The Age has a poll of Victorian state voting intention from Resolve Strategic that records a deterioration in Coalition support from an already dismal starting point in the last such poll two months ago, despite the government bringing down a seemingly tough budget in the interim. Labor is on 41%, down one on the previous poll, as compared with 36.6% at the election; the Coalition on 26%, down four, as compared with 34.4%; the Greens on 15%, up five (which in turn was down three on the February poll), compared with 11.5%; a generic category for independents on 12%, unchanged on the previous poll, compared with 5.6% at the election; and 6% for others, up one, as compared with 11.9%. Based on an educated guess of preference flows, this would come out as a Labor lead of between 62-38 and 63-37, where the previous poll would have been around 59-41 and the result at the election was an even 55-45.
The poll credits Daniel Andrews with a lead over John Pesutto of 49-26 as preferred premier, out from 49-28 two months ago. It also gauged opinion on two contentious budget measures: “an increase in the payroll tax paid by some businesses and high-fee independent schools”, which found 40% in favour and 27% opposed, and “an increase in land tax by around $1300 a year for property investors with average landholdings of $650,000”, for which 34% were in favour and 38% opposed. The poll had a sample of 1006 and combined results of the pollster’s last two monthly national surveys, conducted from May 10 to 14 and June 7 to 11. Since the budget fell between these dates, the questions relevant to it presumably had around half the total sample size.
Further evidence of Labor’s ongoing dominance was provided recently by Kos Samaras of RedBridge Group, whose polling of 1003 respondents in the Greater Melbourne area in late May had Labor on 44%, Liberal on 31% and the Greens on 12%. By my reckoning, this compares with results at the election of around Labor 40%, Liberal 31% and Greens 13%.
In other Victorian electoral news, the Victorian Electoral Commission has published exhaustive preference counts down to the final two candidates in 39 seats where they were technically unnecessary, since the winning candidate crossed the 50% threshold at an earlier point in the count. Most of the electoral commissions conduct exhaustive counts for informational purposes, but the VEC has not traditionally done so. I believe an exception was made on this occasion to address conspiracy theories about Daniel Andrews’ seat of Mulgrave, propagated in part by a Liberal candidate with a penchant for Trumpian rhetoric. Michael Piastrino in fact failed to make the final count, having been outpolled by independent candidate Ian Cook. Information earlier published by the VEC established that 22,976 ballot papers (60.2%) had Andrews ahead of Piastrino, with 15,191; we now know that 23,070 (60.8%) had Andrews ahead of Ian Cook on 14,854.
Can we please keep this thread for discussion of Victorian politics. The open thread for general discussion is here.
Victorian National party vote
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_National_Party
A couple of things.
Its total number of votes in 2022 is less than what it got in 2018 although they got more seats in 2022 than in 2018
The percentage of votes is more in 2022 than in 2018, which is 5%.
So if Victorian National party vote is at 5 %, then the total Victorian L-NP vote is 26% as per Resolve polling, then Victorian Liberals vote is 21%.
So the difference in PV of Victorian Labor and Victorian Liberals is 20%>
Victoria: The Jewel in the Labor Crown
Daniel Andrews reached the cult leader status. Why? Even after every effort from all of media and opposition he remains the leader for his supporters.
Your reminder that the Victorian political media acted like Mulgrave was in play (it doesn’t take much to find stories that said Andrews was “in danger of being voted out” of his own seat, not to mention the breathless reporting of Ian Cook’s unscientific “exit poll”! ) – and Andrews desperately unpopular with voters in general, and then wonder why their narratives about the Andrews government in general are disbelieved. The disbelief that voters are not out with pitchforks for the government over the state budget and IBAC inquiries just radiates off the page. But the figures are the figures.
The interesting one was that only 27% oppose the ‘horror’ budget as described by MSM.
That lurch to religious fundy crazy town is working out well.
Wow. While the “lemmings rushing over a cliff” story is an absolute crock , it somehow seems appropriate as a description of the Victorian Liberal Party, as well as its counterparts in some other States.
Polls may come and go, but the downward slide for the Libs seems to continue. The point that virtually nobody believes either in them or the media that slavishly supports them is absolutely salient.
Federally, one poll has Dutton on net zero in for and against ( to use a sporting expression).
Surely Dutton has to push for Federal intervention in the Vic Libs in order to save remaining seats and his own job.
