‘Sh*tshow’: How the Voice blew up Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party’s polling

As a blame game erupts over the Liberal Party polling, insiders have revealed Peter Dutton’s seat wasn’t polled because they didn’t want to “spook” the leader.

Peter Dutton was left in the dark over risks in his own seat and the election outcome as a result of a Liberal Party polling “sh*tshow.”

As the post-mortem begins into how it all went wrong, Liberal strategists have told news.com.au that they believe they know three reasons why the polling did not predict the result.

The first reason is that the Voice referendum results were factored into the Liberal polling methodology over-inflating support for Mr Dutton among Labor’s ‘No’ voters.

The second reason is that Gen Y and millennial voters are notoriously difficult to poll because many don’t answer unknown numbers on mobile phones.

The third reason was that the Liberal Party didn’t poll in Mr Dutton’s seat in the final weeks of the campaign as it was thought it wasn’t necessary as they were “throwing everything” at the seat anyway.

After 24 years in parliament, voters in Dickson then hit the eject button on Mr Dutton’s political career on Saturday night.

He never saw it coming.

Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton speaks to the media during a press conference on Day 1 of the 2025 federal election campaign, in Brisbane, Friday, March 28, 2025. Picture: AAP /Jono Searle.

How Peter Dutton was left in the dark

In an extraordinary revelation, Liberal insiders also claim that Mr Dutton’s political adviser Jamie Briggs cautioned the pollster Mike Turner about research in the seat of Dickson because it might spook the leader.

Four weeks out from the poll, things looked promising in the marginal seat. When it was suggested they might poll again the Liberal Party hesitated.

“Jamie Briggs, who was one of his senior advisers … was sort of like saying, “you know, just be careful. Because he sort of gets nervous a bit, right?,’’ a Liberal campaign source told news.com.au.

Instead, the Liberal Party sandbagged the seat.

Mr Briggs is a former Liberal MP who famously climbed on a marble table at a party in Tony Abbott’s office on the night he was rolled as Liberal leader before injuring himself.

The next day, he was seen in a wheelchair attending a Liberal Party meeting.

He later lost his seat of Mayo to Independent Rebekha Sharkie.

“Briggs is an unflushable turd,’’ a former Liberal staffer complained.

“His previous marginal seat campaigning involved losing his own seat.”

Jamie Briggs arrives in a wheelchair at a party room meeting at Parliament House in Canberra.

However, other Liberals defended Mr Briggs arguing he played a positive role.

He urged Mr Dutton to embrace the indexation of tax thresholds, before his advice was ignored and the Liberal leader panicked and squibbed it.

Mr Dutton and his chief of staff, Alex Dalgleish pulled the pin, concerned that automatically increasing income tax thresholds would be difficult to explain to voters.

Instead, some MPs claim that Mr Dutton shocked colleagues by adopting a temporary tax offset of up to $1200, against the wishes of his own treasury spokesman Angus Taylor.

Liberal polling never predicted a majority

Despite Mr Dutton’s confident predictions he could win the election, news.com.au has confirmed the polling he was briefed on never had him in a position to form a majority government.

At the beginning of the campaign, it did show a projected seat count high 60s.

“Never in the campaign did we have him winning a majority,’’ a Liberal campaign source said.

It then dropped down into low 60s and mid 60s or eight to ten seats. He needed twenty to win.

When news.com.au published Labor polling on the Thursday before the election showing Labor expected a range of 72-78 seats the Liberals were pleased and thought it “credible” and in line with their own polling.

“They are seeing what we are seeing,’’ a campaign source said.

“The last track poll had undecided at one in six voters.”

“The most likely reason we got it wrong has got to be something to do with a late swing.”

‘Poll murder-suicide confirmed’

Mr Dutton’s decision to back the No vote in the referendum was hailed as strategic genius by the Liberal supporters, but they now believe it set the scene for a catastrophic outcome at the election.

It also contributed to the Coalition breaking with their long-time pollsters.

CT Group, the polling outfit founded by Mark Textor and Lynton Crosby, was the Liberal Party’s go-to pollsters for more than 20 years.

Legendary Liberal pollster Mark Textor no longer does the polling for the Liberal Party. Picture: Hollie Aadms/The Australian

It went on to propel David Cameron, Boris Johnson and John Howard to power.

Mr Textor was also a Yes23 director who attacked Mr Dutton’s No vote stance arguing that there was “no electoral benefit in being a No wrecker” in September, 2023.

After a Newspoll published by The Australian showed support for the voice falling to 36 per cent and Peter Dutton’s approval ratings at record lows, Mr Textor said this on Facebook.

“So, poll murder-suicide confirmed. No electoral benefit in being a “no” wrecker, worse it’s just sure death. As I predicted.”

In the months after the referendum in October, 2023, Mr Dutton told colleagues that he has lost faith in the legendary pollster’s judgement.

The same month, The Australian reported that Liberal MPs would “push back against any future involvement from long-time Liberal polling outfit CT Group after its involvement in the disastrous Yes23 campaign.”

“Several conservative and moderate Liberal MPs say they do not want CT Group to be involved in the next election campaign, with party sources saying that Freshwater Strategy will likely take on most of the work,’’ the report said.

“Freshwater Strategy is led by experienced pollster and strategist Michael Turner, whom Liberal Party sources endorse as highly regarded within the party.”

That’s when Freshwater’s Dr Mike Turner, who previously worked with CT research and worked on multiple campaigns, came on board as the official new pollster for the 2025 election.

Asked to comment on the outcome on Sunday, Mr Textor declined to do so.

He instead offered a Delphic response – a photo of a sunset where he was camping.

Mr Textor’s sunset photo.

What the pollster did next

The Liberal’s pollster Dr Mike Turner has argued a late swing was to blame for the blowout, not the referendum results which he has confirmed were used in the polling formula.

Pollsters have always weighted the results that they obtain from online or phone interviews with demographics and previous preference flows and election results.

In this instance, the Liberals argue it over-egged hopes that working class voters and ‘soft voters’ who had not made up their mind would switch to Peter Dutton.

Instead, the voters lurched back to the Labor Party blowing out the number of seats it won

Dr Turner, who also conducted polling for the Liberal Party in 2019 and 2020, said he was unable to comment given he was contracted for the confidential reach.

The Liberal Party’s new pollster Dr Mike Turner.

In the case of the Liberal Party polling conducted by Freshwater, who also provide polling to The Australian Financial Review, all of the polling is conducted by a method known as CATI or computer assisted polling.

This is a respected method of polling, however like any polling it can underestimate Gen Z or millennial voters because they don’t always answer their phones.

While Freshwater maintains it puts huge resources into reaching younger voters to deliver reliable results, obtaining quality results from younger voters using traditional polling methods is always a challenge for pollsters.

“It’s really hard to get under 30s on the phone and the ones that do answer, there’s something wrong with them,” one pollster quipped.

In other words, the younger voters are either not answering or are highly politically engaged and not representative.

Pollsters do a lot of work to “weight” polling to address this issue and make sure younger voters are represented.

‘Broken’

Meanwhile, Coalition finance minister Simon Birmingham has labelled the Liberal Party “broken” in a scathing review of the 2025 election posted to his LinkedIn page.

“The broad church model of a party that successfully melds liberal and conservative thinking is clearly broken,” he said.

“The Liberal Party is not seen as remotely liberal.”

Originally published as ‘Sh*tshow’: How the Voice blew up Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party’s polling