Roy Morgan Update July 14, 2026: Federal Vote, Consumer Confidence and Unemployment

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

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly update.

Consumer Confidence improved last week, but all other Roy Morgan measures are worse – Government Confidence down, Inflation Expectations up, unemployment up, and support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party bounced back.

Factors influencing voting intention last week were Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s lapse of judgment about Kylie Minogue, images from Iran attacking President Trump and Israel during the country’s mourning period for Ayatollah Khamenei and rising tensions with Iran with the Memorandum of Understanding in tatters and the region set to be engulfed in conflict once again.

These new events are reshaping people’s political views as Pauline Hanson’s desire for an Australian ‘monoculture’, and her remarks that businesses can’t sack ‘lazy workers’ and especially young people who ‘don’t turn up to work’ and ‘spend all day on their phones’ recede into the background.

One Nation primary support is up 5.5% to 28% (however still down 3.5% from the high of 31.5% in mid-June) and ahead of ALP down 0.5% to 27.5%, L-NP Coalition, down 1.5% to 20% - Liberals 17.5% (down 1.5%) and Nationals 2.5% (unchanged), Greens down 1.5% to 12.5%, and Independents/ Other Parties down 2% at 12% according to the Roy Morgan Poll conducted from July 6-12, 2026, with a representative Australia-wide cross-section of 1,612 electors.

This week’s increase in support for One Nation (up 5.5% points to 28%), puts an end to two weeks of declines in support after Hanson’s address to the National Press Club a month ago (June 15).

However, if a Federal Election were held now the ALP would win a majority against either One Nation or the Coalition.

Against One Nation – the Roy Morgan estimate is 52.5% (down 3.5%) to 47.5% (up 3.5%) in favour of the ALP.

If the contest were between ALP and L-NP, on a two-party preferred basis ALP is ahead – 54% (down 1%) to 46% (up 1%), based on how electors said they’d ’vote’ their preferences.

The complicated nature of the next Federal Election means there will be contests between the ALP and One Nation, the ALP and L-NP Coalition, One Nation and the L-NP Coalition, and any three of these parties against the Greens, Teal Independents, and other minor parties such as Katter’s Australian Party (KAP).

Whether the contest were ALP One Nation, or ALP L-NP, will depend on the seat-by-seat outcome – and it’s too early to begin detailed analysis – especially given the dramatic rate of change in the parties’ support.

An increasing majority of electors, 62.5%, say the country is ‘going in the wrong direction’ (up 3.5% since last week) which results in Roy Morgan Government Confidence dropping significantly by 6.5 points to just 61.

Only 23.5% say the country is ‘going in the right direction’ (down 3%).

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence is up 0.6 points to 75.3 – now around 25 points below the neutral level of 100.

The small improvement was due to more confidence about people’s personal finances over the next year.

In concerning news, ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation Expectations increased 0.3% to 5.7%.

This means Australians expect annual inflation of 5.7% in each of the next two years.

This is the largest weekly increase to Inflation Expectations for three months since mid-April and came after the Albanese Government reversed half of the fuel excise cut in early July.

Average retail petrol prices have increased about 10 cents per litre since the end of June.

Now to Roy Morgan measures of accurate employment and unemployment – there was considerable weakness in June with ‘Real Unemployment’ up 1% to 11.7%, 1.86 million Australians looking for work, up 156,000 from a month ago.

Most concerning for the Federal Government, there was a contraction in employment in June – fewer jobs – which drove ‘Real Unemployment’ up. Overall employment was down 128,000 to just over 14 million and this was due to a significant fall in part-time employment.

The net result was a slightly larger workforce, up 28,000 to almost 15.9 million driven by the rising unemployment.

Workforce under-utilisation was at 21.1% (up 0.9% from a month ago), – an estimated 3.35 million people – clearly an indicator of a weak economy struggling to generate new jobs.

The June ‘Real Unemployment’ estimates continue a long run of high figures with over 3 million Australians now underutilised for a 19^th straight month.

Finally, today, new data from Roy Morgan on AI usage is almost evenly split between the genders – 50.3% male. 49.7% female.

Or in numbers, 6.8 million male users and 6.7 million female users (49.7%).

But there are differences between major platforms. The largest, ChatGPT is almost evenly split between women and men.

Other leading AI platforms such as Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Claude skew more towards men.

Canva’s Magic Studio stands out as an exception with over 60% of its users being women. (821,000 women to 547,000 men).