Philippa Kaur

Donald Trump is clearly concerned about the midterm elections that loom next November, which look to be a referendum on his administration. All seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs as will one-third of the Senate. Losing control of the House would severely crimp the US president’s ability to govern the way he has for the first nine months of his second term.

Trump has already voiced some unease about the election. In a recent interview with the One America News (OAN) network he stated: “The one thing that I worry about is that… I don’t have the numbers, but the person that wins the presidency always seems to lose the midterms”.

There’s a clue to the president’s apprehension about the numbers from the 2024 general election results. Despite winning the popular vote in 2024, the Republican vote in the House fell by 0.2 percentage points, as a result the GOP (the Republicans) lost two seats, leaving them with a majority of only five seats.

Trump knows from bitter experience what could happen if he loses control of the House. The Democrats made a net gain of 40 seats at the 2018 midterms after which the House impeached Trump twice.

So the president and his Maga coalition are well aware of how important it is to retain control of Congress.

The president is already taking steps that could tilt the midterms in his favour. Shortly after being sworn in as president in January 2025, he rescinded Joe Biden’s executive order that aimed to expand voting access and voter registration.

In April Trump ordered the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into the Democrats’ top fundraising platform ActBlue, after allegations it had allowed illegal campaign donations. The Democrats denounced the move as “Donald Trump’s latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition”.

In August, Trump announced he wanted to ban mail-in-voting for the midterms. Three in every ten ballots cast in 2024 were mail-ins and are historically thought to favour the Democrats. But the US constitution mandates that the states control their elections. Congress has the power to pass legislation banning mail-ins for federal elections, but it is thought unlikely that such a measure would pass the Senate.

History has shown that the party occupying the White House usually performs poorly in the subsequent midterm elections. Three recent polls, Economist/YouGov, Morning Consult, and Emerson, show Democrats edging ahead in the generic congressional vote.

But precedent and political polling may count for little over the next year, as America’s democratic system is tested by extraordinary events and challenges.

Redistricting

There are already moves by mainly, though not exclusively, Republican controlled states to carve out additional congressional seats (referred to as redistricting) to bolster the party’s chances of retaining their majority in the House of Representatives. In three states – Texas, Missouri and North Carolina – Republican legislatures have redrawn constituency lines to the party’s electoral benefit, resulting in a notional seven new GOP-leaning congressional seats.

Changing electoral boundaries could affect the election result.
Alan Mazzocco/Shutterstock

After the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature voted through a new congressional map that may provide the party an additional seat in next year’s midterms, Trump posted on Truth Social that this provided the potential for “A HUGE VICTORY for our America First Agenda.”

Democrats have responded to these events by launching their own redistricting plans, with Virginia becoming the latest blue state to announce proposals to redraw electoral boundaries that could give the party two or three additional seats.

It is, however, the largest state in the union – California – which serves as the base for Democrats counterbalancing moves. California Governor Gavin Newsom is asking his state’s voters to decide on proposition 50. If passed this would authorise state lawmakers to create new electoral wards that could favour Democrats. Academic analysis has estimated that the move could provide up to five additional Democratic seats in Congress.

This action has been endorsed by former US president Barack Obama, who stated the Democrats strategy in California gives the national party a “chance… to create a level playing field” in next year’s elections.

Partisan gerrymandering is nothing new in US politics. But what is new, according to Benjamin Schneer, a Harvard-based expert in political representation, is the scale on which this is being done. He believes:

Gerrymandering can be done more effectively now because we have fine-grained data on the population and on how people are likely to vote, and computing techniques to design maps in clever ways. Put all that together with intense polarization and that creates a perfect storm where gerrymandering can flourish.

Voting rights

The 2026 midterms would also be affected in a seismic way by an impending Supreme Court decision relating to a central pillar of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA). Section 2 of the act “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, colour, or membership in one of the language minority groups”. The court is now weighing whether Section 2 is constitutional.

People vote in Louisiana: changes to voting rights laws could affect the outcome in 2026.
Allen J.M. Smith/Shutterstock

The case relates to a lawsuit in Louisiana where it was required under the VRA to redraw its congressional map to ensure two majority black districts. This is now being challenged in the Supreme Court. If successful it could weaken the voting power of minorities and result in congressional districts being redrawn throughout the American south.

