Labor loses ground in biggest states but Albanese still has edge on Dutton as PM

Voters have cut their support for Labor in the nation’s two most populous states and swung strongly against the party in the battleground of Western Australia, heightening the prospect of an election swing that wipes away the government’s majority in parliament.

The trend has cut the government’s primary vote from 33 to 29 per cent in both NSW and Victoria since the last election, putting Labor on course for defeat in key electorates unless it stages a dramatic turnaround next year.

Exclusive polling shows swings against Labor late in 2024 in two crucial states.Credit: Monique Westermann

Victorian voters have given the Coalition its biggest boost in support since the 2022 election among the mainland states, lifting its primary vote from 33 to 38 per cent, while NSW voters have increased their Coalition support from 37 to 38 per cent.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has kept his personal edge over Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in the two biggest states when voters are asked to name their preferred prime minister, ahead by 38 to 36 per cent in NSW and 36 to 34 per cent in Victoria.

But the exclusive findings, conducted for this masthead by Resolve Strategic, show the two leaders are closely matched at a national level, with 37 per cent support for Albanese and 36 per cent for Dutton.

The quarterly analysis of the Resolve Political Monitor is based on responses from 4831 voters from October to December 2024, continuing the trend seen in the previous quarter and confirming the shift from Labor to the Coalition since the May 2022 election.

Resolve director Jim Reed said the latest results confirmed his view that Labor would lose its majority at the election unless there was a significant change in popular support in the months ahead.

The most recent monthly Resolve Political Monitor showed the Coalition had 51 per cent support in two-party terms, slightly ahead of Labor on 49 per cent, assuming preferences flowed as they did at the previous election. The gap between the two is within the margin of error for the survey, leading Reed to warn of the volatility in the electorate.

“We’ve seen in recent years, here and abroad, that the axioms of politics no longer hold true,” he said.

“A lot of modern polling is about having the flexibility and ability to look at things that have never happened before.

“In 2022, we correctly anticipated that Labor would win with less than a third of the primary vote, that they would pick up seats in Western Australia, that the Greens would win seats in Brisbane, and that Liberal heartland would be taken by the teals.

“This time around we’ll be looking for things that go against the received wisdom, like the possibility of a first-term government being voted out, the Liberals winning seats in Victoria, the Greens losing seats, and independents being denied a second term.”

The quarterly survey shows the Greens have kept their primary vote at 12 per cent nationally but have slipped from 13 per cent to 11 per cent in the key state of Queensland – where they want to hold the three seats they won from the major parties.

Albanese took power in 2022 after Labor gained 52 per cent of the national vote in two-party terms, giving it 77 of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives. The House returns to 150 seats at the coming election, after changes to boundaries by the Australian Electoral Commission, and Labor currently holds 78 seats after winning the Aston byelection during this term.

The quarterly Resolve analysis finds only slight changes in Queensland for the major parties compared to the election results, with Labor showing a slight fall in its primary vote from 27 to 26 per cent and the Coalition increasing from 40 to 41 per cent.

The Liberal National Party lost the seat of Brisbane to the Greens after the party’s primary vote tumbled from 48 to 38 per cent, and it lost the seat of Ryan to the Greens with a similar slump in core support. The quarterly analysis does not show a sufficiently strong rebound in LNP support, at this point, to regain those seats.

The changes are more dramatic in Western Australia, where Labor hopes to hold the four seats it seized from the Liberals – Pearce, Hasluck, Swan and Tangney – and is also seeking the new electorate of Bullwinkel.

Labor has suffered a steep fall in its primary vote in Western Australia, down from 37 to 30 per cent since the election, and the federal Coalition has increased its support in the state from 35 to 37 per cent.

The findings for Western Australia show a slight improvement for Labor from the quarterly Resolve Political Monitor analysis for July to September, showing the party increased its primary vote from 29 to 30 per cent, but the gain to the Coalition has become more pronounced.

A higher primary vote for the Coalition raises risks for independent MP Kate Chaney in the Perth seat of Curtin, where ABC election analyst Antony Green estimates she holds the electorate by a margin of 1.3 per cent in two-party terms.

The threat to Labor appears greatest in Tangney, where former dolphin trainer Sam Lim holds the seat by a margin of 2.8 per cent in Green’s latest election pendulum.

The changes in Victoria cement the gains for the Coalition over the course of this year and highlight the relative weakness of the government after it staged two big victories in the state during this term, holding Dunkley in a byelection in March and winning Aston from the Liberals in a byelection in April last year.

The fall in the Labor primary vote from 33 to 29 per cent since the election is a slight deterioration for the government on the previous quarterly Resolve survey, showing its core support was 30 per cent in Victoria from July to September.

The strong gain for the Coalition in Victoria, up from 33 to 38 per cent, could be enough for it to reclaim Aston and win Chisholm and McEwen if replicated at the election.

The shift toward the Liberals also presents a risk to the two teal independents in Victoria, given that Monique Ryan holds Kooyong by a margin of just 2.2 per cent and Zoe Daniel holds Goldstein by 3.3 per cent in the ABC election pendulum.

A similar challenge has emerged for Albanese in his home state of NSW, where the Labor primary vote has fallen from 33 to 29 per cent and the Coalition has slightly increased its support from 37 to 38 per cent since the election.

The quarterly analysis collates figures from the Resolve Political Monitor each month rather than asking new questions, leading to a larger sample size that produces results with a margin of error of 1.4 percentage points for the national findings, much smaller than for monthly surveys.

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