A new survey by The Australia Today found the Liberal-National Coalition leading among Victorian voters from multicultural households, while Labor and One Nation are tied on primary voting intention ahead of the November state election.
The survey of 1,268 Australian citizens eligible to vote, aged between 20 and 60 and living in Victoria, was conducted between 5 and 28 September 2026.
Respondents came from households where a language other than English is spoken at home and were recruited through The Australia Today’s subscriber database and community networks.
The survey found the Liberal-National Coalition on 31 per cent, with Labor and One Nation both on 26 per cent.
The Greens recorded 9 per cent, while independent candidates attracted 8 per cent.
| Voting intention | Primary vote |
|---|---|
| Liberal-National Coalition | 31% |
| Labor | 26% |
| One Nation | 26% |
| The Greens | 9% |
| Independents | 8% |
The Coalition holds a five-point lead over both Labor and One Nation.
However, arguably the most striking finding is One Nation drawing level with the governing Labor Party within the surveyed multicultural households.
For a group of voters often treated as automatically aligned with one of the established major parties, the result points to a much more fragmented political picture.
The Coalition and Labor together account for 57 per cent of the respondents.
The remaining 43 per cent selected One Nation, the Greens or an independent candidate, suggesting a sizeable share of the surveyed voters are looking beyond the traditional Labor-Coalition contest.
One Nation alone was selected by more than one-quarter of respondents.
That makes the party’s 26 per cent result one of the most noteworthy findings of The Australia Today survey.
It places One Nation exactly level with Labor and only five percentage points behind the Liberal-National Coalition among respondents.
The result should not, however, be interpreted as a prediction of the statewide Victorian election result.
The Australia Today survey was designed specifically to examine voting intention among multicultural households, rather than produce a representative poll of all Victorian voters.
The survey population was restricted to Australian citizens eligible to vote who were aged between 20 and 60 and lived in Victoria.
That means eligible voters aged 18 and 19 were not included, nor were voters aged over 60.
The survey also defined a multicultural household as one where a language other than English is spoken at home.
This provides one practical measure of cultural and linguistic diversity, but it should not be interpreted as capturing every Victorian with a multicultural background.
Likewise, the term “multicultural voter” encompasses an enormous range of communities.
People of Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Nepalese, Sri Lankan, African, Middle Eastern, European and many other backgrounds can have very different political priorities and experiences.
The topline result therefore represents the combined responses of the survey participants rather than suggesting that multicultural Victorians vote as a single bloc.
A forced-choice survey
An important feature of The Australia Today survey was its forced-choice format.
Respondents were asked:
“If the Victorian state election were held today, which party or type of candidate would you give your first preference to in the Legislative Assembly (lower house)?”
The response options were:
- Labor
- Liberal-National Coalition
- One Nation
- The Greens
- Independent candidate
There was no “Other” option.
There was also no undecided or refused option.
Every respondent therefore had to select one of the five categories.
This means the survey does not measure the proportion of multicultural voters who remain undecided ahead of the election.
It also means people who might intend to support another minor party could not nominate that party.
The 31-26-26-9-8 result should consequently be understood as how respondents divided when required to choose between the five available alternatives.
The percentages total 100 per cent because every completed response was allocated to one of those categories.
Coalition leads as dominant party?
The survey puts the Liberal-National Coalition in first place at 31 per cent.
But it also shows that no political force comes close to commanding majority primary support among respondents.
Almost seven in every 10 surveyed voters selected someone other than the Coalition.
Similarly, almost three-quarters selected someone other than Labor, and almost three-quarters selected someone other than One Nation.
Rather than showing one dominant political party, the survey presents a three-way contest, with just five percentage points separating the first three positions.
That fragmentation could matter politically because multicultural voters are an increasingly important part of Victoria’s population, particularly across Melbourne’s western, northern and south-eastern suburbs.
The Australia Today survey does not provide electorate-level results, however, so it cannot establish where the strongest support for each party is concentrated.
A statewide or statewide-style percentage within a particular community sample does not automatically translate into individual seats.
Labor faces pressure within the sample
Labor’s 26 per cent result places it five points behind the Coalition and level with One Nation.
For the governing party, that indicates substantial competition for multicultural voters within The Australia Today sample.
The finding is particularly notable because multicultural communities have traditionally been heavily courted by Labor governments and candidates through policies relating to migration, international education, multicultural affairs, community organisations and culturally specific services.
The Australia Today survey cannot explain why individual respondents made their choice because it did not ask voters to nominate the issues influencing their decision.
It therefore cannot say whether respondents moving away from Labor were motivated by cost of living, crime, housing, migration policy, government performance, taxation, social policy or another issue.
Any attempt to assign a particular motivation to the 26 per cent Labor result would go beyond what the survey measured.
What the survey does establish is that Labor did not hold a clear advantage among respondents from multicultural households.
Instead, it found Labor sharing second place with One Nation.
One Nation’s result stands out
One Nation’s 26 per cent result deserves particular attention because it challenges assumptions about how multicultural voters might respond to the party.
Within this sample, more than one in four respondents selected One Nation when asked which party or candidate type they would give their first preference to.
That puts the party level with Labor and only five points behind the Coalition.
The survey does not establish why those respondents selected One Nation.
Nor does it measure whether they are long-term supporters, former Labor or Coalition voters, or people simply considering One Nation at this stage of the campaign.
But the scale of the result suggests that political parties would be unwise to treat multicultural voters as predictable or politically uniform.
