Poll briefing · Ace Strategies
Western Australia, November 2025
Labor leads 56–44 after preferences on a primary vote of 41 per cent, within half a point of its election result. No party has moved more than two points since March, and the ballot this question used did not offer One Nation.
Labor primary
41%
It is 0.4 below its March 2025 result, and leads 56–44.
Liberal
30%
Up 2.0, the largest movement in the wave and inside error.
Greens
13%
Up 1.9, and 32 per cent among voters under 35.
Eight months after the election, nothing has moved
The largest change in the table is 4.3 points, in an any-other-candidate category rather than a party. Every named party sits within 2.0 points of its March result, and the two-party figure within 1.1.
| Party | Election, 2025 | November 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Labor | 41.4 | 41 | −0.4 |
| Liberal | 28.0 | 30 | +2.0 |
| Greens | 11.1 | 13 | +1.9 |
| WA Nationals | 5.2 | 6 | +0.8 |
| Any other candidate | 14.3 | 10 | −4.3 |
| Two-party, Labor | 57.1 | 56 | −1.1 |
The poll's figures exclude 5 per cent of voters who were undecided after a leaner question. The changes are DemosAU's own. The any-other-candidate baseline of 14.3 is the 2025 others result of 10.3 plus One Nation's 4.0, because this question had no separate One Nation box; the two-party figure applies 2025 state election preference flows.
A change of this size carries about ±5.5 points between two waves of this series, and nothing here approaches it. What the topline supports is that Western Australian voting intention in November 2025 is the March 2025 election result, and that is worth stating plainly because the three other jurisdictions in this batch were all moving by then. Queensland's One Nation vote had risen six points, New South Wales had lost its Coalition five, and Victoria's two majors were both below 30. Western Australia had done none of that.
The reservation is in the last row of the table rather than the figures. The any-other-candidate category has fallen 4.3 points, and the baseline it is measured against folds in the 4.0 per cent One Nation took in 2025 because this ballot did not list the party separately. A category that contains an unnamed party and falls four points is the one line here that could be concealing a movement, and the February wave, which names One Nation and puts it on 17, is where that question is answered.
Twenty points of two-party vote separate outright owners from mortgage holders
DemosAU publishes no cohort sample sizes for this wave. If the three-way splits each hold about a third of the effective sample of 626, a two-party gap between two of them carries roughly ±9.6 points.
| Cohort | ALP | LIB | NAT | GRN | OTH | ALP 2PP | Undec. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Western Australia | 41 | 30 | 6 | 13 | 10 | 56 | 5 |
| Men | 40 | 35 | 5 | 11 | 9 | 54 | 4 |
| Women | 41 | 26 | 6 | 15 | 12 | 59 | 7 |
| Aged 18 to 34 | 37 | 17 | 7 | 32 | 7 | 66 | 7 |
| Aged 35 to 54 | 48 | 24 | 4 | 12 | 12 | 63 | 8 |
| Aged 55 and over | 39 | 38 | 3 | 6 | 14 | 50 | 4 |
| School education | 40 | 31 | 6 | 13 | 10 | 55 | 9 |
| TAFE education | 41 | 28 | 5 | 12 | 14 | 57 | 3 |
| University education | 42 | 32 | 6 | 15 | 5 | 57 | 2 |
| Own home outright | 32 | 44 | 9 | 8 | 7 | 43 | 3 |
| Mortgage holders | 47 | 24 | 4 | 14 | 11 | 63 | 4 |
| Renters | 40 | 22 | 4 | 19 | 15 | 62 | 9 |
| Income under $45k | 39 | 30 | 7 | 12 | 12 | 55 | 8 |
| Income $45k to $125k | 43 | 29 | 5 | 14 | 9 | 59 | 4 |
| Income over $125k | 39 | 35 | 5 | 13 | 8 | 53 | 3 |
Every first-preference row sums to 100 in the report. The undecided column sits outside that total and is excluded from the party shares. Cohort figures rest on subsamples and carry wider margins than the ±4.0% statewide topline.
Housing tenure is the division this poll measures most clearly, and it is not the one age would predict. Outright owners give Labor 43 per cent of the two-party vote and mortgage holders 63, a twenty-point gap that clears its interval, while renters sit with the mortgage holders at 62. Outright owners are the only cohort in the table where the Liberals lead on first preferences, at 44 to Labor's 32, and they are also the only cohort where the WA Nationals reach 9 per cent.
Age behaves differently here from the eastern states. Labor's best age group is the middle one at 48 per cent, not the youngest, and its two-party share runs 66, 63 and 50 from youngest to oldest rather than falling steadily. The Greens' 32 per cent among under-35s is the highest single-cohort figure any party records in this wave and 26 points above their 6 among the over-55s. Education divides this electorate hardly at all: Labor takes 40, 41 and 42 across the three groups and the two-party figures run 55, 57 and 57, which is the flattest education profile in any wave of this series.