This would be a major blow for the Democrats. Analysis by the BBC projects that this could “flip more than a dozen seats from Democratic to Republican”. Findings from the Economist go further, suggesting “Republicans could eliminate as many as 19 Democrat-held districts in the House of Representatives, or 9% of the party’s current caucus.”

The 2026 midterms will be hugely consequential. They will decide what party controls the US Congress for Trump’s last two years in office and therefore the extent of his power until January 2029. They will also serve as the unofficial start of the 2028 presidential campaign and determine whether it is the Republicans or Democrats with the political momentum heading into this historic election. More

Well-known flaws in conventional polling methods may be creating the incorrect perception that many Americans think political violence is justified. More

A series of recent events has sparked alarm about rising levels of political violence in the U.S. These episodes include the assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, 2025; the murder of a Democratic Minnesota state legislator and her husband in June 2025; and two attempts to kill Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Some surveys have reported that a large number of Americans are willing to support the use of force for political ends, or they believe that political violence may sometimes be justified.

My research is in political science and data analytics. I have conducted surveys for almost 25 years. For the past three years, I have studied new techniques that leverage artificial intelligence to conduct and analyze interviews.

My own recent surveys, which use AI to ask people about why they give their answers, show that the surprisingly high level of support in response to these questions is likely the result of confusion about what these questions are asking, not actual support for political violence.

Law enforcement officials lead a procession as pallbearers carry caskets after a funeral ceremony for Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, on June 28, 2025, in Minneapolis.
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

A failure to communicate

Why would multiple surveys get the answers to this important question wrong? I believe the cause is an issue called response error. It means that respondents don’t interpret a question in the way the researcher thinks they will.

As a result, the answers people provide don’t really reflect what the researcher thinks the answers show.

For example, asking whether someone would support the use of force to achieve a political goal raises the question of what the respondent thinks “use of force” means in this context. It could be interpreted as violence, but it could also be interpreted as using legal means to “force” someone to do something.

Such response errors have been a concern for pollsters ever since survey research began. They can affect even seemingly straightforward questions.

What did you mean by that?

To avoid this problem, I used an AI interviewing system developed by CloudResearch, a well-known survey research company, to ask respondents some of the same questions about political violence from previous surveys. Then I used it to ask what they were thinking when they answered those questions. This process is called cognitive interviewing.

I then used AI to go through these interviews and categorize them. Two short reports that summarize this process as applied to both polls are available online. These analyses have not been peer-reviewed, and the results should be considered very preliminary.

Nonetheless, the results clearly demonstrate that respondents interpret these questions in very different ways.

Nuance matters

For example, in my survey, about 33% of Democrats agreed with the statement that “use of force is justified to remove President Trump from office.” However, when asked why they agreed, more than 57% gave responses like this: “I was not thinking physically but more in the sense that he – the president – might need to be ‘fired’ or forced out of office due to rules or laws.” Still others were envisioning future scenarios where a president illegally seizes power in a coup.

Once you account for these different interpretations of the question, the AI only coded about 8% of Democrats as supporting use of force in violent terms under current conditions.

Even here, there was substantial ambiguity – for example, this type of response was not unusual: “The language ‘use of force’ was a bit too broad for me. I could not justify killing Trump, for example, but less extreme uses of force were valid in my eyes.”

Similarly, 29% of Republicans agreed that “use of the military is justified to stop protests against President Trump’s agenda.” However, almost all of the respondents who agreed with this statement envisioned the National Guard interceding nonviolently to stop violent protests and riots. Only about 2.6% of Republicans gave comments supporting use of the military against nonviolent protests.

Almost all those who agreed that use of the military was justified expressed thoughts like this: “I see the military coming and acting as a police force to stop or prevent the demonstrations that become violent. Peaceful protesters must be allowed to exercise their right to free speech.”

People prepare to march in a ‘No Kings’ protest against Trump administration policies in New York City on June 14, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

When is political violence justified?

