way out anywhere, but despite the Coalition under Peter Dutton relentlessly focusing on such seats (egged on by internal polls that were wrong), they didn't get anywhere near winning most of them and would not have done so even had there not been a national swing against them.  Uniformly removing Labor's 2PP swing from the federal election would have gained the Coalition only Bullwinkel, Solomon and Bendigo and the Coalition would have still lost Dickson, Petrie, Leichhardt, Sturt, Bass and Braddon.

A few years back the theory was that Australia was realigning with higher educated inner suburbs moving to Labor and lower educated working class areas moving to the Coalition but with the current splintering of vote share on the right and following Labor's stellar performance in northern Tasmania in the federal election all that Piketty 101 stuff is feeling very 2022.  The Coalition won't win elections just in the outer suburbs, but leaders who are seen as too inner city might still play badly there, and this is a risk factor with Wilson.  Overall of the eighteen seats in the critical 6-9% range eight are outer suburban with four in the west (where Labor did badly in swing terms last time) and four in the east (where Labor held up well) but there was a lot of COVID issue overlay in the 2022 state and federal spatial vote patterns.  

The latest Newspoll

The first Newspoll of Jess Wilson's career was very quick out of the blocks and this makes it somewhat difficult to compare it with past first Newspolls for state Opposition Leaders.  Pre-2015 state Newspolls outside of campaign periods were aggregates taken from two or three months of polling (similar to Resolve now).  The most notable things in the new Newspoll are firstly Jacinta Allan's terrible -42 net satisfaction and secondly Wilson's 47-33 lead as Better Premier.  Allan's rating is nearly the worst for a Premier in Newspoll history (only John Cain and Anna Bligh at net -43 have been below it).  The only new Opposition Leaders who had not previously led their parties to jump to comparable leads in their first poll were Dean Brown in SA (19% lead) and Campbell Newman in Queensland (12%), and those were polls taken over longer periods.  Both went on to win elections.  

Frequently new Opposition Leaders are slow to get on the board as Better Premier because they are still building their profile.  On this basis a 14% lead after only a few days looks stellar, but because we don't often see such a quick poll after a change, we need to see more over coming weeks and months to be sure this isn't just some instant sugar hit for changing leader against a disliked government.  The other thing that was surprising here was Wilson's personal ratings at 33% satisfied 31% dissatisfied - the latter seems like a high figure for a new Opposition Leader who is also a first termer.  

History suggests it doesn't really matter if state Oppositions are a mess through their term so long as they can get their act together by election day.  The classic case was the WA Liberals in the 2005-8 term where after churning through four leadership changes in a term they had no-one left but to go back to Colin Barnett who had lost the previous election.  Barnett was however able to win (very narrowly).  

Heading into election year 2026 both sides in Victoria have reason to be nervous.  Labor has a Premier way underwater by historic standards and the government will be twelve years old and federally dragged.  The Coalition however faces federal brand damage, the splintering of the right-wing vote and the possibility that federal drag is not going to be such a big thing - as well as its own form for chaos. 

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.

False Declaration: Minor Right Nonsense About Senate Reform

Huge if true, but ...

Recently my attention was drawn to an article on the Canberra Declaration website by one Dave Pellowe.  Pellowe is better known for being on the receiving end of a later dropped 2024 Queensland anti-discrimination complaint over comments he made about Indigenous religious beliefs while explaining why he would not include a Welcome to Country in a Christian religious event.  (I'm vaguely curious about what exactly he said, as my home state has a long history of potentially interesting complaints like this being made then almost always dropped - but not curious enough yet to find it.)  The Canberra/Daily Declaration site was better known to me through the involvement of one Julie Sladden, an anti-COVID-vaccine retired doctor and right-wing culture warrior who was bizarrely endorsed by the Tasmanian Liberals for not one but two state elections.  

I'm not sure I'd come across Pellowe talking nonsense about Senate voting before but this is not the first time he's done it.  His Twitter bio reads "Solomon prayed: Give me an understanding heart so that I can (steward democracy) well & know the difference between right and wrong. 1 Kings 3:9".  I hope that he will see this article and realise that having an "understanding heart" to "steward democracy" requires understanding the facts and consulting reliable sources rather than just former UAP and One Nation figure Lex Stewart.  Stewart and Pellowe have been making very similar complaints about Senate reform and the 2016 election, and they're both wrong.

Australia's Worst Oppositions: How Many Will Win?

Recently I started a Not-A-Poll to determine who readers consider to be Australia's worst opposition in what I have dubbed a "golden age of dreadful Oppositions".  During the polling period the contenders continued to audition for the gong:

* The Victorian Liberals continued with their usual infighting over legal cases related to the Deeming/Pesutto mess but there was also a Brad Battin reshuffle that was none too well received and led to leadership rumblings including speculation that a first termer might become leader.

