The proof? His personal numbers were down and the Coalition trails Labor on the two-party vote. Also, Anthony Albanese has tightened the race on the better PM stakes too. None of that is untrue. But after the past fortnight, even month, shouldn’t the data have been worse than it was for Team Morrison?
Putting to one side the fact that Morrison’s Coalition trailed Bill Shorten’s Labor Party on each and every poll ahead of the last election only to snatch victory in the poll that really mattered, and that John Howard trailed on the numbers more often than he led in the polls during his eleven and a half years as PM, yesterday’s numbers don’t suggest Morrison is finished. Far from it.
Yes, his personal satisfaction rating fell seven points. But that fall left him at 55 per cent. A majority of the electorate is still satisfied with the job Morrison is doing. Tony Abbott’s approval rating never got above 47 per cent, Paul Keating’s only hit a high of 43 per cent. Both won elections.
Julia Gillard only reached a high water mark of 56 per cent satisfaction before it collapsed to just 23 per cent by the time she was removed as PM. By the time Kevin Rudd was on the cusp of losing the 2013 election to Abbott his satisfaction rating was down to just 32 per cent. These sort of low satisfaction numbers are a long way from Morrison’s 55 per cent.
Considering how bad the past fortnight has been for the government, and the PM in particular, his support is surprisingly high. And while Albanese has closed the gap on the better PM rating over the past month, he’s still a full 20 points behind the PM, trailing 32 per cent to 52 per cent. That is some margin in the context of the times we are living through.
Even according to the two party vote, which has Labor ahead 52-48 per cent, the numbers haven’t changed from a fortnight ago. Think about that: despite all the failures by the government over the past 14 days the two party vote didn’t change. In fact, the Coalition’s primary vote went up one point to 40 per cent, just 1.4 points off where it was at the last election.
To be sure, Morrison and his government have a lot of work to do to regain the support of sections of the community. And Newspoll might have only caught this knife as it was falling. Perhaps the downturn in the polls is the beginning of Morrison’s end. But if so, it is certainly early days. The more interesting data will be in the weeks and months ahead, after attempts to stop the rot and as we move closer to the budget and further into the vaccine rollout.
Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University
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