With the Parliament set to start its spring sitting session today, it might be worth taking a look at the current state of play on the polling trends using our Pollytrend system. Over the six-week period from the beginning of June, we saw the Coalition pick up four points of two-party preferred in what was their strongest public support push since the 2010 election — lifting their vote from around 54.5 up to 58.5 by mid July.

Over the past four weeks however, the ALP has actually clawed back a point and a half to give it — and I’m not joking here — its largest increase in the vote share over any arbitrary period since the last election. Millions of words have been written about the current state of ALP support, but that pretty much says it all right there.

The two-party preferred chart tells the story:

As we would expect, this generally reflects the behaviour in the primary votes of all concerned – detailed charts of which you can find in the sidebar on the right.  Currently, the ALP is facing a 9.1% swing against them from the last election on the primary vote with the LNP picking up 5.2% and the Greens losing about half a percent – all washing out into a current 7.2% swing to the Coalition in two party preferred terms.

The broader “Others” have actually jumped 4.3% in the primary vote since the election — nearly all of which came in net terms from the ALP (though, that doesn’t mean the Others growth has all been actual ALP voters — there would have been an unknown amount of churn between all parties to deliver this result). It’s worth mentioning, but probably not worth thinking too much about — as that broad “Others” group historically gets a bit all over the place.

Looking at the longer-term trends in the primary vote, we have:

It’s been a rather smooth ride for all concerned, with only a few bumps along the way. The Coalition has consistently gained primary vote share, the ALP has consistently lost it by a greater amount and the Greens slightly faded. More detailed versions of each party’s primary vote behavior can be seen here.

As we enter the spring parliamentary session, the Coalition is ahead by miles, the long-term momentum is with it, but it has have come off  its peak of six weeks ago — with the ALP having gained its largest increase in public support this term (all 1.5% of it).