Let's look at how the polls have moved in the past six or so weeks. Budget's rarely move opinion polls; however, the May 2026 Budget was an exception. Both the Coalition and Labour dropped in popularity around the Budget and One Nation picked up the lion's share of that drop. Since then we have seen relative stability. One Nation has dropped a touch, and the Greens and Others are up a touch. The Coalition and Labor have barely moved.
Because the reaction to the May Budget appears to have been both quick and significant, I have loosened the day-to-day innovation term in my Gaussian random walk model from 0.1 to 0.15 percentage points. This term is the standard deviation of the day-to-day change in underlying voting intention: a larger value lets the modelled series move more rapidly in response to genuine shifts. It also means the model is less able to filter out noise, and the median lines will not be as smooth as they were previously.
The aggregation tells a story of a fracturing major-party vote. Labor's primary has fallen almost continuously across the year, sliding from the high 30s to a current median of 27.9 percent, well below its 34.6 percent result at the 2025 election and the lowest point in the series. The Coalition has fared no better, drifting down from around 30 percent to 20.6 percent, with a notable step-change late in the year and only a brief plateau through autumn before resuming its decline.
The clear beneficiary is One Nation, whose primary has surged from roughly 8 percent to 28.5 percent, overtaking both major parties at the very end of the period and tracking above its 6.4 percent election result by a wide margin. The Greens have been broadly stable in a narrow band, lifting modestly to about 12.5 percent, while the "Others" vote has eased from the mid-teens to around 10.8 percent. In short, support has drained out of both Labor and the Coalition and flowed substantially to One Nation, leaving a contest where three forces now sit within roughly seven points of one another rather than the familiar two-party structure.
While it looks like Labor and the Coalition have each fallen a similar amount in the polls, around 7 and 7.3 percentage points respectively, this comparison uses each party's mid-2025 polling level as the starting point. A fairer benchmark is the 2025 election result, which is what each party actually achieved at the ballot box. Measured this way, the picture changes sharply. Labor won 34.6 percent in 2025 and now sits at 29.5 percent, a loss of about 5 points. The Coalition won 31.8 percent and has fallen to 22.4 percent, a collapse of more than 9 points. The reason for the difference is that Labor was polling above its election result through mid-2025 (a post-Election honeymoon) and only later sank below it. The Coalition, by contrast, was already polling below its 31.8 percent election result from the outset and kept falling from there. So although the two parties have shed a similar amount in the polls since mid-2025, the Coalition's decline relative to its actual electoral support is nearly double Labor's, and One Nation has absorbed almost all of the combined loss, rising from 6.4 percent at the election to 25.3 percent today.
I am now applying the same Bayesian aggregation techniques I use to the opinion polling. I wrote extensively about those techniques here. The results are as follows:
Now that we have enough data (around 40 national polls since the last election), we can start looking at a Bayesian aggregation using a Gaussian random walk to estimate voting intention from day to day. I will tease with the chart that intrigues me the most: the rise of the One Nation Party since the 2025 election.
It's time for another polling update. We will start with the primary voting intention polls. Of note, there is a substantial divergence between polling firms. In the last couple of weeks we can see one pollster with the Coalition primary vote share at 24 per cent and another at 33. On the other side of the fence one pollster had Labor's primary vote share at 33 per cent and another over 38 per cent.
Overall, the Greens and Others are little changed since the election. Labor's post election honeymoon may be coming to an end. The Coalition's post-election decline may be stalling. One Nation's post-election renaissance may be slowing. However all of these observations are couched in the context of very noisy and somewhat contradictory voting intention data from the various polling firms.
The remarkable thing in the latest batch of polls is the continued rise of the One Nation Party.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As a Bayesian, my prior assumption for first term governments is that they have a reasonably high probability of being re-elected come their first election as a Government. Yes there are exceptions (particularly for state governments), but Federally they have been rare. The only one term Federal government was the Scullin Labor Government that lost the 1931 election, albeit in the midst of the Great Depression. Since the 1920s, there have been more than 20 one term state governments. Recent examples include Napthine, 2014, Victoria; Campbell, 2015, Queensland; Giles, 2016, Northern Territory; and Marshall 2022 South Australia). However, even with the states, one term governments are not the norm.
When the Albanese government was elected in 2022, I assumed Labor would most likely go on to win a second term in 2025. While my intuition remains that Labor should win a second term, my confidence is much reduced. Particularly as the betting market and the final polls of 2024 give the Coalition a slight edge. For the avid poll watcher, it means 2025 will be much more interesting than I had originally anticipated. There is good chance of a very close election and a Parliament where neither of the major parties has an absolute majority. Furthermore, there is a moderate chance of a change of government following the election.
So let's look at the betting market. According to the collective wisdom of punters, the Coalition has a 55 per cent probability of forming government after the 2025 Federal Election.
