Allan faces a spill on Tuesday with the worst dissatisfaction rating in Newspoll history
More than 70 per cent of Victorians are dissatisfied with the premier, but the Coalition still needs to win 16 seats to take government.
Jacinta Allan is refusing to resign as Premier of Victoria after a cross-faction delegation told her on Monday she had lost the majority support of her caucus.
A spill motion is expected at a Labor party room meeting on Tuesday. Deputy Premier Ben Carroll has confirmed he will nominate if it succeeds.
The numbers behind the move are not close.
Newspoll, published in The Australian on Monday, has more than 70 per cent of Victorians dissatisfied with Allan. The Australian reports it as the worst dissatisfaction rating in the poll’s history. It was 68 per cent in November and 61 per cent in mid-2025.
Labor trails the Coalition 52-48 after preferences. On primaries the Coalition leads on 31 per cent, Labor on 28 and One Nation on 19. The poll surveyed 1035 voters from 23 to 26 July.
Liberal leader Jess Wilson leads Allan as preferred premier by a comfortable margin.
A Freshwater poll last month found 62 per cent of Victorians wanted Allan replaced before the election. Among Labor’s own voters it was 39 per cent.
That is the case for moving.
The case against is the seat count.
The Coalition holds 29 of the 88 seats in the Legislative Assembly. It needs 45 to govern in its own right, which means winning 16.
Labor holds 56. It can lose 11 and still hold a majority.
No opposition has taken 16 seats off a Victorian government in a single election since 2010, when Ted Baillieu won by one.
Then there is the cost of the change itself.
Labor rewrote its rules after the Rudd-Gillard years. A contested state leadership now goes to a ballot of rank-and-file members as well as MPs — a minimum 29-day process, with a caretaker premier who is not a candidate running the state throughout.
The election is on 28 November. Labor has four months. A ballot would take one of them.
Psephologist Kevin Bonham told AAP a member ballot would be “very, very bad” for Labor and hand opposition parties ammunition.
Redbridge pollster Tony Barry, a former Liberal strategist, was less certain. “It could be anything from a Labor annihilation to a Labor majority,” he said.
Carroll ruled out challenging in June, standing beside Allan at a press conference.
“I can look you in the eye and I can say that, premier,” he told reporters.
Labor’s problem is not that Allan cannot win. It is that the alternative costs a month it does not have.