Roy Morgan Update January 21, 2025: ALP support down, Consumer Confidence & Business Confidence

In this week's update, Julian McCrann, Roy Morgan Poll Manager, presents the latest data on Primary Voting Intention, Consumer Confidence & Business Confidence.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan weekly update.

I’m Julian McCrann, manager of the Roy Morgan Poll stepping in today for Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine who is unavailable.

This week the Coalition has improved its two-party preferred lead, now on 52%, up 0.5% from a week ago, narrowly ahead of the ALP on 48%.

If a Federal Election were held now the result would be a Coalition Government with a slim majority.

Importantly, the Coalition increased its primary vote lead to a significant 13.5% points ahead of Labor. The Coalition is now on 42% compared to the ALP on only 28.5%.

This is a higher primary vote than the Coalition received when they won the 2016 and 2019 Federal Elections.

The Coalition is clearly benefiting from the strong stance Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has taken in forthrightly condemning anti-Semitic actions.

The rising level of anti-Semitic attacks – especially in Sydney and Melbourne – has raised questions for Australians about how seriously the Albanese Government is taking the issue.

Just today, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a meeting of national cabinet tonight – including state and territory leaders – to discuss issues of anti-Semitism in Australia.

Government Confidence (whether people think the country is going in the right or wrong direction) dropped 4.5 points to 72.

However, this is still well below the neutral level of 100.

A clear majority of 57% of Australians say the country is going in the wrong direction, while only 29% say the country is heading in the right direction.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was down 1.3 points to 85.8 this week with buying sentiment softening for a second straight week.

This week Inflation Expectations increased slightly, up 0.2% to 5.2% and Australians are now expecting annual inflation to be 5.2% over each of the next two years.

And now, Australian Business Confidence.

Roy Morgan measures Business Confidence monthly and in December it was still in positive territory above 100 at 105.9 – although down 1 point from a month ago.

Roy Morgan interviews around 1,500 businesses each month to gauge their views on their company’s prospects as well as their assessment of the broader Australian economy.

In December, businesses remained confident about the next 12 months, both for their own prospects and the broader economy.

Now 59.7% of businesses say they expect ‘good times’ for the economy over the next 12 months and a plurality of 42.8% say the next 12 months is a ‘good time to invest in growing the business’ compared to 37.7% that say it’s a ‘bad time to invest’.

Over the two months of November and December, the most confident industries were Education & Training with Business Confidence of 129.0 – and Mining and Financial & Insurance Services – both with a Business Confidence of 124.9.

Those in the industry of Electricity, gas, water & waste have the lowest Business Confidence – now only 60.1, well below Wholesale trade on 84.4, and Transport, Postal & Warehousing on 89.2.