Polls
Political polls – moving in Labor’s favour, but not much more revealed
The story for every election has to be that it’s going to be a tight contest. Otherwise how could newspapers and other media keep up interest?
Even in The Conversation we find three stories telling us that the election will be tight: Australians almost never vote out a first-term government. So why is this year’s election looking so tight?, Labor’s in with a fighting chance, but must work around an unpopular leader, Can Peter Dutton flip Labor voters to rewrite electoral history? It might just work.
Pollsters are telling us that voters are turning back to Labor. We should be wary of news stories reporting movements between two successive polls. Each poll has its margin of error, which means that the margin of error in the difference between two polls is very large. But when almost all reputable polls show a rise in support for Labor and a fall in support for the Coalition, we can be reasonably confident that there is a shift.
William Bowe’s Bludgertrack, which draws information from all polls, shows a distinct fall in primary support for the Coalition over this year so far, while primary support for Labor has hardly moved. Compared with the 2022 election Labor is down 1.5 percent, and the Coalition is up 1.8 percent.
His TPP estimate therefore gives Labor a 50.3:49.7 lead.
But in terms of seats to be won, and the even more difficult question of who is to form government, these TPP estimates are close to meaningless. The outcome of many seats can rest on the vote count of candidates who have no chance of winning.
One must feel sorry for pollsters who have done so much rigorous research and modelling to come up with TPP estimates, reaching a level of sophistication just as the old two-party system is collapsing. It has been so inconsiderate of the Greens, teals and One Nation to mess up their research.
If you really want to dive into polling, you can go to Bowe’s main page, where you will find a stream of polls – enough to keep you going right up to the time voting closes at 6 pm on May 3.
Essential on Albanese vs Dutton and on the budget
The latest Essential poll can be broken into two blocks – five questions about our assessments of Albanese and Dutton, five on the budget, and two on how we should relate to Trump’s policies.
Albanese vs Dutton
Albanese seems to be stuck on around zero net approval (“approval” minus “disapproval”), while Dutton’s net approval is negative, his disapproval having been rising for the last six months. These results align with other polling showing that Albanese is increasing his lead over Dutton as preferred prime minister.
There are a number of questions on what Essential calls “leadership”. People see Albanese as a little more trustworthy than Dutton. Dutton is seen as much more aggressive than Albanese (48 percent compared with 24 percent).
People also see Dutton as more decisive than Albanese. Essential classifies decisiveness as a positive leadership attribute. Scholars of political leadership would differ, as would those who observe Trump’s “decisive” style.
There is a set of 8 questions about aspects of trust and likeability – to whom would you lend $100, whom would you invite for dinner, and so on. Albanese wins on seven of the eight. Dutton wins on only one: we would trust him more for advice on investing money. (Not surprising: it generally pays to keep in touch with those who move in the circles of billionaires and rent-seekers.)
These survey results, combined with polling showing slipping support for the Coalition, suggest that it’s Dutton’s style that is turning people off the Coalition.
The budget
Respondents don’t think the budget will have much impact on the cost of living. But that’s an overall finding: people aged 18-34 are far more likely than older people to see the budget as having an effect. This aligns with anecdotes from party workers that Labor’s promise on HECS relief is going down well with younger voters.
When people are asked who will benefit, no group comes out ahead, but “people who are well off” and “big business” are seen as the most probable beneficiaries. This suggests that the Albanese government still hasn’t been able to convince the electorate of its social-democrat credentials – a problem it shares with most of the world’s left-of-centre governments.
The most telling responses are to a choice between government priorities – “the delivery of services and supports, even if that means running the budget at a deficit”, or “delivering a budget surplus, even if it means cutting jobs, services and supports”. More than two-thirds – 69 percent – choose the former. Even Coalition voters favour services over a surplus. This helps explain why the Coalition is finding it so hard to convey anything about its fiscal policies.
William Bowe’s Poll Bludger has some results on people’s response to the budget, drawing on Newspoll’s questions. People generally rate it poorly for its effect on the economy, and generally think that the Coalition would have done better. Bowe points out, however, that people aren’t particularly engaged with the budget (confirmed in the Essential survey) and that their assessment of the budget has little by way of an electoral consequence. This aligns with the probability that people’s assessment of economic management as “good” or “bad” is based on the fiscal figures – surplus good, deficit bad. In the voting community there is a lot of fiscal misinformation to be countered.
Dealing with Trump’s America
By a large majority – 86 percent to 14 percent – we believe that “Australia has a sovereign right to set its own laws on how American corporations operate here and the US government should not intervene”. There isn’t support for prioritising “staying on good terms with the US” to achieve tariff exemptions. But we don’t support the idea of responding to Trump’s tariffs by setting tariffs ourselves.