Roy Morgan Update November 28, 2023: ALP Support up, Consumer Confidence & Readership

In this week's Market Research Update, we present the latest data on Primary Voting Intention, Consumer Confidence & Readership.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly Update and we seem to be feeling better this week.

After three straight weeks of declining support the Albanese Government has regained ground this week with support up 3% to 52.5% and ahead of the Liberal-National Coalition on 47.5%.

Government support had slumped after the Reserve Bank raised interest rates on November 7 citing concerns about increasing inflation amid high petrol and energy prices.

Since then petrol prices have softened and the latest speculation is that the Reserve Bank won’t be raising interest rates until the new year.

The bounce-back in support for the ALP this week brings the two-party preferred result back in line with the end of October.

Roy Morgan Government Confidence has also bounced back and was up 4 points to 73.5.

However, most Australians (57.5%) still say the country is heading in the wrong direction and only 31% say the country is heading in the right direction.

In terms of primary voting intention now 35% say they would vote for the Coalition, down 2% on a week ago and ahead of the Labor Party on only 32%, up 2.5%.

A further 13.5% support the Greens, 5% support One Nation while 9% support Independents and 5.5% support Other Parties.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence increased by 2 points to 76.7 this week but is still worryingly in recessionary territory well below 80.

Driving the Consumer Confidence increase was an improvement in net buying sentiment to its highest since January 2023 as Australians embraced the Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales weekend.

Now 23% of Australians (up 4%) say now is a ‘good time to buy a major household item’ and 49% (down 3%) say now is a ‘bad time to buy’ a major household item – a net rating of -26 which is still low but nevertheless an improvement over recent months.

Inflation Expectations fell this week, down 0.2% to 5.4%.

Australians are now expecting annual inflation to be 5.4% over the next two years. This is directly in line with the official level of inflation.

The ABS monthly Inflation figures for the month of October are due out tomorrow with the Reserve Bank set to meet next week for the last time this year next week to decide on the level of official interest rates.

Next, readership.

The latest quarterly Roy Morgan readership figures released in conjunction with ThinkNewsBrands show that an impressive 20.8 million Australians consume news in any given month – that’s 96% of the population.

Readership of news is well above 90% across all key demographic groups including gender, age, income and location.

The most popular news categories read by more than 50% of Australians include Property – read by 14.6 million, Sport – read by 13.2 million, Lifestyle & Health – read by 12.5 million and Entertainment & Culture – read by 11.2 million.