A significant move out of the undecided column was the highlight of this month’s KORE Poll, indicating the electorate is getting ready for an election to be called any day now (but nah, it’s not going to be December). We also asked about job approval and voting for independents.

This month’s sample (unlike last month) was a thing of beauty. 1245 usable responses after cleaning; half panel, half recruited; wonderfully balanced demographically with just women under 35 under-represented (which is normal in political polling); and responses recorded from all 151 electorates. Data below is weighted by age, gender, and state. Join the KORE Panel if you’d like to take part in our surveys.

First Preferences

First preferences are starting to increase for major parties and decrease for minor parties, which is normal as an election starts to become a bit more real. UAP remains stable and above 3%, so we’ll have to put them in the pick list from next survey onwards (please don’t @ us about it…). Undecided dropped a full 2 points, while The Greens got whacked in favour of a surge for Independents. There may be some bias in the sample given we were asking about independents in this survey, but we didn’t really recruit participants on that issue, and given the shift from Greens to Independents it’s more likely to be related to Simon Holmes à Court doing a bit of press around the Climate 200 initiative.

Effective Vote

Effective vote is calculated using the Hypothetical 6 question of asking respondents to rank 6 hypothetical candidates – ALP, Coalition, Greens, a moderate Independent, Minor Left and Minor Right party – and then effecting a preference vote for their electorate, based on the two candidate preferred count in the 2019 election. This is an attempt to find something better than the 2PP and properly account for the increasing number of seats that are not a battle between the two majors.

The effective vote gives us an indication of the likely seat breakdown, and thus is a better indicator of likely winner than the 2PP. Whereas last month wasn’t quite clear, this month is – a hung parliament in anyone’s language. Remember though, a poll is not predictive, it’s just a reflection of the mood of the electorate at the time it was taken.

EFFECTIVE VOTE	Percentage	Seats
Australian Labor Party	47.8%	72
Liberal Party/Nationals/LNP	46.6%	70
Others	5.6%	9

Yes, we’re aware other polls keep pointing at a strong ALP win. This is the third month our numbers have been in the hung parliament /dead heat vicinity. That’s not to say there will be a hung parliament, but the electorate is so far not impressed with either option.

Incumbent v Challenger

The other model we are testing this cycle to see if it is superior to the 2PP is a simple Incumbent versus Challenger measure. To get this figure we code if the respondent’s effective vote is for or against the sitting member. If the challenger figure is above 50% then the government is likely to change hands.

Are these numbers disagreeing again like last month?

Yeah. Well kind of, not as clearly as they were last month where the Effective was pointing to a narrow Labor win and the IvC saying no change in Government. This time it’s saying hung parliament, no change in Government. Which could very well be the case. We’ll continue to see how this plays out throughout the election, but the IvC correctly projected no change in Government from as early as January in 2019, and appears to be a month or two ahead of the Effective or First Preference movements. 

Momentum Tracker

You can read more about the Momentum Tracker in last month’s results post, although I have tweaked the numbers slightly this month so they’re a bit more logical. (Previously I excluded undecided voters from the momentum tracker score, but it looks like the numbers don’t add up, so rather than confuse people I’ve left them in now.)

The way it works is we calculate a score of how committed each respondent is to their declared vote intention. That score puts them in one of these 5 ranges:

• Uncommitted – the uncommitted voter is either so uninterested or unimpressed by the election there is a very high likelihood they will change their vote or not vote at all
• Soft – this voter may need a reason or catalyst to change their vote, but are actively looking to switch.
• Medium – if some significant reason presented itself they’d consider switching their vote.
• Firm – a near-certain vote. The voters may switch if the party or candidate they were intending to vote for did something stupid, unlikely to be swayed by another candidate or party.
• Hard – a locked-in vote. Nothing will budge it.

This month I’ve added the movement from last month, which allows you to see whether a party’s vote is hardening – as is the case with the Labor vote with the big drop in soft and big rise in hard voters; or stable, as with the PHON vote; or softening, as the other minor party vote is. It also allows you to see that while the Liberal and National coalition enjoyed a big jump in first preferences this month, most of that vote is uncommitted or soft.

If Independents were a party, I’d say they have the momentum with both an increase in vote share and a hardening of vote intention. Again, there may be some bias there because this survey asked about independents – we’ll find out next month if it was a blip.

Job Approval

Job approval figures are a widely used tool to gauge to the mood of the electorate and can sometimes be a better gauge than vote intention. We asked about 4 leaders – Morrison, Albanese, Joyce, and Bandt. We also asked about job approval of local members, although as is normally the case this is not particularly revealing with an equally balanced approve/disapprove result.

