Roy Morgan Update January 7, 2025: ALP support down, Consumer Confidence & Inflation Expectations

In this week's update, Michele Levine, Roy Morgan CEO, presents the latest data on Primary Voting Intention, Consumer Confidence & Inflation Expectations.

Happy New Year and Welcome to the first Roy Morgan Weekly Update for 2025. We begin the New year with the L-NP coalition in an election winning position.

If a Federal  election were held today the L-NP would win, with a 2pp vote of 53% (up by 1% since Christmas ) compared to Labor on  47%.

The Coalition’s 2pp vote rise to its highest level since the last Federal election was driven by two things: a dramatic swing to the Coalition in Victoria  following the leadership spill – and , in interesting turn of events, a major shift in Green preferences. The Greens preferences shifted from 85% ALP before Christmas to only 55% ALP this week.

Turning our attention to the primary vote, support for the Coalition dipped by 0.5% to 40.5%, while the ALP primary vote increased by 3.5% to 31%.

The Greens saw their primary support fall by 0.5% to 12%. Support for One Nation dropped significantly, down 1.5% to 3.5%, Other Parties were unchanged at 3.5%, and Independents fell 1% to 9.5%.

As usually happens at the beginning of every new year, the other key indicators of how Australians are feeling about things improved – but on a very low base . – essentially our sentiment is still very low.

Government Confidence (whether people think the country is going in the right or wrong direction) increased 2.7 points to 74.2.

This is well below the neutral level of 100.

A clear majority (56%) of Australians still say the country is going in the wrong direction, while only 30.2% say the country is heading in the right direction.

Consumer confidence also improved in early January with the traditional ‘New Year’s bump’. ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was up 3.6pts to 87.5,  This is the highest start to a New Year for three years - since 2022.

YOY, Consumer Confidence is now 2.7 points above the same week a year ago, (when it was 84.8), and 4.6 points above last year’s average of 82.9.

But however you look at it – Consumer confidence is still low.

Analysis by State shows Consumer Confidence increased in the four largest States of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia but declined in South Australia.

Looking at the longer-term trend on Consumer Confidence it has now been below 90 for 136 weeks (well over two years) This compares to a previous record of 70 weeks below 90 from March 1990 – June 1991.

Inflation Expectations moved in the wrong direction, up 0.3% to 5.1%.

This is the highest weekly Inflation Expectations for five months since early August 2024.

There would appear to be a relationship here to petrol prices. Average petrol prices in the week of Christmas to December 29 were at $1.89 per litre - (and an average of $1.93 in metropolitan areas) - both at their highest since early August 2024.

Whatever the reason, Australians are expecting annual inflation of 5.1% over the next 2 years.