Sunday Mail-YouGov poll: Premier Steven Marshall’s Liberals lead eroded by Peter Malinauskas’s Labor

An exclusive statewide opinion poll shows Labor is back in the race for next year’s state election.

Voter support for Premier Steven Marshall’s Liberals has slumped from a coronavirus crisis peak to put Labor back in the race for the next election, a statewide Sunday Mail poll reveals.

In a significant tightening of the contest, the Liberals lead Labor 51 per cent to 49 per cent on two-party preferred support – down from a 53-47 per cent result last September.

But Mr Marshall holds a commanding 20-point lead as preferred premier – 50 per cent believe he would do a better job than Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas, who 30 per cent favour.

The Sunday Mail-YouGov poll result shows Mr Marshall cannot rely on his government’s handling of the pandemic to propel him to a second term in office at the election on March 19 next year.

Incumbency during the COVID-19 pandemic powered Queensland’s Labor government to a landslide victory last October, while Western Australia’s Liberal opposition leader has already conceded defeat ahead of Saturday’s election in the face of crushing opinion poll results.

Mr Marshall retains strong approval ratings – 60 per cent are satisfied with his performance as Premier – but Mr Malinauskas’s approval rating of 46 per cent is considerably higher than Opposition leaders in other states polled by YouGov.

The results of the latest Sunday Mail-YouGov poll.

This strong showing will be a further boost to Mr Malinauskas after the Liberals were plunged into minority government when backbencher Fraser Ellis resigned from the party on February 19, telling parliament he was charged with – and strenuously denied – offences relating to rorting a country MPs’ allowance.

Mr Marshall in September last year shrugged off the perks scandal and outbreaks of Liberal division to reap the electoral rewards of crushing the coronavirus and take the commanding 53-47 lead over Labor.

That result was a full reversal of the 53-47 lead Labor had a year ago, just before the pandemic erupted and at the half time point in the current electoral cycle.

Both major party leaders have forged an election strategy with jobs, prosperity and service delivery as the centrepieces, believing voters will judge them on South Australia’s springboard from the pandemic-induced recession.

Premier Steven Marshall. Picture: AAP / Russell Millard

Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas. Picture: Sam Wundke

Mr Marshall has lauded latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing jobs and wages have grown more in SA than any other state since the pandemic took hold in March last year.

But Mr Malinauskas has attacked the government’s economic performance, pointing to latest jobless figures showing SA with the nation’s highest unemployment rate of 7.1 per cent.

The latest poll of 843 voters, taken between February 24 and March 1 in the aftermath of the minority government upheaval, shows primary support for the Liberals down three points from September to 43 per cent. Labor’s primary support has risen by one point to 36 per cent.

The Greens’ primary support remained at 10 per cent while SA Best rose one point to six per cent – but continued to be anchored on single figures after the Nick Xenophon juggernaut imploded after the 2018 state election.

Importantly, the Liberals’ primary support of 43 per cent is one point higher than a March, 2019 poll that indicated Mr Marshall’s electoral honeymoon had continued, by mirroring the 52-48 two-party preferred vote at that 2018 election. Labor’s primary support was 37 per cent at that 2019 poll, while The Greens and SA Best were both on seven per cent.

The Xenophon-led SA Best’s 14.1 per cent vote at the 2018 election stripped primary support from both major parties, complicating comparisons with that and the latest poll result.

However, the two-party preferred vote at the 2018 election was 51.9 per cent to the Liberals and 48.1 to the ALP.