Another day, another dire set of polls for Anthony Albanese. As I wrote last week, Albanese long ago slipped over the political event horizon, where the only way is down. Not a ray of political light can escape the black hole. All that remains to see is how bad the electoral damage will be: will it be another minority government, or will the opposition sweep the board?
It’s looking that it will all depend on how preferences flow.
An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows the coalition maintaining a 51–49 per cent two-party-preferred lead over Labor despite a one-point fall in its primary vote to 38 per cent.
Labor’s primary vote remains stuck on an equal record low of 31 per cent, compared to its 2022 election result of 32.6 per cent. The two-party-preferred result indicates a 3.1 per cent swing against Labor since the last election.
On a uniform basis and taking into account new margins created by electoral redistributions, the swing would be equivalent to the loss of seven or eight seats and enough to prevent Mr Albanese forming a majority government.
However, it is still only half the size of the swing the coalition would require to win in its own right, leaving a hung parliament the most likely outcome if the poll numbers were to be replicated at an election.
The big story of the past decade is the breaking of the two-party system – which is not enough of a break to dethrone the two major parties, just enough to make majority government extremely difficult. Even as recently as the ’90s and 2000s, a primary vote of 32 per cent would have seen Labor handed a landslide defeat. But enough coalition voters were disillusioned in the last 20 years to start looking to minor parties. Not even close to enough to make those parties major players, but enough to sap the coalition’s base and give even a despised Labor a crack at government.
Other minor parties and independents have lifted a point to 12 per cent, at the expense of the coalition in the latest poll, suggesting the protest vote against both major parties remains strong.
This time, notably, pollsters are seeing a strong likelihood of preferences from minor parties like One Nation flowing to the coalition.
Mr Albanese’s approval rating remained unchanged on a record low of 37 per cent. But with a one-point rise in dissatisfaction, the prime minister’s net negative approval rating rose to minus 21 which is the lowest since he became leader.
By comparison, [Peter Dutton’s] approval rating rose a point to 41 per cent, which is the highest he has achieved as opposition leader. His disapproval rating remained unchanged on 51 per cent, giving him a net negative approval rating of minus 10.
Being opposition leader, though, is never a popularity contest. Especially not a conservative opposition leader. Tony Abbott’s situation in 2013 was almost identical: not as despised as Kevin Rudd, but barely able to crack a net positive rating. Yet, he won the election in a landslide (which he subsequently squibbed, but that’s another story).
The important point, though, is that almost nobody wants Albanese back. Not even Labor voters.
There is, however, almost universal agreement among voters that Labor does not deserve a second term of government. A total of 34 per cent of voters said Labor deserved to be re-elected, with 53 per cent saying it was time for change.
It’s time for a change. The deadliest phrase an incumbent can hear. That was the mantra in 2007, when 11 years of the Howard government ended. The prevailing sentiment was not that John Howard was a bad PM, but, as entrepreneur Dick Smith told a cheering Today Show crowd, ‘It’s time for a change’. Rudd was elected as, very briefly, one of the most popular PMs in poll history.
The winds of change are blowing so strongly that sails are being adjusted right across the political fleet.
Teal independent MP Allegra Spender has declared she has shared “sympathy” with Peter Dutton’s Coalition and is open to putting them into power in a hung parliament, as the nation faces an election with an enlarged crossbench choosing the next prime minister.
This despite Dutton’s open declaration of making every effort to unseat the teals, and Albanese’s effort to woo them, with private drinkies at the Lodge in recent weeks. Indeed, it appears that the teals are starting to worry that the coalition will reclaim the formerly blue-ribbon Liberal seats they usurped in 2022.
But Ms Spender – whose affluent Sydney seat of Wentworth was dominated by the Liberal Party for most of the past 80 years – said there were parallels between her world view and the opposition’s.
The big question now is: when will the election be? The latest possible date for a normal election is May 17, although Albanese could go as early as March 22. Is an early election likely?
The Daily Mail Australia’s political editor Peter van Onselen has declared that an early poll in March is a dead-cert. And if PVO says it’s in March, you can safely assume it won’t be.
Last year, PVO was predicting an election in August that year. In 2019, he declared that there was no way that Scott Morrison could win.
How’s he predicting the outcome in 2025? A Labor win.
So, congratulations, Peter Dutton: looks like you’ll be PM in a couple of months.
