Poll briefing · Ace Strategies
Victoria, February 2026
One Nation appears in the Victorian lower-house question for the first time and takes 21 per cent. The Coalition's primary vote falls eight points from October to 29 while its two-party share rises two to 53, because the report assumes three in four One Nation preferences reach it.
Coalition primary
29%
It leads 53–47 after preferences, up two since October.
Labor primary
23%
The three-point fall since October is inside sampling error.
One Nation
21%
This is the party's first appearance in the lower-house question.
The comparison with October measures a question change and a voting change together
October's lower-house question offered four options and February's offered five, with One Nation added. Adding an option reduces every other option's share whether or not any voter changed their mind.
One Nation's 21 points have to come from the other four options, and the two that fall are the Coalition, down eight, and others, down ten. Both movements are wider than the ±5.3 points that a change between these two waves carries at 95 per cent, and neither can be read as lost support, because the voters who chose "any other candidate" in October had no One Nation line to choose instead. Labor's three-point fall and the Greens' unchanged 15 both sit inside that interval.
DemosAU's own February report sets One Nation's 21 against a figure of 0 for October. The party polled 11 per cent in October's upper-house question, where it was offered, so a reader taking the 0 at face value would record a 21-point rise in a party that was already measurable at 11 four months earlier in the same survey. The usable statement is that in February, with One Nation on the ballot, the distribution was 29, 23, 21, 15 and 12.
The Coalition trails Labor by six points on primary vote and leads by six after preferences
The report states its flows: Greens preferences split 90 to 10 to Labor, One Nation 75 to 25 to the Coalition, and others 55 to 45 to the Coalition. The table applies them to the primary votes.
| Source | Share | Flow | To Labor | To Coalition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Labor primary | 23 | — | 23.00 | — |
| Coalition primary | 29 | — | — | 29.00 |
| Greens | 15 | 90–10 Labor | 13.50 | 1.50 |
| One Nation | 21 | 75–25 Coalition | 5.25 | 15.75 |
| Others | 12 | 55–45 Coalition | 5.40 | 6.60 |
| Two-party preferred | 100 | — | 47.15 | 52.85 |
The published figure is 53 to 47 and the arithmetic above gives 52.85 to 47.15, a difference of rounding. The reproduction is set out because the report states its flows and does not show their effect, and because it is the step where a quarter of the electorate's second choice decides the headline.
Fifteen and three-quarter points of the Coalition's 52.85 come from One Nation preferences rather than from its own voters. That single assumption is worth more to the Coalition's two-party position than the gap between the two major parties' primary votes. If One Nation preferences split evenly instead of 75 to 25, the Coalition's share would fall by about five points and the two-party figure would be close to level.
The 75 to 25 split is not DemosAU's estimate from this poll. The report takes it from the 2025 federal election result in Victoria and applies it to a state contest, which is a reasonable starting assumption and an assumption all the same. The September 2026 wave revises it to 81 to 19.
Replacing the Liberal leader left the preferred-premier split where Brad Battin had it
Jess Wilson replaced Brad Battin as Liberal leader between the October and February waves. The preferred-premier question was put as the same two-way choice in both.
| Wave | Liberal leader | Jacinta Allan | No answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 2025 | 40 (Battin) | 32 | 28 |
| February 2026 | 40 (Wilson) | 31 | 29 |
Neither figure moved by more than a point. A change of opposition leader that produced no measurable change in the preferred-premier split is a finding about the question as much as about the leaders: a two-way forced choice between a sitting premier and whoever leads the opposition measures the premier's standing more than the challenger's.
The net ratings say the same thing from the other side.
Jess Wilson, Opposition Leader
She recorded 27% positive, 49% neutral and 24% negative. The net of +3 carries an interval of about ±5.2, so it is not separable from neutral.
Jacinta Allan, Premier
She recorded 16% positive, 31% neutral and 53% negative. The net of −37 carries about ±5.4 and is well outside zero.
The premier is 37 points underwater and the opposition leader is indistinguishable from neutral. Only one of those two readings is a finding about a person; the other is a reading of a leader most voters had not yet formed a view about, with 49 per cent answering neutral. That neutral share is the largest for any Victorian leader in this series.
February against October and the 2022 election
Percentage points, first preferences. The change column compares two questions with different option sets, which section 01 sets out.
| Party | Election, 2022 | October | February | vs October |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coalition | 34.4 | 37 | 29 | −8 |
| Labor | 37.0 | 26 | 23 | −3 |
| One Nation | — | — | 21 | — |
| Greens | 11.5 | 15 | 15 | 0 |
| Others | 17.1 | 22 | 12 | −10 |
| Two-party, Coalition | 45.0 | 51 | 53 | +2 |
One Nation has an em dash in the election column because it did not contest the lower house statewide in 2022, in the October column because the question did not offer it, and in the change column because a first reading has nothing to move from. The election column is the result as the Victorian poll register records it. A change between these two waves carries about ±5.3 points at 95 per cent, so the Coalition's and others' falls are outside sampling error and Labor's and the Greens' are not.
Data notes
This report publishes less in readable form than any other in the Victorian series. Its topline comparison and its methodology statement carry text. The demographic breakdowns, the preferred-premier and personal-ratings charts, the upper-house question and the biggest-issue question are images, and no figures can be read out of them. That is why this briefing carries no cohort section, where the other Victorian briefings do, and why the ratings below are stated as derived.
The personal ratings come from the Victorian poll register, which derived them from the change-since-February figures published in the June report. Both sets sum to 100 across positive, neutral and negative, which a direct reading of the June chart does not, so the register is the better source. Treat them as derived rather than as published February figures.
The upper-house question excluded 12 per cent of voters who remained undecided, which the report states. Its party figures are not readable. The lower-house figures exclude undecided voters after a leaner question and the report does not give that share for this wave.
Method
DemosAU/PremierNational Victoria State Poll. Fieldwork 1–10 February 2026, internet panels, Victorians 18+ eligible to vote, n=1,274, effective n=716, effective margin of error ±3.7%. Rim weighting on age by gender, education, personal income, residential tenure, region, 2025 federal vote and left–right self-identification. 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. Two-party preferred uses adjusted 2022 state election flows with One Nation preferences assigned as at the 2025 federal election in Victoria, at Greens 90–10 to Labor, One Nation 75–25 to the Coalition and others 55–45 to the Coalition. Polling and methodology are the work of DemosAU, a member of the Australian Polling Council, in association with PremierNational. Ace Strategies had no role in the poll; analysis and presentation are Ace Strategies' alone. Subgroup samples carry wider margins than the ±3.7% topline.
Use
Polling is by DemosAU and the sponsor is PremierNational. Material from this briefing may be reproduced in client and internal documents provided it credits acestrategies.au, the pollster and the sponsor. Not for resale.
Contact
Ace Strategies · info@acestrategies.au · acestrategies.au
Filing
- File
- ACE-IU-2026-021
- Series
- IU-03 · Poll briefings
- State
- VIC · Public release
- Issued
- October 2026
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