* Tasmanian Labor had three different positions on the Tasmanian Planning Commission's response to the Macquarie Point stadium proposal in seven days, a record even for them, and none of those positons were worth wasting a press release on.

* The SA Liberals had another ridiculously bad poll, a 34-66 drubbing in a DemosAU poll with a primary vote of just 21%.  Given SA's fondness for independents and lack of extremely safe seats this could conceivably even translate to zero seats (though they will improve by the election just five months away surely? probably? maybe?)  

* The Canberra Liberals floated restrictive conditions for federal candidates in which the candidate would have to hit fundraising targets, apparently a reaction to their 2025 Senate candidate being invisible on the campaign trail.  Why anyone would want to raise that much money to run for the ACT Reps seats though is beyond me.  There was also a review into their 2024 election result which for some reason thought regimented how to vote cards in Hare-Clark was a good idea.

* The federal Coalition saw instability with Jacinta Price kicked off the frontbench, Andrew Hastie quitting the frontbench and Barnaby Joyce finally announcing his retirement as Member for New England at the next election while taking potshots at David Littleproud and not exactly hosing down speculation he would join One Nation.  Their polling continues to suck.

* The NSW Liberals were pantsed 60.2-39.8 in the Kiama by-election.  

Tasmanian Redistribution: Clark Must Expand, But Where?

I don't usually get involved in redistribution speculation and lobbying (I don't even have the time and skill to draw nice maps) but this one is particularly interesting to me and local.  A federal redistribution for Tasmania has commenced, with the initial suggestions stage closing on 7 November.  

Tasmania currently uses the federal electorate boundaries for its Hare-Clark system state elections, and if this continues (and no one has convinced me that it shouldn't) then the changes will flow on to the next Tasmanian state election, which could well be held before the next federal poll.  The purpose of this article isn't to support any particular option, or to dive into the finer details of which lines to put exactly where (rather beyond my computing skills for the level of time I have right now); it's to raise awareness of what some of the broad options are and some advantages and disadvantages of them.  

Unlike in the other states that may be affected by planned redistributions (SA and Queensland), entitlement changes or possibly expansion, Tasmania's number of divisions clearly won't be changing in this term.  So this Tasmanian redistribution is for keeps.  

The issue is that as populations outside the inner cities of Tasmania have increased while the inner cities have stagnated, Clark has drifted to a lower population than the other four electorates.  Clark is projected to be 10.5% below quota by 2030, Lyons 9.98% above, Bass 4.42% below,  Franklin 3.20% above and Braddon 1.73% above.  At the least the first three need to be brought inside the 3.5% variation from quota (or at least "as far as practicable") and this means that Clark should gain at least 7%, Lyons should lose at least about 6.5%, Bass should gain 1%, and changes could occur in the others.  

Yes Federal Parliament Should Be Expanded And No It Isn't A Partisan Fix

Federal JSCEM season is upon us and who knows I might manage to write a submission soon.  But for now on this site I want to comment on one issue that has been generating a fair amount of commentary, too little of it accurate.  The fact that JSCEM is again inquiring into the size of parliament has resulted in speculation that Labor is pursuing it for partisan benefit; some have even absurdly alleged the potential expansion is a form of gerrymander.  Nonsense from an already unhinged online right that fails to understand what even happened at the election has been fuelled by a Seven interview with pollster and strategist Kos Samaras that claims that because Labor is doing so well in the cities, an expansion will greatly benefit Labor and put the Coalition to the sword for good.

The fact is that while there is an internal harmony advantage for Labor in expanding the parliament now, it is not likely there will be any advantage for Labor proportionally. Indeed, if anything, there are very good reasons to suspect Labor will be getting a slightly lower House of Reps seat share for a given vote share with an expansion than without.  There are many good reasons for expanding the House of Representatives and I strongly support passing legislation to expand the Parliament in this term.  As with Senate reform in 2016 (an excellent and necessary change that Labor to its shame opposed with embarrassingly bad arguments) we again see nonsense arguments being made by the Opposition against something that is actually a good idea.  James McGrath has claimed that an expansion doesn't pass any sort of test let alone the "pub test".  Well it easily passes mine, and I am not known as an easy marker.  

There are not such strong reasons for expanding the Senate, but nor is there anything in particular wrong with doing so (but see below re Territory Senators), and that will come with any substantial increase in the House via the nexus provision, which I don't think is going away anytime soon.  

For the purposes of this article I am assuming the Coalition survives til the next election as a largely intact Opposition and electoral politics in this country carries on as normal.  I cannot at this time be completely sure this will be so. 

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:

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.