It is a fairly significant indictment on the state of Australian politics that only one of the four leaders has a disapproval rating under 50%, but Albanese really shouldn’t be happy about 48% disapprove. To those of us familiar with these kinds of numbers, the bigger concern is the whopping 23% who don’t give a toss about Albanese either way, and a ‘strongly approve’ number lower than Barnaby Joyce and the average local member.

The broader take home is that with the job approval for both major party leaders, and the leaders of the next two significant parties, being in the realm that makes political operatives sob with hopelessness, leadership will not be a factor in this election. We saw this in 2019 too, and the result was that many people made assessments on the quality of their local members rather than the leaders. Combined with the vastly different experience of the pandemic, this results in significant geographic differences and an election that is impossible to predict. Also: leadership spills are absolutely not out of the question.

Preferred PM

We asked about preferred PM two ways – a head-to-head of Morrison and Albanese, and an open text ‘if you could have anyone at all..’ question.

From the comments, most of the ‘I’m not sure’ responders were actually very sure that they wanted neither of the two major party leaders.

There was little consensus in who people would like as PM, with Batman, Grace Tame, Dan Andrews, and a long list of others nominated including the proverbial Drover’s Dog. The most popular by far was Penny Wong, nominated by some 200 respondents (16%). Then there was a lot of air… Then Craig Kelly, Tanya Plibersek, and Pauline Hanson all hovering around 5%, then a lot more air… Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese were in a large group getting around 1-2%.  This third tier includes former Prime Ministers like Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, NZ PM Jacinda Ardern, and leaders of far right wing micro parties. Aside from the rise in Craig Kelly’s personal name recognition, this largely tallies from the 2019 study, where Penny Wong also led the preferred PM and most popular politician by a long way with broad cross party support.

Of course, the second Senator Wong moved to the lower house and seriously contested for the Prime Ministership that support would plummet. But it would seem that a large number of people continue to daydream about the possibility.

Independents

A series of questions were asked about independents. It is worth noting that major press articles about the Climate 200 group came out during the sample period that may have altered the responses below (although the survey was closed before the Q&A episode).

Just over a third had previously voted for an Independent candidate. If people are going to vote independent, overwhelmingly it is going to be because they are simply the best candidate.

Previous research has found that the biggest obstacle to supporting an independent is not being able to find out much about them (particularly those candidates who don’t have a website), so it’s always interesting to ask whether people have trouble finding information about independent candidates. Some do, some don’t.

And the question I was really curious about is whether people still considered an independent candidate independent if they were endorsed by another organisation. For most people, it depends on what organisation is doing the supporting, and/or what support is being given. However, a solid 30% say no deal.

Question design may have been an issue here – this is the specific question asked: If an independent candidate is ensorsed or actively supported by an organisation, do you still consider them an independent? This may be a union, chamber of commerce, farming or environmental organisation, or a campaign organisation like a ‘Voices of’ group or GetUp.

Specifically, the comments indicated that being endorsed or supported by GetUp was a problem, other organisations not so much.

“Being endorsed by the likes of Get Up does NOT make them independent.”
65-74 year old Queensland voter

“I’d have voted yes if you hadn’t mentioned Getup. Their affiliation with the Labor Party – despite what they say – is indisputable.”
55-64 year old NSW voter

“GetUp is a left funded organisation for the Labor Party”
25-34 year old WA voter

By contrast, some were hoping for a ‘voice of’ supported independent to vote for, and that these local action groups made it easier to find out about their independent options:

“The “Voices of” candidate for this area hasn’t been announced yet but I am very interested to see who it is, and will likely vote for them as my first preference.”
35-44 year old NSW voter

“I’ve been watching with interest the Voices of movement. It seems to me women are putting their hands up and causing concern for those currently holding the various seats.”
55-64 year old Queensland voter

“I live in an LNP safe electorate- I would like a Voices Of candidate to be successful so we are more likely to have a member that respected the importance of climate action and a federal ICAC.”
65-74 year old NSW voter

The Voice Of candidates will be interesting to watch. As I have said elsewhere before, I remain concerned that some – not all – of these local groups are a bit swept up in the excitement of it, and don’t seem to grasp just how very hard it is to get an independent up. For an independent to have any chance they should in most seats they need to have committed to running by now, should already have their website and socials set up, and be actively campaigning. We wish them luck.

Next month’s poll will be on whatever happens at Glasgow.