Roy Morgan Update June 16, 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.

This week the weekly indicators languished virtually unchanged in negative territory. But, of real concern, the Australian workforce contracted for the third month in a row.

For the second week the Roy Morgan Poll shows One Nation primary support holding steady at 29.5% ahead of the ALP, up 2% to 28%, and L-NP Coalition, down 0.5% to 17% - Liberals on 15% (up 0.5%) and Nationals 2% (down 1%).

Support for the Greens is down 1.5% to 14%, and Independents/ Other Parties are unchanged at 11.5%.

The big news last week was the unprecedented success of One Nation’s ‘Fire The Liar’ online fundraiser which launched on Wednesday June 10 and has raised over $4.2 million from around 70,000 donors – an average of around $60 per donor. The campaign tagline is targeting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Although behind on primary support, the ALP maintains a clear two-party preferred lead over the Coalition on 54.5% to 45.5% based on how electors said they would vote.

If the Federal two-party preferred contest is between ALP and One Nation it would be closer, the Morgan Poll estimate is 53% to 47% in favour of the ALP.

Either way, if a Federal Election were held now the ALP would be returned to Government according to interviewing conducted from June 8-14, 2026, with a representative Australia-wide cross-section of 1,583 electors.

Roy Morgan Government Confidence was virtually unchanged at 62.5 – almost 40 points below the neutral level of 100.

Only 26.5% of electors believe the country is ‘going in the right direction’ (that’s up 2.5%); an increasing majority of 64% say the country is ‘going in the wrong direction’ (up 1.5%).

This week ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence was virtually unchanged at 70.7 – before today’s Reserve Bank meeting.

Consumer Confidence has now been below the level of 80 for 16 weeks and averaged only 67.1 over this period.

Although overall Consumer Confidence was unchanged, there was movement within key demographics.

Notably, the Consumer Confidence for People Paying Their Home Off increased 4.4 points to 70.1.

Media speculation in recent weeks has been that the Reserve Bank will not be increasing interest rates again and their next move – whenever it happens – will be a cut in interest rates, perhaps as soon as the next few months.

Today’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged is in line with this change in sentiment.

In contrast to Mortgage Holders, there was a drop in confidence for Home Owners, down 2.5 points to 72.5, and for Renters, down 5.1 points to 68.2.

All three Housing Segments continue to have much lower confidence than before the start of the Iran War and everything that followed.

This week ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation Expectations were virtually unchanged at 6%, down 0.1% from a year ago.

This means Australians expect annual inflation of 6% in each of the next two years.

Inflation Expectations have been very stable over the last five weeks and average 6% since mid-May.

Now to Roy Morgan measures of employment and unemployment – and there was considerable weakness in May with ‘Real Unemployment’ up 0.6% to 10.7%, there were 1.7 million Australians looking for work, up 69,000 from a month ago.

Most concerningly, there was a contraction in employment in May – fewer jobs – which drove real unemployment up. Overall employment was down 300,000 to under 14.2 million and this was due to falls in both full-time and part-time employment.

The net result was a contracting workforce, down 231,000 to just under 15.9 million – as I said earlier this is the third month the Australian workforce has contracted.

Workforce under-utilisation was at 20.2% (down 0.1% from a month ago), – an estimated 3.21 million people – and clearly an indicator of a weak economy struggling to generate new jobs.

The May estimates continue a long run of high figures with over 3 million Australians now underutilised for an 18^th straight month.

And finally today to the annual End of Financial Year Sales forecasts Roy Morgan conducts in conjunction with the Australian Retail Council (The ARC).

Roy Morgan interviewed over 5,000 Australians in late May to find out what their intentions were for this year’s ‘End of Financial Year Sales’ period.

This year 6.1 million people are expected to take part in the ‘End of Financial Year Sales’ – unchanged on a year ago, representing 26% of all Australians.

Interestingly, overall spending for the sales period – which started in late May and runs into early July – is forecast to be $10.7 Billion, up $200 million on a year ago.

This is an increase of only 1.9% from last year, below the current rate of inflation of 4.2%, and reflects the cost of living concerns faced by many Australians.

Average spending for this year is forecast at $1,739 during the sales period, up $25 on a year ago.

The most popular categories are clothing, footwear and accessories (34%), household appliances and white goods (15%), and electronics and technology products (12%).

Online spending is set to account for 44% of End of Financial Year Sales expenditure, unchanged from last year.