Australia’s states often swing in different ways, with trends noticeable at the state level rather than just at the state or regional level. For this reason, I usually choose to measure 2PP results against the state result, rather than the national result.
At the 2010 federal election, the Coalition gained swings in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia, but Labor actually gained ground in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
It’s well known that Labor gained a much larger swing in Western Australia in 2022 – that swing was enough to push the government into a House majority and produced a clear progressive majority in the Senate.
This post isn’t as long or detailed as some of my others, but I wanted to touch on this angle because I think it will be quite important to the outcome of the election.
State polling right now is showing quite different pictures in each state. I’m using William Bowe’s BludgerTrack averages here. We don’t usually get state polling for Tasmania or the territories.
Despite an expectation that Labor’s support in Western Australia would recede to something much closer to their historic levels of support, but that hasn’t happened. If anything Labor right now seems to be likely to gain a swing there.
Labor is also doing better in New South Wales and South Australia (+1.2% and +1.8% respectively). Labor is also up in Queensland, which is significant because the Coalition holds a lot of marginal seats in south-east Queensland as well as Leichhardt and Flynn further north. Labor did gain a swing in Queensland in 2022 but fell a long way short of the results achieved when Kevin Rudd won in 2007, and Labor didn’t gain a single seat from the LNP – indeed they lost one to the Greens.
The only exception to this trend is Victoria. Victoria has been one of Labor’s best states for some time, but William’s poll average has Labor down 2.4% in that state. The swing was looking much worse at the start of the campaign, when the national polls were generally more favourable to the Coalition. As every state has moved back to Labor, they’re tracking better in the other four mainland states, but are still down in Victoria.
I have taken a chart I made after the 2022 election and added in the expected results for 2025 based on the BludgerTrack average. Tasmania has no 2025 figure, and the 2025 figures for Victoria and New South Wales are so close to the national figure that they can’t be seen.
Labor’s current polling would produce their best ever relative result in Western Australia, and the best relative result in South Australia since the 1970s. It would slightly reduce the LNP domination in Queensland, but still worse for Labor than the 2013 and 2016 results.
Victoria has been shifting from the right to left since the 1950s, but that trend hasn’t progressed since 2010, and would be completely cancelled out based on these polling figures. I doubt that’s a permanent reversal, but I guess we’ll see. New South Wales was previously a strong Labor state, but has been basically neutral since the 1990s, and 2025 would be consistent with this trend.
