Every year the Lowy Institute Poll takes the heartbeat of the nation to reveal what Australians think about big international questions and their nation’s place in the world, with the latest edition released today. Australia being a democracy, public opinion ought to count for a great deal, so it’s worth thinking about how the nation’s elected leaders should interpret the data that my colleague Ryan Neelam, Director of our Public Opinion program, presents to them each year. I would offer three observations.
First, our political leaders should ask themselves whether the poll tells them what Australians think, or whether it merely reflects politicians’ own views back at them?
For instance, over 20 years of polling, the Lowy Institute Poll finds overwhelming and consistent public support for Australia’s alliance with the United States.
Once, my default assumption on issues such as the alliance, where voters have little direct experience or knowledge, would have been that they look to their leaders for guidance. If that’s true, then consistent public support for the alliance can simply be put down to the fact that both major political parties regard the alliance as central to Australian security and foreign policy. Yet support for our major parties appears to be in terminal decline and trust in politicians has dropped dramatically over the last half-century. The fact that support for the alliance is holding steady suggests something more is going on than just “authority bias”.
A skilled politician will balance polling results with evidence of how people actually behave.
My second observation is about “revealed preferences”. Opinion polls can tell us what people think, but most of the time they cannot tell us how much or how deeply people care about an issue. A skilled politician will balance polling results (which tell us what people say they believe) with evidence of how people actually behave. Economists call this “revealed preference”, and there’s a good example in the 2025 Lowy Institute Poll.
We asked Australians whether they thought more goods should be made in Australia, even if they cost more.
There you have it: 83 per cent support for Australian-made goods, even if they cost more. But do Australians mean what they say? When they make consumer choices, does it reflect this stated preference for Australian-made?
The demise of the Australian car industry suggests the answer is “no”. Support for Australian-made goods didn’t save the local clothing and footwear industry either, or tech and electronics.
Polls are not powerless in discerning the depth of public feeling. For instance, between 2008 and 2011, the Lowy Institute Poll asked Australians how much they were willing to pay for electricity if it helped to solve climate change.
The fact that up to 41% of people said they were unwilling to pay anything extra suggests that, by asking the right questions, polls can bridge the gap between stated and actual preferences.
But just to underscore the complexities here, since 2015, successive Lowy Institute polls have also found that a majority of Australians support action on climate change even if it involves significant costs. The question of who pays those costs is, of course, left open.
Finally, when considering public opinion, politicians also need to ask themselves deep questions about the nature of Australia’s political system, and their role as elected representatives. Is their job to divine the mood of their electorate or the nation and then translate that into policy? Here, it’s important to remember that Australia is not just a democracy but a representative democracy in which elected officials are expected to display judgment and wisdom. The great Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke put it best, in a speech to his constituents in 1774, saying that “the happiness and glory of a representative” should be to give “unremitted attention” and “great weight” to the opinion and wishes of constituents, and to “prefer their interest to his own.” But, in the end:
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Explore the 2025 Lowy Institute Poll and 21 years’ worth of data on our interactive website: https://poll.lowyinstitute.org/
