We now have a quiet period following the federal election and the Tasmanian election, and I’m using it as an opportunity to complete my election guides for the elections next in the queue.
The South Australian election guide has already been published for some time, but today I’ve published my Victorian election guide.
The Victorian election will be held in November 2026, so that is 15 months from now.
The guide features profiles of all 88 Assembly contests and the 8 Legislative Council regions. These profiles feature results tables, historical information and maps.
Most of the guide is exclusively available for Tally Room members. To become a Tally Room member, sign up as a donor for $8 or more per month via Patreon. Those of you who have been donating $5 or more for a while now are still grandfathered in with access (and if you have trouble with access let me know).
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While there won’t be as much public attention on Australian elections over this year, there will still be plenty of stuff to do. We have redistributions in two Australian states and a territory, and a state redistribution in Queensland. A federal redistribution will be held in Queensland next year, and state redistributions will also take place for Western Australia and both territories.
I’m also hoping the downtime will create more space for things like history podcasts. Either way, your support will help balance out the cycle of interest in elections. If you find this work useful, please sign up.
To give you a taste of what is available, I’ve unlocked four profiles. I tried to pick a range of interesting contests:
- Mornington – a seat the Liberal Party barely held on to against an independent in 2022.
- Richmond – a seat the Greens hold in inner city Melbourne.
- Yan Yean – a marginal northern suburbs Labor seat – the kind of seat that has been becoming stronger for the Liberal Party relative to the rest of Victoria.
- Northern Metropolitan – this upper house region elected Adem Somyurek in 2022. It contains the Greens’ best areas but also outer suburban areas.
I am also planning to publish a guide to the NSW state election later this year, and a partial guide for the next federal election, covering the 100 electorates unaffected by redistribution. Those will be fully available for $8+ Patreon donors.
Craig,
What is actuals?
@Spacefish – Actuals: 34.56/31.82/12.2 Lab Lib Grn. 56.35/43.65 2PP Vic. Take that for what it is worth.
It was more of a commentary that Demos , like other pollsters, expected the Liberals to either win or force Labor into a minority which clearly didn’t happen. Liberals seem to underperform their polls. Of course that’s just the national election but only in Tas was the situation reversed. *Actuals* being the real vote totals from May compared to the polls.
The libs should be happy to get 8-11 seats. I think labor is a chance to win Richmond and Croydon. In regards to preferences instead of preferencing one of the other the libs should just preference against the incumbents when it comes to grn vs lab. This puts a strain on both their resources.
@Craig All Fed election polls were somewhat wrong, Demo’s isn’t special.
I do agree they do need improvement in Resolve Redbridge to have a good chance of winning in 14 months time.
I doubt they’re gonna win regardless labor is unpopular but not in the right places to unseat the govt
All federal election polling underestimated Labor and overestimated the coalition. DemosAU wasn’t the most far off. You might recall Victoria was grossly overhyped as a battleground state. Statewide polling before the federal election indicated a swing away from Labor. There was talk about replacing Jacinta Allan if Labor were to lose 3 federal seats in Victoria. The final result was a statewide swing to Labor and a net gain of 3 seats.
New polling out appears to be worsening for the Liberals if this continues then there could be a leadership spill but I don’t think changing the leader will improve their fortunes in the slightest rather what the party is trying to sell.
Are you talking about Federal polling, SpaceFish, or Vic state polling? Federal 2PP has been bouncing around 55-45 in favour of Labor, give or take. Labor has been on an upswing in Vic, the latest poll had Labor up 53-47.
I’m referring to the state polling
If the Liberals think Battin is the problem they are laughing. He is way up on personal approvals (especially compared to JA) and his recent cabinet re-shuffle actually promoted some high achievers who are working the community well and leveraging social media properly. The reason the Coalition can’t make headway in the polls is the backroom dealing and gossiping that distracts the party from actually holding Labor to account, what a useless bunch of clowns seriously.
Does anyone know how Bonham calculated his 2PP from the Resolve poll? I suspect not only is the generic IND vote way too high and some of that ends up getting distributed to the majors (both Demos and Redbridge found the LNP primary north of 35% keep in mind) but OTH at 15% probably includes a fair whack of PHON vote that will flow to the LNP at a better rate that generic OTH did at the last election for example. Looks more like margin of error on 2PP that poll.
Maxim, I agree Battin presents quite a strong image similar to LNP leader David Crisafulli in the leadup to the 2024 Queensland election. His tough on crime campaign does work well given the perception of high violent crime rates in Victoria and Melbourne.
The problem for the Coalition in Victoria is that they have a very limited number of targets currently, unlike the Queensland LNP who had several marginal seats in regional centres compared to Victorian Labor who hold most regional seats with stronger margins (over 5%).
@Maxim Agreed, polls are still tight despite the disaster of the Coalition federal campaign, he leads Jacinta as preferred premier (a metric that always favours incumbents) and leads her by 30 on net approval (+9 vs -21).
I would say this Resolve is around 51-52% for Labor, given the last one was 53% and they dropped 2 points off primary vote since then.
You would have to assume that ON’s primary vote is higher than it was a year ago, like the rest of the country.
The Libs will have a problem in that they may need a 2pp of somewhere like 54% to scrape a majority. It is quite likely that in regional seats they could increase their already huge majority and there is a seemingly wider sense of grievance – bad roads, the fire services levy, roads, crime, patchy health services, power transmission lines, Gippsland train services – and a view that the Allan Government doesn’t care once you are outside Melbourne. It could become problematic for Labor in the LC and they might struggle to get second seats in some regions.
Redbridge poll today – ALP 52 LNP 48. Primary votes – Labor 32 Coalition 37 Greens 13.
Melbourne 54/46, Rural Regional 47/53.
The lion’s share of seats are in greater Melbourne. To do well, the Liberals need to up their game in Melbourne. The issue for the Liberals is that the disaffected voters in normally safe Labor seats aren’t running to them en masse. Tony Barry said this – “There are people who want to jump off the Labor bandwagon but at the moment the Liberals have not reached minimum expectation.”
What was the Melbourne ttp for 2022? I would be interested to see individual seat polling.
@Spacefish I think last election was about 58-59% Labor in Melbourne, and about 53% LNP outside of it.
So this poll actually has a smaller urban-regional gap than the last election did.
So that would translate to a swing against Labor of 4%-5% which would definitely see Labor lose some skin. That still isn’t enough to knock the ALP out of government or even make it a minority government which isn’t a great position for the LNP to be in.
Spacefish a 4-5% swing would absolutely push them into minority. 8 seats to the liberals makes them down to 46 seats. Then you’ve got to take into account seats to the greens. Then take into account that’s not a universal swing so it pushes labor to the very edge of a minority at best.