Unfortunately, the polarisation and dogma around the issue renders most of the responses on climate change questions in any survey overly emotive, and this month’s questions on COP26 are no different. However, there’s no doubt most Australians think Scott Morrison is a liar and has damaged Australia’s reputation.
After cleaning, 1048 respondents from 150 electorates contributed to this month’s poll, with women under 35 not well represented. The climate questions created an imbalance in the sample with a high over-representation of left-leaning voters. This was expected and planned for, and managed through post-stratification.
First Preferences
Even with multi-layered post stratification and removing a couple of hundred ‘noise’ responses, there was an unmistakable large jump in support for Independents at the expense of the Greens, which seems to be linked to announcements of new candidates and climate issues. PHON also had a sizeable bump clearly linked to the ultimatum on vaccine mandates that happened during the polling window.
It’s unlikely the PHON bump will hold, given the entire far right vote is very fickle and not really party loyal, and very reactive to what ever is in the news (or more correctly, on the socials) at the moment. The independent bump is harder to read.
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. And this month there was a big jump in the effective vote for both the ALP and the cross bench, but we’re still not seeing a majority government indication.
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 | 49.1% (+1.3) | 74 (+2) |
| Liberal Party/Nationals/LNP | 42.9% (-3.7) | 65 (-5) |
| Others | 8.1% (+2.5) | 12 (+3) |
Yes, we’re still aware other polls still keep pointing at an ALP win (if we were doing a 2PP, we’d be reporting ALP 56 – LNP 44, but we’re not because it’s meaningless). While this month’s poll is more positive for Labor, this is the fourth consecutive month our numbers have been indicating a hung parliament. That’s not to say there will be a hung parliament, but there is no clear winner indicated by our numbers as yet.
Incumbent v Challenger
To get this alternative indicator we code if the respondent’s effective vote is for or against the sitting member. Theoretically if the challenger figure is above 50% then the government is likely to change hands. Despite the boost to Labor in the effective vote, most of that was increased participation in Labor held seats which translates to an even stronger indication of no change in government.
Are these numbers disagreeing again?
Yup. Well kind of. The hung parliament/no change in government is possible, and has been the consistent indication… but we’re not happy with these numbers not aligning in terms of momentum, so are going to try something different in the new year.
Momentum Tracker
The Momentum Tracker is part of our efforts to better understand the movement in the electorate. Momentum is the pollster’s unicorn – impossible to capture – but we’re always up for trying to do the impossible. This level of detail is really just for nerds.
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.
The momentum tracker reveals that Labor has been solidly hardening their support across most categories, and the Coalition has been increasing its hard vote, with the overall drop in vote intention being almost entirely uncommitted voters. The level of uncommitted voters should be falling as the election nears, and those blips in Independent and PHON votes are almost entirely in the uncommitted column, although the Independents do appear to have banked last month’s surge. The interesting number is again the Incumbent v Challenger, where the topline increase for the incumbent doesn’t reveal the far more significant hardening of the challenger vote.
COP26
The responses to the COP26 questions were disappointing. Generally, survey questions on anything foreign relations are a bit variable because the average voter isn’t well informed, and most won’t acknowledge that before giving a fairly shallow opinion (there’s plenty of studies on this). We tried to target really specific things in the questions, and have a reverse question format (do you agree with Australia not signing…) to make people stop and think a bit.But as you can see, the near identical responses to each of the three questions reflects that responses were largely partisan.
Where we did get some variation is when we asked about care factor. There were people of all partisan leanings that cared, or not, about COP 26, and a roughly similar proportion considered climate change in their vote decision. 
The break down of caring about climate change by first preference vote intention nicely reveals both the partisan nature of the response to this issue, and that there are people who care, or not, about climate change voting for every party. The ‘other’ responses are largely commenting that climate change is a hoax or similar.
Submarine Saga
The submarine saga was a bit of a storm in a teacup, but a fascinating one because it’s a real litmus test of Scott Morrison’s character and how voters view him.
Short version: Scotty’s a liar. Perhaps both are. But near no one thinks they’re both telling the truth.
Around the same strong majority thought it was inappropriate for Morrison to release the text message, but there was a sizeable number who either commented that it was ok in the circumstances or they believed all such communication should be public.
We asked people to answer in their own words what impact they think this little spat has had on our international standing. There were three themes that came through really strongly: people are embarrassed and think Morrison has made us the laughing stock of the world. The combination of COP26 and the submarine spat amplifies the issue.
We are an embarrassment and the current regime is untrustworthy, mendacious, malicious and unworthy of holding government.
Makes us look like a joke. Scott Morrison lies every time he opens his mouth.
Australia’s standing has been hurt by the double whammy of the stoush with Macron and our obstructive performance at COP26 at the same time.
We are the laughing stock of the world
Thanks to COP26 We are already a global laughing stock. THIS CONFIRMS IT.
Will Scotty the liar stick? It’s likely to be part of the way that he is viewed and will be difficult to shake, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into lost votes. We shall have to wait and see.
There will be no KORE Poll in December, we’ll be back in January.
Thanks for your great work