Even questions that explicitly ask about political violence are open to wide interpretation. Take, for example, this question: “Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals?”

The lack of a specific scenario or location in this question invites respondents to engage in all kinds of philosophical and historical speculation.

In my survey, almost 15% of respondents said violence could sometimes be justified. When asked about the examples they were thinking of, respondents cited the American Revolution, the anti-Nazi French Resistance and many other incidents as a reason for their responses. Only about 3% of respondents said they were thinking about actions in the U.S. at the current time.

Moreover, almost all respondents stated that violence should be a last resort when all other peaceful and legal methods fail.

One respondent illustrated both problems with one sentence: “The (American) colonists tried petitions and negotiations first, but, when those efforts failed, they resorted to armed conflict to gain independence.”

A call for understanding

Even these numbers likely overestimate Americans’ support for political violence. I read the interviews, checking the AI system’s labeling, and concluded that, if anything, it was overestimating support for violence.

Other factors may also be distorting reports of public support for political violence. Many surveys are conducted primarily online. One study estimated that anywhere from 4% to 7% of respondents in online surveys are “bogus respondents” who are selecting arbitrary responses. Another study reported that such respondents dramatically increase positive responses on questions about political violence.

Respondents may also be willing to espouse attitudes anonymously online that they would never say or do in real life. Studies have suggested that “online disinhibition effects” or “survey trolling” can impact survey results.

In sum, my preliminary research suggests that response error is a substantial problem in surveys about political violence.

Americans almost universally condemn the recent political violence they have witnessed. The recent poll results showing otherwise more likely stem from confusion about what the questions are asking than actual support for political violence. More

The President’s polling results haven’t changed much since the government came to a standstill. Here’s why the shutdown came about and how it’s progressing. More

It’s been eight days since a partial US government shutdown began on October 1, owing to a failure by Congress to agree to a new budget by the September 30 deadline.

Democrats are refusing to help to pass a budget unless health insurance subsidies are extended, while Republicans and President Donald Trump want a budget passed without these subsidies. There does not appear to be any progress towards ending the shutdown.

Analyst G. Elliott Morris has reported polls that have Republicans and Trump blamed for the shutdown by six to 17 points more than Democrats. In a YouGov poll for CBS News, by 40–28 respondents said the Democratic positions were not worth the shutdown, and by 45–23 they said the same of the Republican positions.

In analyst Nate Silver’s US national poll aggregate, Trump has a net approval of -9.4, with 52.7% disapproving and 43.3% approving. His net approval dropped two points in late September, but the shutdown hasn’t changed it yet.

Trump’s net approval on the four issues tracked by Silver are -4.7 on immigration, -15.3 on the economy, -15.6 on trade and -27.4 on inflation. His net approval on trade and inflation has risen in the last two weeks.

In November 2026 all of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate will be up for election at midterm elections. Morris’ generic ballot average has Democrats leading Republicans by 44.9–42.1. Democrats have led narrowly since April.

In polling conducted before the shutdown started, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer averaged a net favourability of -20.5 according to Silver, making him the least popular of the six party leaders (Trump, Vice President JD Vance and the Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders).

Schumer’s poor ratings are due to weak ratings from Democratic-aligned voters. A Pew poll gave him an overall 50–21 unfavourable rating, including 39–35 unfavourable with Democrats. There’s pressure on Schumer from his own party to fight Trump harder. If Democrats are perceived to have caved to Republicans, Schumer is likely to be blamed by other Democrats.

How do shutdowns affect the US economy?

There have been 11 US government shutdowns since 1980, with seven of them lasting five days or less. The longest shutdown (35 days) occurred during Trump’s first term after Democrats gained control of the House in November 2018 elections.

Shutdowns are economically damaging, but past shutdowns haven’t lasted long enough to do great damage, and the economy rebounds once the shutdown is over.

Shutdowns result in far less government economic data. The September jobs report was to be released last Friday, but this won’t happen until after the shutdown finishes.

Despite the shutdown, the benchmark US S&P 500 stock index surged to a new record high in Wednesday’s session, and is up 4% in the last month. The stock market has been supporting Trump since it rebounded from April lows.

