John Pesutto chalks up a first-time victory over Jacinta Allan in latest Resolve poll

John Pesutto has for the first time overtaken Jacinta Allan as preferred premier among Victorian voters despite weeks spent in a high-profile court battle that exposed deep divisions inside his team.

The findings are contained in a survey by Resolve Political Monitor, conducted exclusively for The Age, showing 30 per cent of voters now back the opposition leader as the best person to run the state, compared with 29 per cent who back Allan.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto is ranked as the preferred premier in the latest RPM poll.Credit: Chris Hopkins

It is the first time Pesutto has led his Labor opponent since taking on the opposition leadership, after trailing Daniel Andrews throughout his first year in the job. He had one higher result with 32 per cent of voters preferring him as premier last September, but he still trailed Andrews (41 per cent) at that point.

Pesutto has steadily eroded Allan’s lead as preferred premier since she took the role last year. A Resolve poll in October last year reported that Allan was preferred premier for 38 per cent of voters compared with 19 per cent for Pesutto. In the last polling period in September, her lead had narrowed to 1 point.

The newest poll results also showed the first lift in Labor’s primary vote since Allan took over from Andrews as leader, although the Liberals and Nationals maintained a 10-point lead on primary vote.

Although a two-party preferred result is not published as part of the RPM poll, Resolve director Jim Reed said the latest results would put the Coalition narrowly ahead of the government.

Reed said the result appeared to reflect voters switching away from Allan rather than backing alternatives, with 41 per cent of respondents refusing to pick either leader as preferred premier.

“The most popular choice is undecided, which you can also read as being none of the above,” he said.

“It’s probably more of an indictment of the incumbent given few of the comments are complimentary of the Liberals or Pesutto. There is a theme of protest against Labor and what they’re doing, however.”

Reed said Pesutto emerging as preferred premier would be a psychological victory for an opposition leader who had spent the past few months locked in a court case with expelled Liberal MP Moira Deeming.

Throughout that court case, the public heard damaging evidence of divisions within the Liberal Party, including party room meetings and negotiations that were secretly recorded.

The saga also sparked a week of public discussions about a leadership challenge that ultimately fizzled out. Multiple MPs canvassed colleagues about taking over the leadership, but a spill motion was never introduced.

Support for the major parties increased over the past two months, with Labor and the Coalition each improving their primary vote by 1 percentage point to 28 per cent and 38 per cent respectively.

This came directly from a drop in support from the Greens and independents. Labor’s primary vote improvement is the first time the party’s standing has risen since Allan became premier in September 2023, but still represents a significant fall from the 39 per cent vote share it commanded at that time.

Similar results in previous polls have placed Labor narrowly ahead because of preference flows, but the declining Greens vote has changed this equation.

Reed said the results appeared to reflect a trend observed in other jurisdictions, such as Queensland and the ACT, in which support for the Greens was easing after previously being on the rise.

“They’re not huge shifts month by month, but their vote is also being spread over more seats now,” he said.

“In other words, the Greens are appealing to fewer people in more places, which does not help them gain and retain seats in the inner cities.”

Last week, after the RPM poll was conducted, Greens deputy leader Sam Hibbins resigned from the party over a breach of party rules involving a consensual relationship with a staff member.

On Tuesday, this masthead also reported that support for the Greens federally had fallen to its lowest level since February.

Local council election results this week have also shown the Greens either losing ground or holding steady in their traditional inner-city bastions around the cities of Yarra, Darebin and Melbourne. The party significantly improved its primary vote in the Merri-bek council election.

The survey period coincided with the Allan government’s housing blitz, in which it announced a raft of policies aimed at approving affordability through increased supply, including adding 50 new high-density activity centres, stamp duty exemptions for off-the-plan apartments and townhouses, and a reform of subdivisions to make it easier to get a planning permit for a second dwelling.

In a direct pitch to younger voters, Allan said she wanted to be the “the premier who got Millennials into homes”, and declared them the main characters of the economy.

Monash University politics lecturer Dr Zareh Ghazarian said this was unlikely to deliver a short-term boost in overall public support, but would form part of a long-term strategy going into the 2026 election.

“It is important that the Labor Party, in terms of the overall strategy, started to talk about it early because, obviously, it’s going to take up a lot of investment and a lot of political capital,” he said.

“Over the next couple of years, it is going to be Labor’s responsibility to demonstrate how those policy ideas have, in fact, worked in practice by the time people go to vote.”

Ghazarian said the past 12 months had been difficult for Labor, and the party had taken some “electoral knocks” along the way.

“Timing is also a factor. The government is now 10 years old,” he said. “Voters tend to turn away from long-term governments in Australia, so it’s expected that they will be losing support.”

As part of its surveys, Resolve Political Monitor probes the intentions behind people’s vote. Labor voters said they felt the party was more focused on helping everyday people.

Coalition voters said they were disappointed by the government’s action on crime, protesters and debt.

Victoria’s net debt is expected to peak at $187.8 billion by the middle of 2028.

“Nobody could leave the state in as bad a position as Labor have,” one respondent said. “We need to change.”

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