Roy Morgan Update October 1, 2024: Federal Vote, Consumer Confidence & NRL Supporter Ladder 2024

In this week's update, we present the latest data on Primary Voting Intention, Consumer Confidence & NRL Supporter Ladder 2024.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly Update.

There was a slight swing to the Coalition this week with the latest Roy Morgan survey showing the Coalition on 51% (up 1.5% from a week ago) ahead of the ALP on 49% on a two-party preferred basis.

The swing to the Coalition last week comes as Australians face several challenging issues with discussion about changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax - community unease about scams, house prices declines in many areas and the behaviour of the large supermarkets under the spotlight for ripping off consumers and high prices and facing an ACCC investigation.

These concerns all serve to make the community fairly jittery and volatile in terms of voting intention and relatively small events can have a disproportionate impact on sentiment.

There is also an important State Election coming up with Queenslanders set to vote at the end of the month and widely expected to change government and elect Coalition Leader David Crisafulli as the next Premier.

Perhaps with a nod to the upcoming State Election, the biggest swing to the Coalition nationally this week was in the Sunshine State.

Roy Morgan will release a webinar a week prior to the election revealing what Queenslanders think and who they trust and distrust.

This is the first time the Coalition has been in front for over a month – and they are ahead based on preferences being distributed as electors tell us.

On the other hand, when preferences are allocated based on how Australians voted at the 2022 Federal Election the result is reversed with the ALP on 51.5% ahead of the Coalition on 48.5%.

This tight result emphasises again how important preference flows will be in determining which major party is best placed to form government with the support of minor parties and independents after the next federal election.

If a Federal Election were held now, the result would be ‘too close to call’ and either Coalition or ALP would require the support of minor parties and independents to form government.

Other key indicators also went in the wrong direction for the Government this week.

Government Confidence (whether people think the country is going in the right or wrong direction) dropped 3.5 points to 76.5.

A majority (54.5%) of Australians say the country is going in the wrong direction, while only 31% say the country is heading in the right direction leaving the indicator well below the neutral level of 100.

ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence dropped 2.9 points to 82.0 after the Reserve Bank left interest rates unchanged last week for the seventh straight meeting.

Although economists were unanimous that the Reserve Bank would leave interest rates unchanged, it appears some Australians were hoping for a cut – especially given the very widely publicised interest rate cuts in the US.

The Reserve Bank next meets to consider interest rates on Melbourne Cup Day in just over a month.

By then we will have the key September Quarter Inflation figures.

Last week, and after the Reserve Bank met, the ABS released monthly inflation indicator for August which showed annual inflation dropped to 2.7% - the lowest figure for over three years since mid-2021.

This is the first-time official inflation (albeit just the monthly indicator) has been within the Reserve Bank target range of 2-3% since the Bank started raising interest rates in early 2022.

Alongside lowering official inflation, Australians are also expecting lower inflation.

This week ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation Expectations were down 0.3% and Australians now expect annual inflation to be 4.6% per annum over the next two years.

The fall in Inflation Expectations accords with recent moves in the average price of petrol which dropped under $1.73 per litre this week – it’s lowest for over two years.

This is a drop of nearly 40 cents per litre since late April when the average price was near record highs above $2.12 per litre.

Despite the fall over the last four months, average retail petrol prices have now spent a record 105 weeks (just more than two years and since mid-September 2022) above $1.70 per litre.