Why is there a shutdown when Republicans control both chambers?

Republicans won the House of Representatives by 220–215 over Democrats at the November 2024 elections and currently hold it by 219–213, with two special elections to occur later this year. A Democrat who won a September 23 special election has not yet been formally certified the winner.

Republicans also hold a 53–47 majority in the Senate.

In the Senate, legislation usually needs to clear a 60-vote “filibuster” threshold. The filibuster allows at least 41 senators to indefinitely delay legislation they disagree with. To reach 60 votes, Republicans need at least seven Democratic senators to vote with them.

The filibuster is not part of the US Constitution, and the majority party could eliminate it. But some Republican senators are probably worried about what Democrats would do if they won the presidency and majorities in both chambers of Congress.

The filibuster cannot be applied to all legislation. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed the Senate using “reconciliation” by 51–50 on Vance’s tie-breaking vote. But reconciliation is a cumbersome process that isn’t appropriate for a normal budget bill.

Ipsos poll on Trump’s troop deployments

Trump has deployed national guard troops on home soil in Chicago, Illinois, and attempted to also do this in Portland, Oregon. The national guard has assisted before, during environmental disasters and protests, but Trump’s deployments are against the wishes of the affected states’ governors.

In an Ipsos US national poll for Reuters, respondents thought by 58–25 that the president should only deploy troops to areas with external threats. By 48–37, they did not think the president should be able to send troops into a state if its governor objects. More

The United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently released a 238-page album, compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday. On Oct. 6, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Maxwell’s appeal of her 2022 conviction for sex trafficking girls with Epstein.

The release of the partially redacted album is part of a larger investigation of the federal government’s handling of Epstein and Maxwell and “possible mismanagement.”

Read more:
Trump’s Epstein problem is real: New poll shows many in his base disapprove of his handling of the files, and some supporters are having second thoughts about electing him

The album is in the spotlight due to an entry allegedly penned by U.S. President Donald Trump, though the White House has denied he wrote it. Entitled The First Fifty Years, the book overflows with handwritten letters, campy sketches and images fixated on women’s bodies.

The book was bound by Weitz & Coleman, an esteemed bookbinder in New York City since 1909, as indicated by a note within the album itself.

Its “vegetable tanned” leather covers, table of contents and sections titled “Family,” “Friends” and “Business” signal an intent to elevate casual notes into a permanent record.

As book historian D.F. McKenzie contends, a book’s physical form shapes its social role. Here, the elaborate binding and careful organization transform private, ephemeral notes into a social gesture, something shared in a legacy format.

In this sense, Epstein’s album sits alongside a tradition of bound tribute books — scrapbooks pressed into leather for golden anniversaries, glossy volumes marking a CEO’s retirement or academic festschrifts that canonize a career. What unites them is the transformation of passing moments into artifacts meant to endure.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., talks to reporters about the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 19, 2025.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Charm, codes, clichés

Maxwell’s prologue describes the book as a retrospective to “jog your memory of places and people and different events.”

In the birthday book, one redacted former “assistant” recalls how working for Epstein transformed her life: she went from being “a 22-year-old divorcée working as a hotel hostess” to rubbing shoulders with royalty, presidents, financiers and celebrities.

One letter from a childhood friend who recently said Maxwell instructed him to write something “raunchy” spins a sexually explicit fantasy about Epstein’s conception before drifting into nostalgic tales of their four-boy Brooklyn clique.

In one vignette, Epstein is praised for flaunting a “beautiful British babe” at his family’s home, his indifference to her feelings reframed as charm. The anecdote turns callousness toward women into a badge of confidence and belonging. The letter concludes: “That shows a lot. It really does … Yes, your charisma and persuasive ways came very early on … you’re my kid’s role model.”

Epstein’s sex life and treatment of women are recurring themes.

A note apparently from private equity investor Leon Black, who was earlier found to have paid millions in fees to Epstein, cast Epstein as Ernest Hemingway’s hero in The Old Man and the Sea, swapping fish for “Blonde, Red or Brunette” women.

