Victoria, October 2025

01

One Nation was absent from the lower-house question and took 11 per cent in the upper

The two questions were put to the same 1,016 respondents in the same survey. The lower-house question listed four parties and the upper-house question listed fifteen.

A voter who intended to support One Nation in the lower house had nowhere to record it except "any other candidate", which took 22 per cent. The same voters were then offered One Nation by name in the upper-house question and 11 per cent chose it, a swing of 9.0 points on the 2022 upper-house result. The lower-house figure for the party is not low in this wave; it does not exist.

That matters for the series rather than for October. DemosAU added One Nation to the lower-house question in February 2026, where it took 21 per cent, and the February report sets that against a figure of 0 for October. Read as a movement, the 21 points are a question change and a voting change together, and the report does not separate them. Every comparison in this briefing between October and a later wave is stated on that basis.

02

The Coalition's vote is held by outright owners and voters over 55, and the age and tenure gaps are wider than subgroup error

DemosAU publishes no cohort sample sizes. If the tenure and age groups each hold about a third of the effective sample of 691, a share near 37 per cent in one of them carries about ±6.2 points, and a gap between two of them carries about ±8.4.

Each row is the Coalition's lower-house first preference in a cohort, in per cent. The statewide figure of 37 is the first row.

Outright owners give the Coalition 50 per cent and renters 25, a gap of 25 points against an interval of about ±8.5. Voters over 55 give it 46 and voters under 35 give it 23, a gap of 23 against about ±8.4. Both are wider than subgroup error and both describe the same electorate: the Coalition's Victorian vote in October 2025 is older and holds its housing outright.

The three-point gap between men and women, 39 against 36, sits inside an interval of about ±7.2 and should not be read as a difference. Among voters under 35 the Greens took 31 per cent against the Coalition's 23, a lead of 8 points against an interval of about ±8.1, so that cohort's first place is not separable either.

03

The six-point two-party swing is Labor's fall rather than a Coalition rise

The Coalition's primary vote is 2.5 points above its 2022 result and its two-party share is 6.0 points above it, on DemosAU's figures.

40–32 Brad Battin leads Jacinta Allan as preferred premier, with 28 per cent giving no answer. He was Liberal leader for this wave and Jess Wilson had replaced him by February.

A party whose primary vote rises 2.5 points does not normally gain 6.0 points after preferences. The difference is carried by Labor, down 10.7 points on its own primary vote, and by the 22 per cent sitting with candidates outside the three named parties. Preferences from that 22 per cent decide the two-party figure, and the report states no flow method for this wave, so the 51–49 split cannot be reproduced from the primary votes as published.

The preferred-premier question was put as a two-way choice between Battin and Allan, with no third name offered. More than a quarter of respondents, 28 per cent, chose neither. Battin was not leader by the time of the next wave, and his successor went on to higher readings: Jess Wilson took the same 40 per cent in February, 47 in June and 43 in August.

04

October against the 2022 election, in both houses

Percentage points, first preferences. Movements inside the ±3.8% margin should be read as direction rather than magnitude.

The election column is the result as the Victorian poll register records it, where the primary votes carry one decimal and sum to 100.0. The change column is DemosAU's own and rests on a baseline up to 0.4 of a point away from that result, so the two columns are not arithmetic on each other. One Nation has an em dash in the election column because it did not contest the lower house statewide in 2022, and in the lower-house columns because the question did not offer it. The lower-house figures exclude the 6 per cent who remained undecided after a leaner question.