Well how is Dutton going to intervene? Measures that push the Victorian Liberal Party even further to the right? Or hold his nose and go the other way totally against his own personal philosophies and those of the Mainstream Murdoch-rag Media? Perhaps he could somehow engineer the Queensland LNP to do a deSantis and shunt off the few migrants willing to stomach Queensland racism down to Melbourne.
Dutton intervening to help the VicLibs would be like the pork pie factory intervening to help pigs.
Poor Dan! In the MSM he is ‘embattled’! As we were driving through Melbourne last night, my wife at the wheel, I lost count of the roadwork and rail projects. Victoria is clearly ‘on the move’! I think he’d take 62/3 for and bugger all against.
As for federal intervention in the state libs? They need to get Craig Thompson in, at least he could organise a root in a brothel.
@ Rex 8:49am.
Love that gen z statistic. Add in the reduction in older voters due to death and the net loss for the Libs in votes could be pushing 500k. (Assumptions 2/3s of older voters lean LNP and 4/5 younger lean progressive).
I’m in NSW so not in tune with Vic politics but we certainly get doses of Dan Bad, Labor bad from the MSM here
Time to give Brad Battin a bat? At least the rank and file would probably provide a period of unity.
Is there a link to the updated two-candidate VEC counts anywhere? The results for seats on the VEC website don’t seem to have changed.
My elderly mother in law who lives in my home state of WA told me the other
day that the only reason Magowan got in was because of Covid.
I pointed out to her that Magowan had been Premier for at least 2 years BEFORE covid .
She lives 20 kms outside of Busselton , and writes objections to every development put forward
in the town.
The old conservatives are as dumb as dirt.
I see Victorian LNP going the same way as WA.
P.S. I think that anyone over 80 should be removed from the electoral roll.
they are voting about a future that is not there’s.
The problem with Kos Samaras saying its not cyclical is the ALP did suffer a 2% swing at the last state election and the era of tougher budgets has only just started.
Kelta, I think everyone who votes LNP, ON and Clive’s cluster should be taken off the electoral roll! (Not really – it is a democracy, after all.)
My 8o+ year old father was handing out for the Greens at the last election, with his Granddaughters. Not all the oldies are greedy proto-fascists.
How can the same democratic system produce Bob Hawke and Ralf babet?
I wonder, from an ALP point of view, whether it’s a good idea to field a candidate even if they have a realistic chance of winning the seat. Do the ALP want Pesutto or a more conservative Opposition Leader? And what about the people of Victoria?
Arky says:
Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 8:48 am
Your reminder that the Victorian political media acted like Mulgrave was in play (it doesn’t take much to find stories that said Andrews was “in danger of being voted out” of his own seat, not to mention the breathless reporting of Ian Cook’s unscientific “exit poll”! ) – and Andrews desperately unpopular with voters in general, and then wonder why their narratives about the Andrews government in general are disbelieved. The disbelief that voters are not out with pitchforks for the government over the state budget and IBAC inquiries just radiates off the page. But the figures are the figures.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
98.6 remembers :
We heard Melbournians would vote out Dan because they had the longest, biggest, massive, greatest, extensive lockdowns in the history of the universe.
We heard McGowan would be voted out because he was the king of the hermit kingdom and closed, locked, sealed and slammed shut the WA borders.
We heard Queenslanders would vote out Annastacia because she defied PM Morrison and his sidekick Gladys when they both wanted open borders with NSW and QLD.
Who did we all hear this from ?
We all know the answer.
Thankfully, the majority of voters knew how to keep themselves safe during COVID and voted to thank their respective Premiers and Labor governments for helping them to do it.
Kelta says:
Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 11:02 am
P.S. I think that anyone over 80 should be removed from the electoral roll.
they are voting about a future that is not there’s.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
What if they live to be 90, 95 or 99 ?
I think most people over 80 in an aged care home will now be voting for Labor after July 1st.
A 2pp swing like that could see the Nats end up as the senior partner in the coalition. A 7% swing (if uniform for both Libs and Nats, and ignoring independents) would belt the Libs down to Eildon, SW Coast, Malvern, Narracan*, Mornington and Benambra – just six seats. Meanwhile, the only seat the Nats would lose to Labor is Morwell, which would leave them with eight.
(Hard to tell with Narracan because of Labor not contesting the by-election. Labor seem fairly dead in the Latrobe Valley, so I’ll keep it blue.)
Meanwhile at the other end of the pendulum, a decent swing to the Greens would put Northcote, Pascoe Vale, Preston and Footscray on the table, with Albert Park also getting an ALP/Grn 2cp margin.
