Dutton takes the lead, but is he defying gravity?

Peter Dutton will go to the election as the presumptive prime minister unless there is a dramatic disruption to the long, steady trend taking him within sight of victory.

The opposition leader faces big obstacles in forming government – not least driving the “teal” independents out of parliament – but has gained ground at a rate that should alarm the Labor loyalists who thought he could never succeed.

But he is also defying gravity, in a sense, because he is now ahead in the opinion polls at a time of deep unrest over the cost of living when he has no significant public plan to fix the problem.

Nobody can be sure if Dutton will return to earth with a thud after he reveals the cost of his stated policy to build seven nuclear power stations over the coming decades.

And nobody knows if voters will thank Dutton at the election for advocating a “back-to-basics” approach to federal spending that could cut services many voters take for granted.

Dutton is certainly confident.

“There is zero prospect now of a majority Albanese government after the next election,” he said on Sunday. He uses the prospect of a minority Labor government to warn voters about the power of the Greens in a hung parliament.

At the same time, he benefits from the common assumption that he will not be running the country next year. He limits the media appearances that expose him to hard questions. He delivers sharp attack lines without having to worry about being put on the defensive.

This means there is a softness to the Coalition plan even when the language is tough. When tested on his migration policy on Sky News on Sunday, for instance, Dutton ducked and weaved about whether he would reduce net migration to 160,000 as he claimed in May. The target has clearly been abandoned. Dutton’s policy on migration is a mystery; his plan for the economy a vacuum.

What is certain, however, is that the trend is his friend. He has lifted the Coalition back from defeat and taken its primary vote to 38 per cent, safely above the 35.7 per cent result at the last election. He has slipped at times, as he did this month, but recovered later.

Labor, meanwhile, has just experienced one of its biggest falls in the Resolve Political Monitor, conducted for this masthead by Resolve Strategic. Its slump from 30 to 27 per cent over the past month should jolt the party loyalists who keep hoping for a turnaround.

In two-party terms, assuming preferences flow as they did at the last election, the latest Resolve Political Monitor results show the Coalition at 51 per cent to Labor’s 49 per cent. It was 50 per cent each one month ago.

Here is the crucial fine print: the Coalition lead is within the margin of error, which is 2.4 per cent for this survey. The Coalition two-party vote could be as high as 53.4 per cent or as low as 48.6 per cent. The Labor result could vary by the same amount. Most polls gloss over this inherent uncertainty.

This should be no consolation for Labor, however, when voters clearly prefer Dutton and the Coalition on economic management and most other key policies.

If the trend continues, it puts Dutton on track to reach the primary vote that delivered government for Scott Morrison as prime minister in 2019. Yes, the “teals” are an obstacle. But the Coalition primary vote is now at a level that should challenge assumptions about “unwinnable” seats.

While Anthony Albanese expresses absolute certainty about winning the election, these results should deepen the anxiety among his cabinet ministers about the government’s chances. Nothing the prime minister does seems to lift his fortunes: not the “stage 3” tax revamp, not the energy subsidies, not the passage of age limits for social media.

Albanese has told colleagues that the political argument will change when it stops being dominated by complaints about Labor and starts to become a real contest about what the Coalition offers instead. He believes the mood will shift when voters no longer compare the government to perfection and start to compare it to the actual alternative – Dutton and the Coalition.

Australians cannot know what Dutton offers. He has made sure not to tell them – at least not yet. And it has worked. Dismissed for so long as someone who could never be prime minister, Dutton may become the presumptive prime minister instead.

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