By Melissa McCullough
THE recent RedBridge Group and Accent Research poll on the numbers in the run-up to the Victorian state election provide an interesting glimpse into an unpredictable race.
The September polling shows Labor on 24 per cent of the primary vote, the Coalition on 29 per cent and One Nation on 25 per cent.
Labor are down from 32 per cent in September last year, a drop of eight percentage points.
But also down by eight per cent in the same time period is the Coalition who were on 37 per cent in September last year.
Of course, the great disrupter is One Nation, who weren’t even being counted in this poll a year ago, and now sit at a quarter of all primary votes in the survey of voting intentions.
One Nation’s poll numbers are down from a high of 27 per cent in June (not long after the Nepean by-election), but have risen since an August slump where One Nation primary voting intentions dropped to 22 per cent.
The Greens are currently sitting at 15 per cent of the primary vote, up from 13 per cent in September last year, and “other parties and candidates” are at seven per cent, down a substantial 11 percent in the 12 months.
Perhaps the most interesting data in the poll is the voting intentions by generation.
Labor are fairly consistent across the generations of Baby Boomers, Gen-X, Millennials and Gen-Z, varying only between 23 per cent and 26 per cent.
Liberals, on the other hand, are skewed strongly towards the Baby Boomers.
Thirty-nine per cent of Baby Boomers intend to vote Liberal, with the numbers falling as the voters become younger with Gen-X (28 per cent), Millennials (26 per cent) not too critical, but falling to a low 18 per cent among Gen-Z voters (those born after 1997).
One Nation is skewed to the older generation, with Baby Boomers at 28 per cent, Gen-X at 32 per cent, Millennials at 22 per cent and just 15 per cent of support for One Nation among Gen-Z voters, who appear to favour The Greens over anyone else.
It seems clear there are three major parties vying for the state election, and no real chance of an absolute majority by any party.
If that is the case, it comes down to preferences.
With One Nation polling 25 per cent of the primary votes, if they fail to come in the top two, their votes will be distributed according to their preferences.
Of One Nation voters, if it was between Labor and Liberal, 87 per cent of their votes would go to Liberal and 13 per cent to Labor.
The Greens, polling 15 per cent of the primary vote, would send 82 per cent of their preferences towards Labor and 18 per cent towards the Liberals.
If the two-party-preferred battle was between Labor and One Nation, 65 per cent of Liberal voters would preference One Nation and 35 per cent to Labor. The Greens would preference 94 per cent of their votes to Labor and just six per cent of their votes to One Nation.
The final piece of the puzzle is “voter softness” of current first preference state election voting intentions.
The Labor Party currently has the lowest “solid” voter intentions with 48 per cent saying their intention to vote Labor is solid, 41 per cent saying it is soft, and 11 per cent saying it is very soft.
This improves slightly for the Liberal Party with 52 per cent saying their intention to vote Liberal is solid, 39 per cent saying it is soft, and nine per cent saying it is very soft.
For One Nation, the solidness of their first preference intention rises to 58 per cent with 37 percent saying it is soft, and five per cent saying it is very soft.
First published in the Mornington News – 6 October 2026