Housing and cost of living are rated identically, at 53 points negative each
Asked whether the Cook government is doing a good job on each of ten issues, respondents put it in positive territory on two. The two worst ratings are the same three figures: 10 per cent good, 27 neutral, 63 bad.
Each bar is the net rating on an issue, the good-job share less the bad-job share, in points. The note gives the three underlying shares.
Education and schools
28% good job, 45% neutral, 27% bad job.
Job creation
27% good job, 47% neutral, 26% bad job.
North West Shelf gas project
19% good job, 60% neutral, 21% bad job. Three in five have no view, the highest neutral share in any battery in this batch.
Renewable energy transition
22% good job, 53% neutral, 25% bad job.
Budget management
25% good job, 44% neutral, 31% bad job.
The economy
24% good job, 36% neutral, 40% bad job.
Crime and policing
19% good job, 42% neutral, 39% bad job.
Hospitals and health system
19% good job, 31% neutral, 50% bad job. Half the sample rates it badly.
Housing
10% good job, 27% neutral, 63% bad job.
Cost of living
10% good job, 27% neutral, 63% bad job. The three shares are identical to housing's.
Housing and cost of living return the same three shares to the percentage point, and they are also the two issues respondents name most often as the state's biggest, at 33 and 34 per cent. A government rated 53 points negative on both of the things its voters say matter most would, in most readings, be in serious trouble. This one leads 56–44 after preferences and its premier leads the opposition leader by thirteen points as preferred premier. The two facts sit together because the alternative is rated no better: the opposition leader's own net rating is 3 points negative.
The North West Shelf gas project is the most Western Australian line in the battery and the clearest illustration of what a neutral share means. Three in five respondents have no view on a decision that dominated the state's politics, so its net of 2 negative rests on the 40 per cent who answered. Compare the 27 per cent neutral on cost of living. A government's problem is never the issues people are neutral about; it is the two at the bottom of this chart, where almost everyone has decided.
What the ballot did not ask, and what happened when it did
This question offered five options and One Nation was not one of them. Three months later it was, and the party took 17 per cent. Where those points came from is a question this wave sets up and the next one answers.
17% One Nation took 17 per cent in February 2026, the first Western Australian wave to list it. Its 2025 election result was 4.0 per cent.
In New South Wales the same change produced an obvious answer: the any-other-candidate category fell thirteen points, so most of One Nation's new share had been sitting inside it. Western Australia does not behave that way. Between November and February the any-other-candidate share falls from 10 to 9, a single point. The Liberals fall from 30 to 21, Labor from 41 to 36, the Nationals from 6 to 4 and the Greens hold at 13. Those four falls sum to seventeen, which is One Nation's February figure exactly, and nine of the seventeen come from the Liberals.
That is a materially different finding from the New South Wales one. There the question changed and the measured electorate did not; here the question changed and a named party's support moved with it, out of the Liberal column rather than out of an unlabelled residual. It cannot be proved from two waves that these are the same voters, because a changed ballot is a changed instrument and no cross-wave comparison across it is clean. What can be said is that Western Australia's other-candidate category was not holding a hidden One Nation vote in November, because it was still there in February. ACE-IU-2026-024 sets out the case where it was.
Data notes
Roger Cook led Basil Zempilas as preferred premier 47 to 34, with 19 per cent naming neither. On personal ratings Cook recorded 35 per cent positive, 38 neutral and 27 negative for a net of 8 positive, and Zempilas 30, 37 and 33 for a net of 3 negative. Asked whether Western Australia is heading in the right or the wrong direction, 43 per cent said right, 40 per cent wrong and 17 per cent did not know.
Asked the biggest issue facing Western Australia in an open-ended question, respondents named cost of living and inflation at 34 per cent and housing affordability and homelessness at 33. Healthcare and hospitals followed at 10, immigration at 5, climate change and the environment and crime at 4 each, employment and the economy at 3, government spending and trust in government at 2 each, and education, roads and infrastructure, supporting Western Australia and racial discrimination at 1 each. Miscellaneous answers took 11. The categories were generated with the assistance of AI and may sum to more than 100, so a single answer can fall into more than one of them.
Housing and cost of living are within one point of each other as the named issue, which is the closest the two run in any wave of this batch.
Method
DemosAU/PremierNational Western Australia Poll. Fieldwork 10–26 November 2025, internet panels, Western Australian voters 18+, n=1,012, effective n=626, effective margin of error ±4.0%. State voting intention offered Labor, the Liberals, the WA Nationals, the Greens and any other candidate; One Nation was not listed. Initial undecided voters were asked a leaner question and the remainder were excluded from the totals. Two-party preferred uses 2025 state election preference flows. 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 ±4.0% 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-2026-030
- Series
- IU-03 · Poll briefings
- State
- WA · Public release
- Issued
- October 2026
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