James Campbell: Dutton’s fate boils down to battle of preferences

Chances are most potential votes Peter Dutton picked up last year when polls were in his favour weren’t coming from Albo’s pile but from miscellaneous right-wing ‘other’ – but it seems now even they have jumped ship.

At the end of last year when Peter Dutton was, if not exactly flying high in the opinion polls, certainly flying higher than he is today, it was observable that although his primary vote was surging, Albo’s was also still higher than it was when he was elected in 2022.

Indeed in November when the Coalition’s primary reached 40 per cent, at 33 per cent Labor’s was only one point below the 34 per cent Newspoll gave it last week.

But whereas back then that 33 per cent for Labor translated to 49 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis, today’s 34 per cent sees the government ahead 52 per cent to 48 per cent and the bookies’ favourite to be staying in office past next weekend.

The reason of course is because although Newspoll only has Albo’s primary up a little bit since the end of last year, they have Dutton down 5 per cent.

The reason for drawing attention to the above is to point out two things.

The first is that chances are that most of the potential votes Dutton picked up in 2024 weren’t coming from Albo’s pile but from miscellaneous right-wing ‘other’.

From which it follows that since January most of the voters Dutton has lost have not gone to Albo but One Nation and so on, though not Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots which seems likely to tank.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is losing traction with voters as the election campaign begins its final week. Picture: Newswire

The second thing to observe about this is that with both the Coalition and Labor primary votes likely to be more or less the same as they were last time, the outcome of next Saturday is going to turn on how these voters’ preferences flow.

Before getting to that however you first have to acknowledge that if going up against a first-term government as bad as this one, Dutton still ends up with more or less the same number of primary votes as the dreadfully unpopular Scott Morrison managed in 2022 it will be a disaster – even if he does pick up seats.

At most elections the Coalition gets roughly 65 per cent of One Nation’s preferences but Coalition strategists have their fingers crossed that figure will be much higher this time.

They point out that at last year’s Queensland state election, 75 per cent of PHON’s preferences ended up with the LNP and this election the party is directing them to Dutton.

The difference between a preference flow of 65 per cent and 75 per cent – or even higher – could end up being the difference between victory and defeat in a bunch of tight seats around the country.

And they are going to be – much tighter than the nationwide polling suggests – if Liberal insiders who have access to their seat-by-seat polling are to be believed.

And it needs to be acknowledged here there is a reason why their internal polling might end up better than everyone else’s – they have direct access to the Integrated Public Number Database.

Most of the voters Dutton has lost have not gone to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese but One Nation and so on. Picture: Getty Images

This is the central register of mobile numbers maintained by Telstra to which political parties have direct access and which they can match to the electoral roll for their pollsters to use.

A pollster doing non-party work not only does not have access to the electoral roll but they have to buy the phone numbers they use to contact voters.

And the commercial databases they buy are nowhere near as comprehensive.

Opinions differ, but pollsters say for a commercial client they might only have access to between 50 per cent and 65 per cent of voters’ numbers.

This, along with the expense and the fact young people don’t answer the phone, in part explains why most pollsters have moved to using online panels or a mixture of calls and online panels to get their samples.

Pollsters working for parties on the other hand cannot only be certain the people they are calling are on the roll, they have numbers for 80 per cent of them.

In other words there are reasons other than wishful thinking why the Liberals might be telling people things are better for them than the polls suggest.

I should stress however no one I have spoken to on Team Liberal is attempting to hide that they had a lead in January which they have blown.

Nor are they trying to bulls--t they have any reason to believe Dutton is going to win an outright majority.

A GOOD result would be to put Albo down in the 60s where he needs the Teals, Greens, Andrew Wilkie and Helen Haines.

An amazing out-of-the-park result would see a minority Dutton government, although for that to happen everything and some would have to go very right in the final week.