New poll says 27pc of ALP voters would not vote for Labor now

A new poll shows the federal government has lost the confidence of a large chunk of voters who carried it into office in 2022, but it’s not all bad news for the PM.

A quarter of people who voted for Anthony Albanese at the last election say they don’t plan to vote for him again.

A new poll shows the federal government has lost the confidence of a large chunk of voters who carried it into office in 2022 but, in a sign of a fickle electorate, it has managed to pick up support from Liberal and One Nation voters.

Rather than just testing voting intention, the GXO/J.L. Partners poll of 2000 Australians, tracks how voters have moved since the May 2022 election — and they have changed their mind.

The results show while the major parties’ primary votes are almost identical to their results at the 2022 election, there has been substantial traffic in both directions.

Overall the poll shows that more than a quarter (27 per cent) of the people who voted for Anthony Albanese in 2022 no longer plan to vote Labor.

A poll has found that more than a quarter of the people who voted for Anthony Albanese at the last election plan to take their vote elsewhere. Picture: Martin Ollman

Of the voters who have deserted Labor, 8 per cent have gone to the Greens, 8 per cent to the Coalition, 8 per cent now say they are undecided, and the remaining 3 per cent have drifted off to One Nation and other small parties.

But despite losing so many of their 2022 supporters, Labor’s primary vote has only dropped 1.58 per cent to 31 per cent since the election because it has also picked up support from people who voted for the Coalition and One Nation.

Overall the Coalition has held on to almost 8-in-10 of the 2022 voters, but 6 per cent have moved support to the ALP and 2 per cent to the Greens while 7 per cent say they are now undecided. Four per cent of Coalition voters have moved to One Nation and 2 per cent to another party.

At 36 per cent, the Coalition’s primary vote is almost the same as its result at the 2022 election.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has also lost some voters. Picture: Ben Clark

GXO director Cameron Milner, a former Queensland ALP state secretary, said the poll drilled down to the fundamentals of political support and explains what’s happening with the Labor primary vote and why it’s gone backwards.

He said it also revealed the government was now dangerously dependent on keeping former conservative voters.

“The problem for Anthony Albanese is he has to hang to a group who are likely to be easily picked off by Peter Dutton, this is not a comfortable position for the ALP,” he said.

The poll also tested voters’ attitudes to the government’s handling of the cost-of-living crisis, and found almost three- quarters of voters think it is doing poorly at managing the cost of living and inflation.

Worryingly for the government, younger voters, who are the bedrock of Labor’s electoral coalition, are much more likely to have a bad opinion of the government’s handling of the issue than older voters.

So while 69 per cent of 35 to 49-year-olds and 71 per cent of 50 to 64-year-olds rate the Government a failure on cost of living, this rises to 79 per cent among 18 to 24-year-olds.

The poll also found 77 per cent of voters believe the federal budget will do little or nothing to help them.

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