Officials speak during a news conference to announce charges against Ghislaine Maxwell in 2020, in New York. Maxwell is now in federal prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.
(AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Philosophers and scholars of rhetoric have long noted that ready-made clichés can replace inner reflection, forming a “code of expression” that insulates people from moral reckoning.

Laughter as defence

If language conveys loyalty, humour compounds it. Composed in 2003, as Epstein’s notoriety grew, today — amid the knowledge of Epstein’s sex crimes — the birthday book’s laughter seems knowingly defensive.

There are bawdy jokes and mocking nicknames: Epstein is dubbed “Degenerate One” and teased or taunted with “so many girls, so little time.”

As French philosopher Henri Bergson argued, laughter functions as a social corrective: a “kind of social ragging” that polices behaviour by ridiculing deviation under the guise of amusement.

One birthday book contributor quips that Epstein had “avoided the penitentiary.” The comment implies knowledge of punishable behaviour, yet also suggests Epstein is an affable rogue.

Figures of authority

The book’s inclusion of entries from public office and science figures could suggest Maxwell and Epstein sought to keep or commemorate connections with figures of authority as a form of perceived legitimacy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that former U.S. president Bill Clinton, whose name appears in the album’s “Friends” section, gave Epstein a handwritten note praising his “childlike curiosity” and drive to “make a difference.” In 2019, a spokesperson for Clinton said he severed ties with Epstein prior to his 2019 arrest and he was not aware of Epstein’s alleged crimes.

Peter Mandelson, recently forced out as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the U.S. after the Epstein birthday book’s release, penned a note saying Epstein was an “intelligent, sharp-witted man.” Mandelson has said he felt tremendous regret over his Epstein friendship and sympathy for Epstein’s victims.

The birthday book’s “Science” section, with letters from leading scientists, shows that Epstein’s reach extended beyond business and politics into elite academic networks.

Read more:
How higher ed can deal with ethical questions over its disgraced donors

Eroticized power and dominance

While some entries strike a mundane or playful tone, others veer into vulgarity.

The former CEO of Victoria’s Secret, Leslie Wexner, contributed a sketch resembling a woman’s breasts with the words “I wanted to get you what you want… so here it is” — framing it as a present. Wexner has said before he severed ties with Epstein in 2007 and declined to comment about the book.

The note allegedly written by Trump features a drawing of a naked woman alongside typewritten text imagining a conversation between them. It calls Epstein “a pal” and ends with the wish that “every day be another wonderful secret.”

Former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold contributed a series of African wildlife photographs, claiming they spoke more vividly than words. The images — of copulating lions and a zebra with an erect penis — foreground predatory and sexualized behaviour, and may be interpreted as reflecting a fascination with dominance and raw biological impulse.

The Seattle Times reports that a spokesperson for Myhrvold said Myhrvold knew Epstein “from TED conferences and as a donor to basic scientific research” and “regrets that he ever met him.” The representative did not address the letter.

This image posted Sept. 8, 2025, on the X account of the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, shows a sexually suggestive birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein alluding to a ‘wonderful secret’ and purportedly signed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has denied sending the note.
(@OversightDems/X via AP)

The legacy of small gestures

While journalists have long documented that Epstein’s networks stretched from political leaders and Wall Street financiers to influential figures in science and culture, it remains to be seen how the carefully curated and gifted birthday book fits into the larger investigation.

The book’s most insidious achievement is its ordinariness. It suggests the ways that power is fortified and legitimized not only with contracts and institutions but through gestures of social life, including commemorative books. More

Not long after U.S. housing prices reached a record high this summer – the median existing home went for US$435,000 in June – President Donald Trump said that he was considering a plan to make home sales tax-free.

Supporters of the idea, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as the No Tax on Home Sales Act in July, say it would benefit working families by eliminating all taxes on the sales of family homes.

But most Americans who sell their homes already do so tax-free. And the households that would gain most under Trump’s proposals are those with the most valuable real estate.

As a legal scholar who studies how taxes affect racial and economic inequality, I see this proposal as part of a familiar pattern: measures advertised as relief for ordinary families that mostly benefit the well-off.

