NewsBite

John Black

February

Opinion polls this week, including the Resolve Political Monitor poll in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age,  had Labor heading for a big defeat.

Tips for reading the polling on who will win the election

In terms of measuring how the primary vote stands for the major parties at the moment, the Resolve poll could be right, after all.

The Victorian state ALP primary vote was tracking down the latest January Resolve poll in a bad sign for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s chances in the federal election.

Victoria byelection results could be terminal for Albanese

If state Labor and the Greens can’t hold state seats such as Werribee and Prahran in Victoria, things are looking terminal for the Albanese government.

December 2024

It’s starting to look like Albo could be getting some new neighbours at Copacabana come next winter.

It looks like Albo might need that beach house in 2025

There is a disconnect between the prime minister’s regime and its senior ministers, which is starting to trigger bad memories for me of the Whitlam government.

October 2024

David Crisafulli gives his victory speech.

Labor can take no comfort from Queensland election

ALP candidates won over many traditional Green voters on Saturday, but there is little sign of the party picking up federal seats in early 2025.

Greens leader Adam Bandt at a press conference in Perth on Thursday.

Queensland vote a pivotal moment for Greens

Unlike in the 2022 federal election, the Coalition is preferencing Labor ahead of the Greens for this weekend’s state election.

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Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton ahead of the 2024 Queensland election.

Labor’s chance of holding on to power was slim. Now it’s wafer thin

Anthony Albanese’s chances of holding an angry caucus together at the next election were already low, now they have withered to almost nothing.

September 2024

 Peter Dutton is still on the nose with female professionals. But the blokes don’t mind him. Dutton is now running level pegging with Albanese for preferred Prime Minister.

Both sides have a chance of forming minority government

My current estimates are that the Coalition will comfortably win more seats in the House of Representatives than Labor next year.

July 2024

The Muslim vote was a disaster for Starmer and could be for Albanese

An analysis of the 23 seats in the UK where Muslim Vote candidates opposed Labour, resulted in an unmitigated disaster for the party. Repeated here, it would be a wipeout for Labor in western Sydney.

March 2024

How migrants are changing the face of Australian politics

Aspirational migrants and their families will be the fastest growing demographic chunk of suburban Australia for at least the next two decades.

The support base for Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party is getting bigger.

State polls position Albanese for a second term

Polling booths around the country show Labor’s support base is growing enough for another narrow federal win.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the new member for Dunkley, Jodie Belyea, on their way to Oliver’s Corner cafe in Frankston on Sunday morning.

Dunkley exposes further shift away from major parties

With the core demographics exposed and projected nationally, the byelection points to a narrow majority for Labor in 2025.

February 2024

Aspirational parents move to the independent school sector as soon as they can afford it.

Working women swing to Labor – and to private schools

As soon as families can afford it, they have been switching to independent schools. No amount of public money is likely to reverse that soon.

December 2023

Odds for 2024 point to another close Labor win in 2025

A growing number of Australian voters are looking for genuine leadership in both major parties, but find them wanting.

October 2023

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks after the defeat of the Voice referendum.

Dutton understands Labor voters better than Albanese

Coalition wins for the No vote from 2022 Labor two-party preferred voters were huge, and spread across what used to be safe ALP outer-suburban or provincial city seats.

The result in Saturday’s referendum was defined by demographics.

Demographics explain how we voted on Saturday

The haves voted to share their wealth, the have-nots wanted someone to notice them, too.

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We’re still looking at a national Yes vote around the low forties and Yes losing every mainland state.

Tracking the Voice decline starts with Albanese

Having made a hot mess of the referendum, Albanese is now offering to work with the opposition in the unlikely event the Yes case wins. It’s all a year too late.

September 2023

Albanese, cursed with the first-term hubris of a Labor PM, took personal charge of the referendum processes.

Albanese will have only himself to blame for losing the Voice

ALP campaign veterans are now trying to work out how the prime minister has diminished the Yes vote to its current desperate position.

July 2023

The LNP’s Cameron Caldwell has won the Fadden byelection

Dear Albo, here’s why Fadden shows your honeymoon is over

Young voters deserted Labor in the Fadden byelection and renters turned on the Greens. Tarting up the result as anything other than trouble for the Albanese government is a mistake.

May 2023

It’s less rosy than it looks for Labor

The next two years look a lot tougher than the first and, like Howard in 1998, Albanese would be well advised to take some substantial economic reforms to the next election.

March 2023

LThe seats that swung to Labor on Saturday were dominated by a combination of thirty-something aspirational swinging voter parents and forty-something dual-income professionals, sticking to Labor in their late forties, instead of making the traditional move to the political right.

Albanese’s aspirational left piggybacks NSW Labor to close win

Meanwhile, the genuine battlers in our community are drifting off to the Coalition via right-wing fringe parties.

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/by/john-black-p53670