Poll briefing · Ace Strategies

Tasmania, October 2025

Three months after the July election the Liberals are on 41 per cent and Labor on 24, and no party has moved more than 2.4 points. On an effective sample of 500, a movement needs about six points before this poll can see it.

State: Tasmania · DemosAU
Fieldwork: 16–27 October 2025
Sample: n=1,021 · eff. 500 · ±4.4%
Last election: 19 July 2025

Liberal primary

41%

Up 1.1 on July, and 53 per cent among mortgage holders.

Labor primary

24%

Down 1.9, and its best cohort is renters at 34.

Independents

14%

Down 1.3, and 18 per cent among the over-55s.

The smallest effective sample in the series, and nothing in it moved

An effective sample of 500 carries a statewide margin of ±4.4 per cent, the widest in these briefings. The largest movement since the July election is 2.4 points.

Tasmanian first preferences at the July 2025 election and in the October 2025 DemosAU poll, with the change, in percentage points.
Party	Election, July 2025	October 2025	Change
Liberal	39.9	41	+1.1
Labor	25.9	24	−1.9
Greens	14.4	15	+0.6
Independents	15.3	14	−1.3
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers	2.9	2	−0.9
Any other candidate	1.6	4	+2.4

The poll's figures exclude 2 per cent of voters who were undecided, the lowest undecided share in any wave of these briefings. The election baselines are reconstructed from the swings DemosAU states in the February wave and sum to 100. No two-party preferred figure is published; the report records the calculation method as not applicable.

Tasmania elects five members per division under Hare-Clark, so a two-party preferred figure would describe no contest that exists and DemosAU does not publish one. That removes the measure every other jurisdiction in this series leads with, and it is a clarifying absence: what is left is the primary vote, which is what actually determines how many of the five seats in each division each party wins.

On this sample a change between two waves needs about six points before it can be distinguished from sampling noise, and the largest movement in the table is 2.4 in a residual category. Three months after an election that produced no majority, the electorate is where it was. The useful readings in this wave are therefore not in the topline at all; they are in the cohort splits in section 03 and in the ratings in section 02, where the figures are large enough to survive the interval.

Nine figures were rated and one is in positive territory

Jeremy Rockliff records a net of 5 points positive. The other eight run from zero to 33 negative, and they include both of the major parties' treasury spokespeople.

Each bar is the net rating, the positive share less the negative share, in points. The note gives the three underlying shares.

Jeremy Rockliff, Premier, Liberal

39% positive, 27% neutral, 34% negative. The lowest neutral share of the nine, so this is the most-formed opinion in the set.

Kristie Johnston, Independent MP

23% positive, 54% neutral, 23% negative.

Peter George, Independent MP

−2

25% positive, 48% neutral, 27% negative.

Josh Willie, Opposition Leader, Labor

−5

21% positive, 53% neutral, 26% negative. More than half the sample has no view of the alternative premier.

Craig Garland, Independent MP

−10

17% positive, 56% neutral, 27% negative.

Guy Barnett, Deputy Premier, Liberal

−14

22% positive, 42% neutral, 36% negative.

Eric Abetz, Treasurer, Liberal

−19

22% positive, 37% neutral, 41% negative.

Rosalie Woodruff, Greens leader

−20

24% positive, 32% neutral, 44% negative.

Dean Winter, Shadow Treasurer, Labor

−33

15% positive, 37% neutral, 48% negative. The worst rating of the nine.

Rockliff leads Josh Willie as preferred premier 46 to 34, with 20 per cent naming neither, and the ratings explain the gap. The premier is the only figure a majority of respondents has an opinion about in either direction, at 39 positive and 34 negative on a neutral share of 27. Willie's 53 per cent neutral is the ordinary position of an opposition leader three months into a term, but it is also the reason his 34 per cent on preferred premier outruns his party's 24 per cent primary vote.

The three independents sit between zero and ten points negative on neutral shares of 48 to 56, which is a distinct profile from the party figures: known to about half the electorate and, among those who know them, close to evenly rated. In a chamber where independents took 15.3 per cent of the vote at the last election, that is the relevant measure, and none of the three is carrying the negatives that the Greens leader at 20 negative or the shadow treasurer at 33 negative are.

Twenty-eight points of Liberal vote separate mortgage holders from renters

DemosAU publishes no cohort sample sizes for this wave. If the three tenure groups each hold about a third of the effective sample of 500, a gap between two of them carries roughly ±10.5 points, which is the widest cohort interval in these briefings.