Most families already sell their homes tax-free

Right now, according to the Internal Revenue Code, a single person pays no tax on the first $250,000 in gain from a home sale, while married people can exclude $500,000. All told, about 90% of home sales generate less than $500,000 in gains, so the overwhelming majority of sellers already owe no tax.

The minority who would see new benefits from the proposed tax change are those with more than $500,000 in appreciation – typically owners of high-priced homes in hot real estate markets. Yale’s Budget Lab estimated the average benefit for these tax-free sales was $100,000 per qualifying seller.

Homeownership itself isn’t equally distributed across the U.S. population. About 44% of Black Americans are homeowners, compared with 74% of white Americans. That racial gap has only widened over the past 10 years. Similarly, single women – particularly but not exclusively women of color – face additional barriers.

A broader trend of upward wealth transference

Though still just a proposal, the tax-free home sales bill is part of a broader set of Republican tax plans that would have regressive effects – that is, where the vast majority of benefits go to high-income people and very few to low-income people – under a pro-worker banner.

Trump floated the tax-free home sales idea less than three weeks after he signed a large package of tax and spending measures in July 2025. That bill generated strong public criticism because of its emphasis on tax savings for the rich at the expense of almost a trillion dollars in cuts for federally funded health care for the poor and disabled.

The home sales idea follows the same script – and echoes the distributional pattern established by his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That tax reform increased racial wealth and income disparities and provided 80% of its benefits to corporations and high-income individuals. In fact, my research shows that white households received more than twice as many tax cuts as Black households from that law.

The same dynamic plays out in this new tax-fueled housing policy. Eliminating capital gains taxes on home sales would primarily benefit the 29 million homeowners who already have substantial equity – a group that skews heavily white, male and upper middle class. Meanwhile, America’s millions of renters, disproportionately people of color and women, would receive no benefit while potentially losing access to social programs Congress must cut to fund these tax breaks. More

US President Donald Trump’s net approval in analyst Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls slid two points in the last week to -9.4, after his ratings had been stable since late July. Currently, 53.1% disapprove of his performance, compared to 43.7% who approve.

Trump’s net approval was worse last Wednesday at -10.0 before recovering. This is only slightly better than his worst net approval of this term, -10.3 on July 22.

In Silver’s historic approval data, Trump’s ratings are worse than any other president after Harry Truman – they only top his own ratings at this stage of his first term.

Trump’s ratings may have slid over his administration’s controversial attempts to cancel the late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel. Analyst G. Elliott Morris cited a YouGov poll this week in which 68% of Americans said it was unacceptable for the government to pressure broadcasters to remove shows it disagrees with, compared to just 12% who said it was acceptable.

An alternative explanation for the slide in Trump’s ratings is inflation. Silver tracks Trump’s ratings on four issues: immigration, the economy, trade and inflation. Trump’s net approval on immigration (-5.3), the economy (-15.6) and trade (-17.3) have held up in the last month, but his net approval on inflation (-30.0) has dropped six points since the end of August.

The benchmark US S&P 500 stock index peaked last Monday at nearly 6,700 points, an increase of 2.8% in the last month.

I believe Trump’s ratings are unlikely to become very poor unless something goes badly wrong with either the stock market or the broader US economy.

US and UK elections and polls

Last Tuesday, Democrats held Arizona’s seventh House district in a US special election, with a substantial swing in their favour.

Other US state and local elections will happen on November 4, covered here in The Poll Bludger.

There will also be a deputy Labour leadership election in the United Kingdom in late October. The far-right Reform party is leading Labour by about ten points in national polls and would probably win a majority in the House of Commons on current voting intentions, given the UK’s first-past-the-post system.

Victorian polls are contradictory

A Victorian state Redbridge poll for The Herald Sun, conducted September 3–11 from a sample of 2,005 voters, gave Labor a 52–48% lead over the Coalition, a 0.5-point gain for Labor since July.

Primary votes were 37% Coalition (down one point), 32% Labor (down one), 13% Greens (down one) and 18% for all others (up three). The next Victorian election is in November 2026.

