Summary outcome of the 2025 Australian Federal Election

Day 32 - 2025 Federal Election

Today we have a new Newspoll (52/48) in Labor's favour. The Bayesian aggregation is unchanged. We are looking at a result much like the previous election if the polls are correct.

Day 30 - 2025 Federal Election

At this point everyone expects Labor to form government following the election. The only question is whether it will be majority or minority government. Based on odds of \$6 (Coalition) and \$1.14 (Labor), the betting market has the probability of a Labor government at 84%. But betting markets must contend with the bookmaker's over-round and the favourite-longshot bias problem. It is reasonable to conclude that most punters think the probability of a Labor win is higher than this.

Day 28 - 2025 Federal Election

The betting market has been remarkably quiet over the past week. What follows is the table of raw odds in dollars for the party to provide the Prime Minister after the next election. I collect this data each day at around 6.30am (local Canberra time). Normally, this close to an election, the odds change every day. 

Day 25 - 2025 Federal Election

We have another Newspoll, in which Labor has a two-party preferred (2pp) vote share of 52 per cent (which is the same result as the previous two Newspolls). This is effectively the same result as the previous election (52.13 per cent for Labor). When I aggregate the pollster estimates, I get 51.9 per cent for Labor. 

Day 23 - 2025 Federal Election

I have been refining my code for the individual seats market at Sportsbet.com.au. Before we get to the charts for every seat, let me take you through the changes I have made.

Occasionally, Sportsbet suspends odds for a particular candidate in a seat, and sometimes it even removes an entire seat from the market for a few days. This morning, there were no odds at all for the seat of Franklin in Tasmania. Furthermore, the odds for a candidate in each of the seats of Bendigo (Vic) and Lyons (Tas) were suspended. In each of these cases I use the most recent odds available to calculate seat probabilities. However, to be transparent, when this occurs I add a grey bar to the seat probabilities chart. 

Second, I have changed the way I manage the favourite-longshot bias problem. Before I explain these changes, I need to explain why I do this. Counting favourites from each seat does not give a good picture of the Parliament that is likely to emerge. A better picture of the likely Parliament comes from summing the probabilities. But when I sum the simple probabilities, because of the favourite-longshot bias problem, I do not get enough Labor and Coalition seats (the typical favourites), and I get far too many seats for "any other candidate" (the long shot).  

To address this bias, I treat odds up to \$7.50 normally (ie. for probabilities greater than roughly 15 per cent after the bookmaker's overround). I inflate odds between \$7.50 and \$25 by multiplying them by their square root, this reduces the associated longer shot probability. Finally, I ignore odds over \$25. In many seats, the odds for any other candidate are set at \$26 (fairer odds in many of these cases might approach \$1000). 

With that aside, let's look at the likely Parliament according to the punters.

Day 20 - 2025 Federal Election

Yesterday we had an Essential poll with Labor on 50 per cent 2pp, the Coalition on 45 per cent and 5 per cent undecided (which I make as 52.6 to 47.4 percent with the undecideds distributed). This brings my aggregated poll of pollster 2pp estimates to 51.8 per cent in Labor's favour.

Day 18 - 2025 Federal Election

Today's Newspoll 52/48 in Labor's favour on the two-party preferred (2pp) metric is the same as the last Newspoll. My Bayesian models assume that if the national voting intention for Labor is 52 per cent, we will see a smattering of 53 and 54 polls, as well as a smattering of 51 and 50 polla. With the exception of Roy Morgan, we are not seeing polls above 52.5. And I start to worry when the polls do not have the variability I would otherwise expect. I am not yet concerned, nor am I alarmed, but I am watching. 

My Bayesian aggregation of Labor's 2pp is 51.1 per cent (based on pollster estimates). It is lower that the most recent polls, because they are clumped together, and it is balancing the absence of polls above the median with the earlier historical polls. For Roy Morgan, I am adjusting its recent polls as a separate series, because the relationship to the trend suddenly changed, suggesting a change in collection practice that impacts on the house-effects part of the model. 

Day 13 - 2025 Federal Election

Today, let's look the complete set of charts from the individual seats market. Overall, we can see another net seat with Labor in the lead. The two seats that were tied yesterday (McEwan and Robertson) have bounced to a Labor lead.