October 2025 Tasmanian first preferences by party within each demographic cohort, in per cent.
Cohort	LIB	ALP	GRN	IND	SFF	OTH
Tasmania	41	24	15	14	2	4
Men	44	24	13	14	2	3
Women	38	25	16	15	2	4
Aged 18 to 34	44	21	20	8	5	2
Aged 35 to 54	42	22	17	14	1	4
Aged 55 and over	38	27	12	18	1	4
School education	40	28	14	12	2	4
TAFE education	42	22	14	15	2	5
University education	41	22	17	17	1	2
Own home outright	38	25	15	16	0	6
Mortgage holders	53	18	13	13	1	2
Renters	25	34	19	14	5	3

Every row sums to 100 in the report. The undecided share of 2 per cent sits outside these totals. Cohort figures rest on subsamples and carry wider margins than the ±4.4% statewide topline.

The Liberals take 53 per cent of mortgage holders and 25 per cent of renters, a 28-point gap that clears even this wave's wide interval, and Labor runs the other way at 18 and 34. Renters are the only cohort in the table where Labor leads, and mortgage holders are where the Liberal vote is twelve points above its statewide figure. Outright owners sit between the two at 38, so this is not the owner-versus-renter division the mainland waves show; it is specifically about people paying a mortgage.

Nothing else in the table clears its interval. The six points between men and women on the Liberal vote, the six between the youngest and oldest groups, and the two-point spread across the three education groups are all inside what a sample of this size can resolve. Tasmania's electorate divides on housing tenure and, on this evidence, on very little else. The education row is worth noting for its flatness: 40, 42 and 41 on the Liberal vote, where Queensland's LNP runs from 30 per cent among the school-educated to 42 among the university-educated in February.

What this ballot did not offer

The question listed the Liberals, Labor, independents, the Greens, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, and any other candidate. One Nation was not among them, and by June/July 2026 it was polling 21 per cent in Tasmania.

21% One Nation took 21 per cent in June/July 2026, the first Tasmanian wave to list it. This question and the February 2026 question both ran without it.

The pattern is the one every jurisdiction in this series shows. Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia all ran a lower-house ballot without a One Nation line in late 2025 and added one within six months, and in each case the party recorded between 17 and 21 per cent at its first appearance. Tasmania ran two waves without the line, in October 2025 and February 2026, and when it appeared in June/July the figure was 21.

That does not establish where Tasmania's One Nation vote was in October 2025, and this briefing does not claim to know. The any-other-candidate category here is 4 per cent, which is too small to have held much of it, and unlike New South Wales and South Australia there is no upper-house question to cross-check against, because Tasmania's Legislative Council is elected by rotating single-member divisions rather than statewide. What can be said is that a reader comparing this wave's 41 per cent Liberal vote with June/July's 28 should expect the ballot, not only the electorate, to have changed in between. ACE-IU-2026-019 sets out which categories fell as One Nation arrived.

Data notes

This wave was self-generated by DemosAU rather than commissioned, and the sample was collected through internet panels at 87 per cent and random device engagement at 13 per cent. The effective sample of 500, against a raw sample of 1,021, is the largest proportional reduction from weighting in any wave of these briefings, and it is the reason the margin of error is ±4.4 per cent on a sample size that elsewhere supports ±3.6.

Weighting was applied on age by gender, education, residential tenure, location, the 2025 federal vote and the 2025 state election vote. This is the only wave in the series weighted on two separate election results.

The February 2026 wave repeats this question design and this briefing's companion, ACE-IU-2026-037, reads it. Between the two, the Liberal vote falls six points.

Method

DemosAU Tasmania Poll, self-generated. Fieldwork 16–27 October 2025, internet panels (87%) and random device engagement (13%), Tasmanian voters 18+, n=1,021, effective n=500, effective margin of error ±4.4%. Rim weighting on age by gender, education, residential tenure, location, 2025 federal vote and 2025 state election vote. State voting intention was the first substantive question after demographics. Initial undecided voters were asked a leaner question and the remainder were excluded from the totals, which exclude 2 per cent of voters. No two-party preferred figure is published; Tasmania elects five members per division under Hare-Clark and the report records the calculation method as not applicable. Polling and methodology are the work of DemosAU, a member of the Australian Polling Council. Ace Strategies had no role in the poll; analysis and presentation are Ace Strategies' alone. Subgroup samples carry wider margins than the ±4.4% topline.

Use

Polling is by DemosAU. Material from this briefing may be reproduced in client and internal documents provided it credits acestrategies.au and the pollster. Not for resale.

Contact

Ace Strategies · info@acestrategies.au · acestrategies.au

Filing

File: ACE-IU-2026-036
Series: IU-03 · Poll briefings
State: TAS · Public release
Issued: October 2026

Every poll briefing The next Tasmanian wave The briefing that tracks One Nation's arrival The wave as published