YouGov poll reveals LNP and Labor neck and neck

The Palaszczuk government’s polling is now definitively at its lowest ebb since 2016 – a deeply concerning result that will send shockwaves through the party ahead of the Christmas break.

A state election held this weekend would be too close to call, with the LNP leading Labor on primary votes but still just shy of the support usually required to win in its own right.

And in a worrying sign for both major parties, the exclusive YouGov poll for The Courier-Mail shows the Greens vote is locked in at 13 per cent across the state and support for One Nation is holding up at 11 per cent.

YouGov’s two-party preferred model has the parties tied at 50-50, the same result as when the last poll was taken in June.

David Crisafulli’s LNP and Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor Party are tied at 50-50 on two-party preferred, according to a YouGov poll.

Other than a brief period after former deputy premier Jackie Trad’s trainwreck of a year in 2019, the Palaszczuk Government’s polling is now definitively at its lowest ebb since 2016 – a deeply concerning result that will today send shockwaves through the party ahead of the Christmas break.

Labor strategists will also be concerned about the net-negative result in today’s polling on the critical election-defining question of whether the state is heading in the right or the wrong direction.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, 54 per cent of respondents agreed things were looking up – with a massive +27 result on that question, the biggest net-positive result since the early months of the Palaszczuk Government in 2015.

Today just 40 per cent of respondents think Queensland is heading in the right direction, compared to 41 per cent who think things are going wrong.

When the Bligh Government was demolished at the 2012 election, the result on this question was negative-3 – with 47 per cent still believing that things were going well with 50 per cent saying the state was heading in the wrong direction.

Prior to the 2015 election, it was 52-41 on the positive side.

The fact that the Premier’s satisfaction rating is now – alongside the party’s primary vote – also in the net-negative when compared to the LNP for the first time since before the pandemic will set phones ringing across the Labor caucus this afternoon.

As the government lurched from one crisis to another this year, Labor bosses have been reassuring worried backbenchers that the Premier’s personal popularity would offset any major electoral impact.

But this poll puts paid to that assurance.

When Labor snuck over the line at the 2015 election, its primary vote was 37.47 per cent – and the LNP’s 41.3 per cent (compared to YouGov’s campaign poll result finding of 38-41).

This YouGov poll of 1000 voters last week has the Labor primary vote at 34 per cent, and the LNP at 38 per cent.

At the 2017 state election the Labor vote was 35.4 per cent compared to the LNP at 33.7 per cent.

In the pandemic poll of 2020, Labor won 39.6 per cent of the primary vote and the LNP 35.9 per cent.

The recent Victorian election saw 37 per cent of voters give their first preference to Labor, and 34.4 per cent to the Liberals.