Roy Morgan Update April 29, 2025: ALP Support down, Consumer Confidence and Inflation Expectations

In this week's Market Research Update, we present the latest data on Federal Vote, Consumer Confidence and Inflation Expectations.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan weekly update.

This week Government Confidence and Consumer Confidence are both down and inflation expectations are up for a second week in a row.

And we are finally within sight of the Federal Election – being held this Saturday.

Poll watchers have asked for more detail – so we are looking at voting intention in more detail this week, as minor party preferences are going to decide who wins in many seats.

The latest Roy Morgan Poll shows the race tightening – although the ALP is still in pole position. ALP 53% on a two-party preferred basis, down 2.5% from a week ago, ahead of the L-NP Coalition on 47%.

This is pretty much back to the two-party preferred lead for the Government in late March when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the election.

Since early voting opened last week, over 3 million Australians have already voted representing around 20% of the electorate.

If the Federal Election had been held last weekend the Albanese ALP Government would have been returned with a slightly increased majority.

However, since then we’ve had

• the final leaders’ debate, and
• we all know a week’s a long time in politics.

And there are still many undecided voters out there, including 5.5% in this week’s survey who can’t say who they will vote for and around a third of the electorate plan to vote for a minor party or independent.

In many seats the parties or candidates these people would like to vote for may not be standing, or may not be handing out ‘how to vote’ cards - and this introduces further uncertainty regarding

• who they will vote for,
• which major party they will send their preferences to, and
• even whether some of them will vote at all –

So, although Labor appears well on top with a week to go – there are still many uncertainties that could heavily impact these results over the closing few days of the campaign.

On Sunday night Channel Seven hosted the final Leaders’ Debate between Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.  Roy Morgan provided the studio audience of ‘undecided voters’ to assess both leaders on key questions.

The results were conclusively in favour of Prime Minister Albanese who won on five out of 7 questions – and overall.

Importantly, the Prime Minister’s biggest win was on the Cost of Living – 65% of the undecided voters agreed with Albanese  compared to only 16% for Dutton.

Albanese also won easily in the ‘Hot Takes’ section – Albanese 50% compared to Dutton 14%; and the section on Tax Cuts – Albanese 49% compared to Dutton 21%.

There was a narrow victory for Albanese on Housing on 35% compared to Dutton on 30% while Opposition Leader Peter Dutton performed well on two issues, winning on the issue of Defence – Dutton 43% just ahead of Albanese on 37% and a clear win on Indigenous Affairs – Dutton on 46% compared to Albanese on 27%.

Dutton’s clear win on Indigenous Affairs recalls the Opposition Leader’s successful campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in 2023.

Overall though, the verdict was clear – Albanese easily won the debate attracting 50% support of the undecided voters compared to only 25% who said Dutton won the debate and a further 25% of the audience was still undecided.

The strong result for Prime Minister Albanese in Sunday’s Channel Seven debate augurs well for the Government as we head towards election day on Saturday.

Coming back to dissect the latest Roy Morgan voting Intention data. Despite the two-party preferred swing back to the coalition, primary support for the major parties was little changed with the Coalition on 34.5% (up 0.5%) now just ahead of the ALP on 34% (down 0.5%). The movement was in the minor parties.

Primary support for the ALP is strongest in South Australia (39%) and Victoria (37%) and among Australians aged 50-64 (36%).

For the Coalition, primary support is strongest in Queensland (39%) and Western Australia (37.5%) and is far higher for Australians aged 65+ at 49.5% than any other age group.

Looking to the minor parties, support for the Greens dropped 1.5% to 13% while support for One Nation increased 1.5% to 7.5%.

This is not a ‘direct transfer’ of voting intention but indicates movement between the two major parties and the two key minor parties of the ‘left’ (Greens) and the ‘right’ (One Nation).

Greens support is highest in South Australia (15.5%), Western Australia (14.5%) and Victoria (14%) – only in Victoria does the party hold Lower House seats.

Support for the Greens is clearly highest among younger Australians at 33.5% for 18-24 year olds and 24.5% for people aged 25-34.

One Nation has its highest levels of support in New South Wales (11%), South Australia (8.5%), Tasmania (8%) and Queensland (7%) – One Nation is challenging for Senate seats in all four of these States.

In terms of age groups it is 35-49 year olds at 11% and younger Australians aged 18-24 at 9% who provide One Nation’s strongest support.

A further 11% of electors are opting to support other minor parties and independents, unchanged on a week ago. Within that bloc of support the largest support is for so-called ‘Teal Independents’ (2%) and Clive Palmer’s ‘Trumpet of Patriots’ (1.5%). These results take into account that minor parties and independents are not running in every seat.

This week’s Government Confidence (whether people think the country is going in the right or wrong direction) dropped 4.5 points to 81.5 and remains well below the neutral level of 100.

Now the majority of Australians 52.5% say the country is ‘going in the wrong direction’ (up 4.5% in a week).

Only 34% (unchanged) that say the country is ‘going in the right direction’.

In concerning news, ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence, fell 2.1 points to 83.4 – now at its lowest so far this year.

Concerns about personal finances over the next 12 months drove the fall with only 26% of respondents saying they expect to be ‘better off’ financially this time next year – the lowest figure for this indicator for five years since April 2020.

And, Inflation Expectations increased 0.2% to 5.1% this week.

Australians now expect inflation of 5.1% over each of the next two years – the highest rate since mid-January.