Poll reveals 76 per cent of voters picked a side before campaign began

Updated

More than three-quarters of Australian voters had already decided which party they would vote for in the upcoming election when the starting gun for the 2019 campaign was fired on April 11, according to a new poll.

Key points: A Roy Morgan SMS poll found 76 per cent of voters had already decided who they would vote for when the election was called

The poll found 43.5 per cent of voters were paying "not much" attention to the campaign

The poll found Queensland voters were the most engaged with the campaign so far



The results suggest Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten are chasing a small minority of undecided voters as they tear through the country's marginal seats, unveiling new spending promises and attack lines over the course of this five-week campaign.

The Roy Morgan SMS poll, which had a margin of error of 2 per cent, was undertaken as part of the Australian Futures Project and provided exclusively to 7.30.

The poll asked more than 1,100 voters if they had already picked a side when Mr Morrison called the election. Only 24 per cent said they were undecided at the time.

While comparisons are an inexact science, pollster John Scales of JWS Research conducted similar research in the wake of the 2016 election that painted a very different picture.

Those results showed almost the reverse of the current numbers, with only 31 per cent deciding before the start of the 2016 campaign and 65 per cent deciding during. A further 4 per cent could not say when they made up their minds.

Have you been paying attention?

In some ways, Australians have never been so engaged in politics. The Electoral Commission says the highest proportion of people since Federation — 96.8 per cent — have registered to vote in this election. That is 750,000 more people than last time.

But the Roy Morgan poll also asked how much attention voters were paying to the campaign itself. The question was asked as the race entered its third week.

The results showed just 30 per cent were paying "a lot" of attention, while the remainder were disengaged — 43.5 per cent were paying "not much" attention, while 26.5 per cent were switched off completely.

Voter apathy was fairly consistent across the country, except for two outlier states.

Queensland was the most engaged, with 35.5 per cent paying a lot of attention and only 21 per cent paying none.

On the other end of the scale, in Western Australia, the numbers were almost reversed, with only 17.5 per cent paying a lot of attention and 37 per cent paying none.

'Cost-of-living pressures, health care, hospitals'

Ralph Ashton is the executive director of the Australian Futures Project, the non-partisan organisation that conducted the polling. The group says its aim is to counter a tendency for Australian politics to focus on the short term, rather than long-term challenges.

Mr Ashton said the organisation's research over the past decade had identified key issues with which voters wanted politicians to engage.

"The top-five concerns of Australians across the country are cost-of-living pressures, health care and hospitals, open and honest government, climate change and a well-managed economy," Mr Ashton told 7.30.

"Most importantly, they want them solved as a package. They don't want politicians to be picking and choosing."

Mr Ashton said politicians could win back the trust of voters by engaging with 21st century problems and thinking long-term. He said leaders should be more honest with the people about what was possible, and what trade-offs they were making.

Topics: government-and-politics, federal-elections, elections, scott-morrison, bill-shorten, australia

First posted