If all of that happens (yeah, I know this is fantasy football, but it’s interesting)…
ALP 66 (+10)
Nat 8 (-1)
Green 8 (+4)
Lib 6 (-13)
Yowch. Coming fourth in a two party system… that’s a paddlin’.
If that happened, there’s zero chance of Greens becoming the official opposition – even if there wasn’t a coalition and the Nats dropped a seat or two to independents, there’d be an Lib-Nat alliance of necessity like what currently exists in WA.
Counter to the above: Labor copped some big swings in the northern and western suburbs of Melbourne in 2022 (over 10% in Greenvale, Kalkallo, Mill Park, St Albans, Thomastown and Yan Yean). They went into the election with 12 seats over 20% and came out with none – two became marginal ALP/Grn seats (Preston and Footscray), but the rest were standard ALP/Lib. Lockdowns and the “I hate Dan” hysteria will be a distant memory by 2026, so an overall swing to Labor could mean big fat swings to Labor in those areas, while leaving the Libs’ more vulnerable seats alone.
Another way of looking at a 62% 2pp is as a 5% swing to Labor from 2018 (pretending Covid never happened). It’s hard to tell because there was a redistribution before 2022, but the Lib result would be… erm… slightly less horrific. That election left them with a soft underbelly of marginal seats in the eastern suburbs that hasn’t gone away.
Anyway, bring on the Warrandyte by-election!
Good insight Birdy. These numbers could just mean a reversion to the norm in the oh so many safe ALP seats pre 2022. The big swings in those electorates were exactly where the anti Dan crowd was centred. Lots of reasons for that.
It doesn’t really help the libs, but it shouldn’t make them contemplate a bridge late at night. They do need to figure out how to get out of this hole though. Mandatory voting is not serving the religious nutters well.
Sorry Ven – You don’t get to this kind of dominance based on some kind of culty “marmite” approach to politics.
The “cult of Dan” stuff is just a media trope: sure there are partisans on both sides but that probably adds up to about 30% rabid for and 30% rabidly against. Doesn’t get you to this kind of result.
The sad (for media) fact is that there is a significant chunk of of Victorians who just think Dan is a reasonable leader who went through some tough calls and runs a good government that does not make too many mistakes. They don’t think he’s Mao, just nothing to vote out.
As I said in another thread, Dan Andrews is the greatest premier since Federation and is a Labor legend and then you have Minns…ha, ha, ha!
Whoever in the Vic ALP was first to say “why don’t we remove all the level crossings?” should go down in history as a saint.
Clem – What you don’t think he rates against the premiers pre-federation? The Victorian Premiers in the Victorian era were generally fairly terrible. There were some good ones but mostly they were rubbish.
Bloody hell, the VEC don’t make those preference distributions easy to get at. Excel files? C’mon.
VEC seem to be the polar opposite of NSWEC, where you can get literally any 2cp pair in any seat automatically generated (even something silly like Socialist Alternative vs Family First). Not doing that is understandable if they don’t have computer entry of ballot papers, but not even bothering to count out a 2cp margin properly (and then making it seem like a special occasion that they’re doing so) is just lazy. Footscray is a good example: likely an ALP/Ind 2cp in 2006, and almost certainly an ALP/Grn 2cp in 2018, but we’ll never know.
Bird of paradox: I disagree with downplaying the results in the west and north of Melbourne: there’s a multi-election shift out of dissatisfaction at getting taken for granted, and Labor being blase about it is going to eventually turn western Melbourne into another western Sydney. The state MPs aren’t too bad – especially Katie Hall who is a star and saved Footscray for Labor – but federal Labor has a cast of complete dropkicks right through this area who collectively (regardless of faction or personal politics) need to be challenged for preselection by some candidates with a pulse. Libs and Greens both benefited without really trying at all.
(That’s not to suggest there are broader ramifications because there isn’t – it’s just a very evident backlash on local issues that seems to be sticking around.)
I’m not downplaying it, just throwing up possible explanations for a poll like this (assuming it’s right, of course). A result this much stronger than what was already a landslide for Labor must be coming from somewhere. If Labor’s red wall north of the Yarra has found a new normal, then the eastern suburbs is about to become a smoking crater for the Liberals. Living in a state where the Liberal party has been reduced to a faint squeaking noise (we have less Libs than you have Greens!), I guess it’s possible, but to happen twice?
I guess the Warrandyte by-election will be a good pointer (as was Aston). If Labor win that, then… crater time.