The survey instead indicates that at least among The Australia Today respondents, dissatisfaction or political realignment may be cutting across traditional community assumptions.
Greens and independents account for 17%
The Greens attracted 9 per cent of respondents, while independents received 8 per cent.
Combined, that represents 17 per cent of the survey.
That share further underlines the fragmentation of the sample.
Independent support is particularly difficult to interpret at a statewide level because independent candidates vary considerably between electorates.
Some campaigns are built around local infrastructure or planning issues, while others centre on integrity, climate, social policy or dissatisfaction with the major parties.
The survey grouped all independent candidates together rather than asking respondents to name a specific individual.
The Greens result similarly represents support for the party across the sample but does not show where that support is geographically concentrated.
No two-party-preferred estimate
The Australia Today has not produced a two-party-preferred figure from the survey.
That is deliberate.
With One Nation on 26 per cent, the Greens on 9 per cent and independents on 8 per cent, attempting to produce a Labor-versus-Coalition two-party-preferred result would require assumptions about where almost half of all respondents would direct their preferences.
The survey did not ask respondents how they would allocate subsequent preferences.
It would therefore be misleading to manufacture a 2PP figure by assigning assumed preference flows.
The Australia Today is publishing only the results that were directly measured.
No seat projection
The survey also does not produce an electorate-by-electorate projection or predicted seat count.
Victoria’s Legislative Assembly is decided through individual electorate contests.
A party’s statewide support can produce very different parliamentary outcomes depending on where its voters live.
For example, 26 per cent support spread evenly across Victoria would have a different electoral effect from 26 per cent heavily concentrated in a smaller number of electorates.
The survey did not gather sufficient electorate-level data to make such projections.
For that reason, The Australia Today is not using the figures to predict which party will form government.
How the survey was conducted
The survey was conducted between 5 and 28 September 2026.
It received 1,268 completed responses from Australian citizens eligible to vote, aged between 20 and 60 and living in Victoria.
Participants came from households where a language other than English is spoken at home.
Respondents were recruited through The Australia Today’s subscriber database and community networks and were contacted by email and text message.
Answers were submitted through an online link, by text reply, or through a combination of the two methods.
The survey contained only one question — voting intention.
That means there were no policy or leadership questions immediately before the voting question that might have influenced how respondents answered.
Results were not weighted
The results were not weighted.
Weighting is commonly used in political polling to adjust a sample so that characteristics such as age, gender, geography or other demographic factors better reflect the target population.
No such adjustment was made to The Australia Today survey.
That means groups that responded in greater numbers have correspondingly more influence over the overall result.
For example, if one language community, age group or geographic region responded at a higher rate than another, the topline figures would reflect that imbalance.
The Australia Today has therefore chosen not to present the results as representative of every multicultural voter in Victoria.
Why there is no conventional margin of error
A conventional margin of error does not apply to the survey.
Participants were recruited through The Australia Today’s subscriber database and community networks rather than being randomly selected from the entire target population.
This makes it a non-probability survey.
If 1,268 respondents had been selected through a genuine simple random sample, the theoretical maximum margin of sampling error would be around ±2.8 percentage points at the 95 per cent confidence level.
But applying that figure to this survey would give a false impression of statistical precision.
The key source of uncertainty is not simply sample size — it is who chose to participate and whether respondents differ from those who did not.
The results should therefore be described as indicative.
What the survey can — and cannot — tell us
The survey provides a clear picture of how these 1,268 respondents divided when given five choices.
It tells us:
31 per cent selected the Liberal-National Coalition.
26 per cent selected Labor.
26 per cent selected One Nation.
9 per cent selected the Greens.
8 per cent selected an independent candidate.
It does not tell us how undecided voters are leaning because respondents were not allowed to select undecided.
It does not measure support for other minor parties.
It does not tell us why people chose their preferred party.
It does not provide age, language or regional breakdowns.
It does not provide a two-party-preferred estimate.
And it does not predict how many seats any party will win.
Multicultural voters cannot be taken for granted
Despite those limitations, the survey raises an important political question.
Multicultural voters are frequently discussed by political parties as though they form a relatively predictable electoral constituency.
The Australia Today survey suggests a more complicated picture.
Among respondents, the Coalition leads but does not dominate.
Labor is tied with One Nation.
The Greens and independents retain a combined 17 per cent.
And no party receives even one-third of the primary vote.
The result suggests political allegiance among multicultural households may be far less fixed than commonly assumed.
For Labor, the survey raises questions about its ability to retain support in communities it has spent years courting.
For the Coalition, the 31 per cent lead is encouraging, but One Nation sitting only five points behind demonstrates that dissatisfaction with Labor does not automatically translate into Coalition support.
For One Nation, the result shows that its appeal among The Australia Today’s respondents extends into multicultural households in a way that challenges conventional political assumptions.
And for the Greens and independent candidates, the combined 17 per cent suggests there remains a sizeable group looking beyond the three largest political forces in the survey.
With the Victorian election approaching, the central message from The Australia Today survey is therefore not a prediction about who will win.
It is that multicultural voters cannot simply be assumed to belong to one political camp.
Among the 1,268 voters surveyed, Victoria’s political contest looks genuinely three-way: Coalition 31 per cent, Labor 26 per cent and One Nation 26 per cent.
Whether that pattern changes before election day remains unknown.
But within this survey, the era of taking multicultural votes for granted appears increasingly difficult to defend.
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