Day 10 - 2025 Federal Election

Twenty-seven days until the election on 3 May. The punters are firming on Labor winning this election.

Day 5 - 2025 Federal Election

Yesterday's polls were plentiful. Roy Morgan had Labor on 53 per cent of the two party preferred vote (unchanged on its previous print a fortnight ago). Newspoll had Labor at 51 per cent (up 2 on three weeks ago). Resolve Strategic had Labor on 50 per cent (up 5 from mid February) and Freshwater Strategy had Labor on 49 per cent  (unchanged from a fortnight ago).

As a consequence, all of my polling aggregation models have moved further in Labor's favour. But importantly, they suggest that the rate of movement towards Labor may be slowing or even coming to a stop. 

Day 4 - 2025 Federal Election

Today I am looking at the individual seat betting markets. These markets are tricky to analyse because of the favourite-longshot bias problem. To reduce the impact of this problem, I multiply the odds from each seat by its square root. This has the effect of increasing the odds for longshot outcomes, and thus reducing their probability. To calculate probabilities I take the reciprocal of the odds and then adjust for the bookmaker's overround.

From the individual betting markets we can deduce which parties might win the election. For example, we can count the party that is ahead in each seat. This suggests that the punters think the most likely outcome is one in which no party secures 76 of the 150 seats to form government in their own right.

Day 3 - 2025 Federal Election

Around lunchtime every day I take a snapshot of the odds for the winner of the next Federal Election at sportsbet. I use it as a barometer of public intuition for who might win the next election. At the moment it is very close. Today the win probabilities are effectively 50/50 for both Labor and the Coalition (ignoring the long shot outcome of any other party). 

Day 2 - Federal Election 2025

Today I spent some time looking at the published two-party preferred (2pp) opinion poll estimates for each of the Australian states and territories. [Note: I have excluded Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory because there was not enough polls for these jurisdictions]. 

We will start with the headline chart that shows the current state of polling compared with the outcome of the previous election. As you can see, with the exception of Queensland, Labor state polling is below what each State achieved at the 2022 Federal Election. In the three largest states, it is below 50 per cent. 

Friday 28 March - we have an Election date

It has happened. This morning a Federal election was called for Saturday 3 May. The Parliament has been prorogued (a fancy word for closed). The House of Representatives has been dissolved. The Government is now a caretaker government, and (by convention) it only takes major decisions in consultation with the Opposition.

Over the next six weeks I will be blogging most days on electoral and polling matters. Today we will look at the betting market and primary vote polling in the states.

The betting market

The betting market at sportsbet has moved around a bit over the past few days. Around noon today, it gave Labor a 52.6 per cent probability of winning the 2025 election. That is very close to even money, with Labor as the slight favourite going into this race.

Late March Update

An Australian Federal election is likely to called in the next few weeks, and could be called as early as this weekend. Yesterday, the betting market has saw Labor pull ahead as the favourite to form government after the election. 

Mid-March 2025 Update

Since Donald Trump was sworn in as the President of the United States of America, the Australian polls have been trending away from the Coalition. Now Labor is is ahead on all of my aggregation models of the two-party preferred vote. If an election was held now, the sizeable "third party" vote would see either Labor or the Coalition form minority government. 

Late February 2025 Polling Update

Two-party preferred

The localised regression has Labor on 49 per cent, and the Coalition on 51 per cent of the two party preferred vote (2pp/TPP). There is not much change since the start of 2025.

Betting and polling update: mid-February

With the Victorian by-elections on 8 February for two seats, we have seen some movement on the betting market for the next Federal election. Currently, punters are giving the Coalition a 58 per cent probability of forming government after the next Federal election. Note: the gaps in the following charts are those days where I did not collects odds from SportsBet.

Polling update mid January

January is normally a quite month for polling in Australia, and 2025 is no exception. Nonetheless there have been a couple of polls since Christmas 2024. These polls suggest little movement since Christmas in two-party preferred terms. You will note that I now indicate on the first house-effects chart below, those polling houses which I have constrained so that their house effects sum to zero. I exclude pollsters with fewer than 5 polls, and the prior methodologies from pollsters which have changed methodologies.