James Campbell: Another day, another terrible poll for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

For months, Anthony Albanese and his ministers have been pelting Peter Dutton with every insult they can think of. And where has that gotten them?

Another day, another terrible, no good, very bad poll for Albo.

Seriously it’s starting to look like something might be going on.

The voters certainly think so.

According to Monday’s Newspoll a majority of people now think when the dust settles after this year’s election Peter Dutton will be Prime Minister.

For months Albo and his ministers have been pelting Dutton with every insult they can think of.

The attacks began in earnest in August when Treasurer Jim Chalmers used an otherwise unremarkable lecture about what a good PM John Curtin was to call the opposition leader “the most divisive leader of a major political party in Australia’s modern history”.

Among things he’s been repeatedly accused of is being reckless and wanting to destroy Medicare.

And what has been the effect of this onslaught?

Since September, Dutton’s preferred rating has jumped four points and is now only three points behind the Prime Minister’s.

The best to be said for this poll is at least he’s still ahead on that metric.

Anthony Albanese and his ministers have turned the blowtorch onto Peter Dutton. Picture: Sharon Smith

Last week’s Resolve poll had Dutton leaping five points ahead of Albo as preferred PM, after being tied in December.

Though preferred PM gets the most attention these aren’t the numbers that get political hacks excited.

Hand them a poll and after looking at the primary vote they’ll go straight to the leaders’ net-satisfaction ratings.

This is the number you get when you subtract the percentage of people who are unhappy with the way they’re doing their job from the percentage who say they are happy.

And you thought the preferred leader rating was bad for the Prime Minister; his net satisfaction rating is diabolical.

Between the 2022 election and last September the gap between Albo and Dutton’s net satisfaction ratings was in the PM’s favour.

Since then the gap has turned viciously in Dutton’s favour with latest Newspoll having him -11 versus Albo’s -20.

Peter Dutton has been improving in the polls despite Labor’s relentless attacks. Picture: Brendan Radke

As the Melbourne Uni polling guru Adrian Beaumont points out, there have been five polls rating the leaders this month — Freshwater, YouGov, Resolve, Essential and Newspoll — and “on average, Albanese is at -15 net approval and Dutton at -3.2”

Indeed, if it wasn’t for the outlier Essential, “Albanese’s ratings would be worse.”

The question Labor’s brains trust must be pondering is whether Albo’s dire net satisfaction rating is a symptom of the government’s unpopularity or if the government’s unpopularity is a symptom of voters’ dissatisfaction with him.

If it’s the former then there’s probably nothing they can do about it.

But if they decide it’s the latter they need to think hard about, you know, um, other options.

And they need to answer that question quickly because as the old song goes it’s later than you think.

Originally published as James Campbell: Another day, another terrible poll for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese