Bracing for bad news, Labor leader dodges a bullet

This is the result that neither leader expected.

Scott Morrison would have been hoping for a significant lift on the back of his successful dismemberment of the opposition over border protection.

Bill Shorten would have been hoping that the lift for the Coalition wasn’t significant.

An exercise in managing expectations? Perhaps. But he would nevertheless have been bracing for the worst.

Based on the headline numbers, however, it would appear that the Labor leader has dodged a bullet.

Understandably, Coalition MPs will be demoralised.
And confused.

The fundamentals for the Prime Minister are all pointing in the right direction.

He is winning the “trust” race when it comes to handling the economy, the boats and national security. Indeed, there is a large rump of Labor voters who trust him more than they do the Labor leader on all three metrics.

This doesn’t necessarily mean they are going to shift their vote. This is not carrying over into an increase in popular support. Morrison just can’t seem to shift the dial.

There will be a view among Morrison’s colleagues that if a scare campaign on boats can’t turn things for them, nothing will. But as Morrison rightly told them at the partyroom meeting last week, the government can’t win an election on border protection alone.

Nor can it win an election on the economy alone, unless it can demonstrate what it is going to deliver for people.

The real concern for Morrison in today’s numbers resides not in recent trends or movements — the so-called snapshots in time — but over the longer term.

Since the 2016 election, the polls for the Coalition have bounced around from between 45-55 and 49-51.

There have been only two occasions when they have reached 50-50 — and they were the two polls following the election.

The average of the past two years and eight months has in fact been 47-53 in Labor’s favour. Which is exactly where the Coalition finds itself today. Business as usual.