A Victorian state DemosAU poll, conducted September 2–9 from a sample of 1,327 voters, however, gave the Coalition a 51–49% lead. Primary votes were 38% Coalition, 26% Labor, 15% Greens and 21% for all others.

Liberal Brad Battin led Labor incumbent Jacinta Allan by 37–32% as preferred premier. Respondents thought Victoria was headed in the wrong direction by a wide margine, 58–25%. A quarter of respondents thought crime was the most important issue, while 24% said cost of living was.

Federal Labor led the Coalition in Victoria by a 55–45% margin. Primary votes were 32% Labor, 29% Coalition, 13% Greens, 12% One Nation and 14% for all others. One Nation’s vote in this poll is six points above its 2025 election result.

NSW Resolve poll has big Labor lead

A NSW state Resolve poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, conducted with the federal August and September Resolve polls from a sample of over 1,000 voters, gave Labor 38% of the primary vote (steady since July), the Coalition 28% (down four), the Greens 10% (down three), independents 11% (up three) and others 12% (up two).

Resolve doesn’t usually give a two-party estimate for its state polls, but The Poll Bludger estimated a Labor lead by 59–41%. Labor incumbent Chris Minns led Liberal Mark Speakman as preferred premier by 37–16% (compared to 35–16% in July).

This poll was released shortly after Labor gained the seat of Kiama that had been held by convicted sex offender Gareth Ward at a September 13 byelection.

Labor’s Katelin McInerney defeated the Liberals’ Serena Copley at the byelection by a 60.2–39.8% margin. (Ward had beaten McInerney by 50.8–49.2% as an independent at the March 2023 election).

The next NSW election is in March 2027.

Labor holds large lead in federal Morgan poll

A national Morgan poll, conducted August 25 to September 21 from a sample of 5,084 voters, gave Labor a 55.5–44.5% lead by headline respondent preferences, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the August Morgan poll.

Primary votes were 34% Labor (steady), 30% Coalition (steady), 12% Greens (steady), 9.5% One Nation (up 0.5) and 14.5% for all others (down 0.5). By 2025 election preference flows, Labor led by an unchanged 55.5–44.5%.

The Coalition has taken the lead in Queensland, leading by 51.5–48.5%, but Labor is well ahead in all other states. Queensland was the only state the Coalition won at the 2025 federal election (by 50.6–49.4%).

Labor had a commanding 69–31% lead among those aged 18–34, a 59–41% lead with those aged 35–49 and a 50.5–49.5% lead with those aged 50–64. The Coalition had a 56–44% lead with those aged 65 and older.

Newspoll aggregate data for July to September

On September 21, the Australian released aggregate data
for the three Newspolls taken from July 14 to September 11. The overall sample size was 3,811 people, and Labor led by 57–43% across all three polls.

The Poll Bludger reported that Labor led by 60–40% in New South Wales, 58–42% in Victoria, 51–49% in Queensland, 54–46% in Western Australia and 55–45% in South Australia. Morgan had Labor ahead by 56.5–43.5% in NSW, with the election result there at 55.3–44.7% to Labor.

Labor led with university-educated people by a 60–40% margin. Labor also led by 57–43% among those with a TAFE/technical education, but only by 53–47% among those with no tertiary education.

Additional federal Resolve questions

I covered the national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers that gave Labor a 55–45% lead over the Coalition.

In additional questions, 52% of respondents thought it was important for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to meet Trump, although 58% had a negative view of Trump.

By 58–18%, voters also supported or accepted the adoption of nuclear-powered submarines by Australia (compared to 57–20% in November 2021).

There was a 29–29% tie on whether Australia should recognise Palestine as a state this month. On the Israel-Gaza war, 39% wanted an immediate end without preconditions, 22% only supported ending the war if Hamas is removed from power and 13% only when the remaining hostages are returned to Israel.

Liberals abandon Bradfield legal challenge

Last Thursday, the Liberals abandoned their legal challenge to teal Nicolette Boele’s 26-vote win in Bradfield at the May federal election.

The electoral commission had declared Boele the winner in June and she was seated pending the outcome of legal challenges. She will now serve a full term as the member for Bradfield. More