Shannon Deery: Voters send clear message they’re sick of Labor’s damaging lockdowns

Labor MPs have long feared a backlash against lockdowns and now recent polling shows support for the Andrews government is falling and falling fast.

The new polling out today shows just how frustrated Victorians are 18 months into the pandemic.

And for the first time they’re taking it out on the government in a way that, if replicated at next year’s elections, could see several Labor MPs looking for a new job. After four lockdowns, billions of dollars wiped from the economy and ongoing uncertainty about the future, support for the Andrews government is falling and falling fast.

Tellingly, it is in the ALP’s traditional heartland – Melbourne’s west – where it is showing the most. And that should come as no surprise.

This is where the largest number of vulnerable Victorians live and work, with a highly casualised workforce completely reliant on the trigger-happy government ready to lock the state down at short notice.

The government is still well ahead of the opposition.

But it’s 52.4 per cent to 47.6 per cent lead on a two-party-preferred basis is a long way from its 57.3 per cent share at the 2018 election.

Support for Andrews Government is falling. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Daniel Pockett

It’s also fallen from 54 per cent in September, at the height of the state’s deadly second wave.

Out of all the numbers to come out of today’s polling, that’s perhaps the most significant.

That is because it shows that even in the middle of one of the world’s longest lockdowns, when Victoria was still recording dozens of new cases a day, and amid an inquiry into the disastrous hotel quarantine failings, the government was still more popular then than it is today.

Which is a sign of just how tired, frustrated and angry Victorians are.

Labor MPs have feared for some time of a voter backlash against hard line lockdowns and ongoing restrictions.

Anecdotally they’ve long noticed a “softening” in support for the government’s pandemic response.

One thing they’ve banked on is the opposition’s failure to properly capitalise on their failures. And that has probably kept support for the government high for so long.

But in a perverse way, that may also have become a major problem for the government, giving them a false confidence that they can act without consequence. Today’s poll shows that just can’t work.