B.S Fairbairn wrote, “Clem – What you don’t think he rates against the premiers pre-federation? The Victorian Premiers in the Victorian era were generally fairly terrible. There were some good ones but mostly they were rubbish.”
I agree with you. They are irrelevant, so didn’t mention them.
As for that federal cast of dropkicks: the one I wonder about sometimes is Maria Vamvakinou, whose name I only ever see once every three years on the ABC call of the board when she wins Calwell yet again. 22 years is a long time to occupy a safe seat without ever being a minister. Reminds me of Alan Cadby, whose one and only notable moment was when the Chaser did a joke campaign for him to replace John Howard as PM (he’d been around for as long as Howard and accomplished sweet FA).
Lopsided defeats like NSW 2011 and WA 2021 usually have a few people like that. Barnacles blasted away, with no political legacy beyond the phrase “… who was that guy again?”
Labor did suffer huge swings in seats like Thomastown and Mill Park, which are not far from me. The demographics of my seat whilst not far in distance from these seats, had a somewhat different attitude to the pandemic.
I said it at the time and I will say it again, Embarrassing as it was, there were plenty of covidiots who not only railed against lockdown, but did not believe the virus was serious and were against vaccines. It was all Dans fault.
It was a frustrating time to say the least.
@bird of paradox 10:29pm
Agree completely, I don’t understand how parties can simply have seat warmers like that.
Reminds me of Melanie Gibbons who was a MP for a decade in the NSW LNP Gov’t and amounted to nothing. Yet when she was turfed out at preselection (mind you she wanted the safe federal seat of Hughes) they tried to get her on the senate ticket and then eventually threw her in to Kiana where she pulled third.
You have to wonder whether polls like this have any impact on the media outfits that ran all those rubbish stories about Dan the Dictator, Linsey Fox conspiracies etc etc. Clearly public embarrassment is not enough to change their ways, maybe a decline in readership will?
It’s disturbing that the Andrews government is fairly mediocre but gets away without having to improve its performance because the Opposition and the media in Victoria are so pathetic. Even as a committed ALP voter you would have to be a bit nervous that the lack of opposition and decent investigative journalism risks the government going down the path of the last ALP government in NSW.
Any positive change seems a long way off.
I absolutely love that after all the ridiculous conspiracy theories over the VEC not doing a 2CP count between Andrews & Cook – despite it being completely irrelevant because his primary vote was over 50% anyway – that his 2CP margin vs Cook was actually even higher than it was against the Liberal!
Shuts down all those “They wanted to hide how close it really was” theories!
On another note, Bird’s comment from 4:09pm yesterday with the hypothetical seat count on these swings would be such a dream come true. 74 out of 88 seats held by Labor or the Greens, and the Liberals coming 4th in the seat count, would be incredible!
From today’s age:
Liberal women demand dumped MP Moira Deeming be reinstated
Do these people not actually want to be in government? The reinstates got up by one vote! The same margin as Pesutto won the leadership by…….
A house divided cannot stand.
This is why I think a split of the Victorian Libs might be likely this term. Most of the base want to embrace full on far right ratbag Sky After Dark Culcha War™ politics, while most of the parliamentary team is too focused on putting out the fires they’re lighting everywhere.
It’s probably going to hit a breaking point sooner or later.
Nice seeing you back Trent.
@Bird of paradox
There was a 4% swing on 2pp and a 6% on primaries in Kalkallo, not 10%+
Right you are – it was Kororoit. (Wrong K seat.) That came from a 2 min eyeball of the Wikipedia article… yeah, I’m not from there. 😉
Labor copped a 20% plunge on primary vote there. Went to a combination of Vic Socialists, DLP and Family First. VS managed to come third there, ahead of the Greens. (Also did so in Thomastown.)
VS were unlucky not to get an upper house seat – they clearly put a hell of a lot of effort into the lower house seats in that part of Melbourne. I can actually believe they knocked on 180,000 doors. I wonder if they’ll keep the energy up for 2026.
I can’t see a split in the state Libs happening – the only way it could happen would be if someone could unite the rest of the party enough to whack the Bev McArthur seven and cut off the extreme fringe. It certainly won’t be Pesutto, and I have great doubts anyone else could pull it off, unless say, Battin did a deal with the moderates.
Much more likely that they’re just going to hang around keeping Andrews in office for as long as he feels like staying on, and then continuing to be an ongoing gift to Premier Allan.