Small target strategy working for Anthony Albanese, but Scott Morrison can still win from here

However objectionable a small-target political strategy may be, for Anthony Albanese it appears to be working.

And unless the Coalition can mount a credible campaign to undermine confidence in Labor as an alternative government, it will continue to do so.

For an Opposition Leader to be on a level playing field as preferred prime minister going into an election is hardly a remarkable thing, and there are plenty of strategists who don’t subscribe to an absolute maxim that popularity of the leader is the key decider of voting intention or necessarily determines the outcome.

That said, the last opposition leader to not win an election when regarded as an equally good or better prime minister on election eve was former Labor leader Kim Beazley in 1998.

And before that it was Liberal leader John Hewson in 1993.

Put another way, Albanese cannot win the election unless he remains level-pegged with Scott Morrison or pulls ahead, bearing in mind that only six months ago he was 16 points behind.

Albanese has offered very little other than not being the other bloke. And that may well be enough.

When Beazley also employed a similar small target strategy, however, that didn’t go so well for him in the end.

Heading into the 1998 election, Beazley had an approval rating of plus 13 compared with John Howard, who was defending his first term on a net negative approval of minus 11.

Only time will tell whether Albanese’s approach will be seen as a strategic blunder or a brilliant, if not vacuous, electoral proposition. For the meantime, it is being vindicated by the polls.

The Prime Minister may be running out of runway but he still has time to get the plane off the ground. He has been in this position before and survived.

In March 2019, Newspoll recorded the Coalition primary vote at 36 per cent.

Today, almost precisely the same period before the next election, it is on 35 per cent, well within the margin of error to be comparable.

Labor was then on 39 per cent and is now on 41 per cent. The combined Labor/Greens vote is at 49 per cent, only one point different from the 48 per cent in March 2019.

The two-party-preferred vote was then 46-54 in Labor’s favour. It is now 45-55. So the answer to the question of whether the Coalition can win from here is obviously yes.

But whatever its political strategy is to achieve that might need to quickly become apparent. While Morrison is suffering from a lack of clear air to establish a campaign footing, Albanese continues to get away with it.