Roy Morgan Update March 10, 2026: Federal Vote, Consumer Confidence and Mortgage Stress

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

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly update.

The first Roy Morgan Poll taken after the conflict in the Middle East began, shows support for both the ALP and the Liberal-National Coalition down and support up for the Greens and One Nation.

ALP dropped 4% to 26.5% and the Coalition was down 1% to 22.5%. The Greens gained 3% to 14.5% and One Nation was up 1.5% to 23.5% - and again ahead of the Coalition. 13% support Independents and Other Parties according to interviewing conducted from March 2-8, 2026, with a representative Australia-wide cross-section of 1,532 electors.

In times of global unrest, the usual response of the electorate is to swing behind the Government – although clearly this hasn’t happened so far in the early stages of this war.

The rise in support for the Greens is likely because the Greens are the only major political party to take a stand against the US and Israeli strikes in the Middle East, and this support has come straight from people previously supporting the ALP.

A look at the results by gender and age show the picture is complicated with the ALP losing primary support of both men and women,  and both the Greens and One Nation gaining support of both men and women.

Analysis by age shows the ALP losing support in every age group – mostly to the Greens. For people aged 18-24 though – ALP support went to One Nation and Independents/Other Parties and the Greens lost support. One Nation gained support in all age groups under 65.

The two-party preferred support of the ALP also dropped this week. In calculating a two-party preferred vote when preferences are allocated based on how Australians voted at the 2025 Federal Election, ALP leads the L-NP: 53% to 47%.

Based on how electors said they would ’vote’, ALP is 54.5% well ahead of Coalition 45.5%. If a Federal Election were held now the ALP would be returned to Government with a clear majority under either methodology.

This week Roy Morgan Government Confidence was unchanged – but at a very low level. 59% of electors, say the country is ‘going in the wrong direction’, only 26.5% say the country is ‘going in the right direction’.

This means the Roy Morgan Government Confidence Rating is at only 67.5 – over 30 points below the neutral level of 100.

The Middle East War clearly hit Consumer Confidence.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence and fell 3.1 points to 73.4 – the lowest for the index for over three years since July 2023.

Concern about the next 12 months drove the decrease. Australians have less confidence about the economy over the next year (down a net 6% points) and less confidence about their personal finances over the next year (down a net 7% points).

ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation Expectations jumped rapidly this week – up 0.8% points to 6.1%.

This means Australians expect inflation of 6.1% in each of the next two years.

This is a huge weekly jump in Inflation Expectations and now at its highest since November 2022 – during the first year of the Russia-Ukraine War.

The latest Roy Morgan estimates show mortgage stress down 0.6% in January to 23.9% of Australians with a mortgage – an estimated 1.18 million Australians.

Mortgage stress has proven sensitive to interest rate decisions and declined by 4% following the Reserve Bank’s decision to cut interest rates last year in August.

This is the lowest level of mortgage stress for three years since January 2023.

However, as we know, the Reserve Bank has now decided to raise interest rates – and did so recently in February.

If the RBA decides to raise rates again in March by 0.25%, Roy Morgan forecasts that mortgage stress will jump to 28.9% of mortgage holders by April – higher than it was in August.

Last week Roy Morgan released the latest quarterly survey results on Australia’s most trusted and distrusted brand for the year to December 2025 – and for a ninth straight quarter – Bunnings is Australia’s most trusted brand.

Bunnings is followed by ALDI and Kmart second and third place.

The improvers in the latest quarter were led by the banks with the Commonwealth Bank up one spot to fourth – its highest ever result, Westpac up one place to 13^th, NAB up two spots to 17^th and ING up 1 spot to 19^th, and ANZ up three places to 29^th.

Discount department store retailers Big W and Target also improved.

Woolworths was again Australia’s most distrusted brands, although Optus was the slider after the triple zero outage late last year – the telco is now the second most distrusted brand overall – and for the single month of December was the most distrusted brand in the country.

Other brands to slide include Tesla, Shein, Nestle, and Google – which deteriorated five places to 17^th most distrusted brand.