Roy Morgan Update October 6, 2026: Consumer Confidence, Victorian State Election and NZ Voting Intention

In this week's Market Research Update, we present the latest data on Consumer Confidence, Victorian State Election and New Zealand Voting Intention.

Welcome to the Roy Morgan Weekly update.

Let’s start with Consumer Confidence. Consumer Confidence was already in decline before last week’s Reserve Bank meeting where the cash rate was increased.

This has resulted in the ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence falling 3.4 points in a week, now at 67.1, well below the neutral level of 100.

And inflation expectations . ANZ-Roy Morgan Inflation Expectations were up 0.2% to 5.9%.

This means Australians expect annual inflation of 5.9% in each of the next two years.

Now let’s turn to the Victorian election. To help navigate the tricky electoral landscape,

Roy Morgan has created a Winnability Score It combines current voting intention with how closely an electorate's voter profile aligns with each party's core support base. In other words, it measures not only who is currently voting for a party, but also which voters are most likely to be persuaded to support that party.

This becomes particularly important when assessing the electoral prospects of individual seats.

Importantly, this is before all candidates are locked in, before preference deals are done, and before the campaign begins in earnest.

For example, this map illustrates One Nation's Winnability Score across Victoria by electorate. Electorates shown in dark orange are considered the most winnable for One Nation, while those shaded grey represent the party's least favourable opportunities.

Unsurprisingly, the strongest concentrations of winnable seats are found across regional and rural Victoria, where the electorate profiles align more closely with the voter segments that have shown growing support for One Nation.

But the map also highlights that One Nation's appeal is no longer limited to traditional rural strongholds. A number of outer metropolitan and regional growth areas also display relatively high Winnability Scores, reflecting the party's increasing support across a broader range of voter segments.

Overall, the map demonstrates that although One Nation's greatest opportunities remain in regional Victoria, its electoral potential now extends well beyond the stereotypical "country voter" base, giving the party a competitive presence across a much wider part of the state.

In contrast, many inner-city and metropolitan electorates rank much lower on the Winnability Index. These areas are typically ‘Metrotech’ in nature, who are more likely to support the Labor or the Greens, with pockets of strength for the Liberal Party in the inner east and inner south.

Overall, if an election were held today, based on a seat by seat analysis of Roy Morgan data from the past 6 months, with preferences allocated based on how electors said they would vote. It would be a real cliff-hanger.

Two natural coalitions – that we’re told won’t happen – would see a Labor Greens government with 46 seats.

But the questions remain:

• what will happen in the next few weeks,
• how will preferences flow, will there be coalitions formed or will parties go it alone and potentially have a minority government,
• or will One Nation be underestimated, like the DLP in the 1950s, Donald Trump in 2016 or even this week’s presidential election in Brazil, where right wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro was underestimated in polling by around 7 percentage points.

And now over to New Zealand, where an election will take place on the 7th of November.

The latest Roy Morgan New Zealand Poll shows the National-led government coalition increasing its lead into an election winning position over the Labour-led Opposition – now leading 52% to 41.5%.

This is the largest lead for the Government for two years since September 2024.

The National Party support is unchanged, but there were increases for both NZ First and ACT, while Greens support has increased at the expense of Labour, down slightly in September.