Politicians will tell you they aren't really interested in them, but there's a reason Australian governments keep toppling their own prime ministers: the power of opinion polls.
This page pulls together charts for primary vote, two-party preferred, and party leader ratings.
Before diving into the charts, a few tips for reading polls:
- Don't read too much into the results of any one opinion poll. Look at trends over a number of polls.
- Two-party-preferred (2PP) is a broad indicator of support but ABC election analyst Antony Green explains why it's far from perfect.
- Pay attention to how polls are carried out — and the margin of error. The polls charted here publish their methodology and sample size, ask standard questions and publish their recent poll history.
Primary vote
Newspoll is now conducted by Galaxy and published in The Australian. Its margin of error is usually 3 per cent.
Essential polls use data collected from an online panel called Your Source. The margin of error is generally 3 per cent.
Roy Morgan Research's margin of error is between 2 and 3 per cent.
Ipsos polls are published by Fairfax and have a margin of error between 2 and 3 per cent. This company started producing data for Fairfax in November 2015.
Two-party preferred
The polling companies use a variety of methods to predict how voters' preferences might flow to the major parties.
Leader ratings
These are Newspoll's results for the leaders' performances and preferred prime minister since Malcolm Turnbull took over from Tony Abbott.
