Roy Morgan Update November 6, 2024: ALP support down, Consumer Confidence & Inflation Expectations

In this week's update, we present the latest data on Primary Voting Intention, Consumer Confidence & Inflation Expectations.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan weekly update.

This was a second good week in a row for the Coalition with the Opposition taking the lead on a two-party preferred basis for the first time since late September.

The Coalition on 51% (up 1.5%) now has a narrow lead over the ALP 49% on a two-party preferred basis. If a Federal Election were held now, the result would be ‘too close to call’.

The Coalition or ALP would require the support of minor parties and independents to form government, the latest Roy Morgan survey finds.

The big news last week surrounded Prime Minister Anthony Albanese allegedly asking for flight upgrades from Qantas and former CEO Alan Joyce. Albanese denied contacting anyone at Qantas, including Joyce, to ask for any upgrades.

Nevertheless, this is politics and the scandal detracted from a potential good news story for the Government – the official ABS quarterly inflation dropped 1% to 2.8% for the September quarter – the lowest figure for over three years.

However, despite the drop, the Reserve Bank decided to leave interest rates unchanged yesterday given that core inflation, the ‘trimmed mean’, remains above the 2-3% target range at 3.4%.

There was little change in the other key weekly indicators.

Government Confidence (whether people think the country is going in the right or wrong direction) was little changed at 77.5 – and well below the neutral level of 100.

This is because fewer Australians said the country is going in the right direction, (31.5%, up 1.5%). A majority of 54% still say the Country is going in the wrong direction.

Coming back to voting intention. The swing to the Coalition this week came from the changing preferences of supporters of independents and minor parties.

In fact, primary vote support increased for both major parties with Coalition support up 0.5% to 38% and ALP support up 0.5% to 30.5%.

Support for the Greens was unchanged at 14% and One Nation support increased 0.5% to 6%.

Support for Other Parties was unchanged at 4% but support for Independents dropped 1.5% to 7.5%.

With over 30% of electors giving their first preference to a non-major party, its clear preferences are critically important.

And Roy Morgan preference data shows preference flows are very different today then they were at the last election.

Preference flows are more strongly towards the coalition.

If preferences from this week’s Roy Morgan survey are allocated based on how Australians voted at the 2022 Federal Election the two-party preferred result is reversed in favour of the ALP on 51% ahead of the L-NP 49%.

The Roy Morgan survey allocates preferences based on how people say they will vote today as we believe it is important to measure the pulse of the nation at this point in time.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was unchanged this week at 86.5.

Importantly as we enter the most important retailing period of the year – the pre-Christmas and Black Friday period – Consumer Confidence has now spent three weeks above 85 for the first time since January 2023.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation Expectations were unchanged this week with Australians are now expecting annual inflation to be 4.6% over the next two years.

In New Zealand both key indicators – Government Confidence and Consumer Confidence – decreased in October following several key pieces of bad news.

Roy Morgan Government Confidence dropped 6.5 points to 86 in October and ANZ-Roy Morgan New Zealand Consumer Confidence, the measure of consumer’s economic sentiment, decreased 3.9 points to 91.2.

So what was the bad news? Preceding the declines in both Government Confidence and Consumer Confidence.

Figures from Stats New Zealand in late September showed GDP contracting in the June quarter by 0.2%, the first quarterly decline since the September quarter 2023.

Annual growth in New Zealand GDP was also negative for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, shrinking by 0.2% compared to a year ago.

This poor economic news, as well as challenges on other several other fronts led to a sharp decline in support for the National-led Government.