Federal election: Suburbs of Victoria, NSW ‘ground zero’ in determining result of 2025 vote

The suburbs of New South Wales, Sydney and Melbourne will be “ground zero” in the 2025 Federal Election, according to one of the nation’s leading pollsters.

“New South Wales and Victoria will be determining the result,” said Kos Samaras, director of strategy and analytics at the Redbridge Group, told the Nightly.

His analysis echoes a new demographic and state-by-state Newspoll survey released by the Australian on Boxing Day that shows the two most populous states to be critical election battlegrounds in the nationwide poll due sometime in the next five months.

The survey revealed Labor is vulnerable among disillusioned 35-49-year-old voters, many of whom have mortgages and are unhappy with high interest rates and cost of living pressures.

Labor’s primary vote among 35- to 49-year-olds slid from 35 per cent in the April-June period to 33 in the July-September survey. It has since dropped to 31 per cent in the October-December period.

The decline in primary vote support has reduced Labor’s two-party-preferred lead in this demographic from 53 to 47 per cent, putting it on a par with the Coalition.

The cost-of-living crisis was the primary issue voters cared about in the upcoming poll, said Mr Samaras.

“It’s number one, two, three, four, five and six. It’s completely all consuming,” he said.

Support for Labor was faltering in “distressed electorates” in Sydney and Melbourne and in regional Victoria and New South Wales where the inflationary crisis was hitting the hardest, added Mr Samaras.

“The seats that we see in play are outer suburban electorates in Sydney and regional electorates in New South Wales, like Robertson, Gilmore, Dobell, Paterson, Hunter and then suburban seats, like Macarthur, Bennelong, Reid,” he said.

“In Victoria, a very similar picture emerges, which is McEwan, Hawke, possibly Dunkley. Aston will be reclaimed by the Liberal Party.”

These were the areas where lower income constituents who were “feeling the pinch the most” lived in the greatest number, explained Mr Samaras.

“This is where people have basically been forced to buy homes which they probably can’t afford, that they were able to afford when interest rates were very low,” he said.

“And if they were to try to buy the same home now, with the current interest rate levels, they’d be unlikely to get the loan they need,” he added.

“These constituencies are where we find people with the greatest level of anger towards the Federal Labor Government, the perception that they’ve been ignored during the inflationary crisis.”

But if the analysis predicts a sobering outlook for the Albanese Government, it does not offer too much solace to the Coalition either.

“I would say that the picture that is emerging is one of the Coalition picking up momentum in terms of support,” Mr Samaras said, but added: “It’s still unknown as to whether the Coalition can pick up enough momentum in these electorates to actually win them.”

While the “politics of grievance” was “doing a lot of heavy lifting,” for the opposition, it still had a steep path ahead.

“The problem for the Coalition is they need to put together a set of policies that actually seal the deal, because if they just rely on grievance, they won’t get there,” he said.

The latest Newspoll analysis revealed approval of Anthony Albanese’s leadership among Victorian voters had declined from 46 per cent approval in April to June to 41 per cent now, while his disapproval ratings had increased from 48 per cent to 53 per cent over the same period.

This makes Victoria the Prime Minister’s worst state apart from NSW and Queensland.

Mr Albanese was “perceived by voters as someone who has priorities elsewhere,” said Mr Samaras.

“People think that he’s come from a poor background, but he’s not one of us anymore. He has low levels of campaign IQ. He is not performing all that well.”

Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton had “been able to exceed expectations” among voters but was still vulnerable to a negative Labor campaign, he said.

For now, Labor’s “fragmented, inconsistent” message was not cutting through to voters and it was struggling to shake voter dissatisfaction with the amount of Government time and effort that had been spent on the failed Voice referendum.

As things stood, the election was heading towards a hung parliament, Mr Samaras predicted.

It’s an outcome projection that Ben Raue, an electoral analyst and blogger at the Tally Room, agrees with.

“The polls have clearly turned against the Labor Government. I think you can overstate the problems they’re having but they got elected in 2022 with the lowest primary votes of any government to win an election in modern Australian history,” he said.

“They’re in this position where they don’t need to lose many seats to lose their majority.”

While a 10 percent swing towards Labor in Western Australia was crucial to its electoral victory in May 2022, the party was unlikely to repeat that in 2025, said Mr Raue.

“I think they will probably lose some ground there and they’ve been looking for places to pick up ground elsewhere,” he said, pointing to outer suburban and provincial seats as a probable target.

Labor had won in 2022 “solely because the Coalition lost votes and they went to other parties,” but its core support had “basically flatlined” in 2016, he said.

The Coalition had lost a lot of inner-city seats and next year must battle to win places like Werriwa, Western Sydney and Hunter, that were not historical strongholds, while continuing to fend off challenges from the Teals.

“There is a (question) here about how much are they trying to win back those Teal seats they lost, or how much they’re trying to win seats they’ve never really won before, going for unprecedented territory,” Mr Raue said.

The Teals “had a moment” in 2022 and the chance to bed down in their constituencies since.

“I don’t think they’re going to make a lot of gains or they’re going to get a lot of new seats the way they did in 2022, but I think where they have sitting MPs, they will probably do quite well,” he said.

“Most of them, maybe all of them, will get re-elected, and there’ll still be a lot of them there in the next parliament.”

As for the Federal poll’s timing, Mr Raue predicted a May election.

“There’s been some rumours about calling the election in February or March,” he said. “Albanese is not a risky politician. I think he’ll go for the safe, boring option.”