Soul-searching turns to abject fear for Sussan Ley and the Coalition
The soul-searching of Liberal MPs and supporters will transform into a state of abject fear after the Coalition crashed to a primary vote of 24 per cent in the latest Newspoll.
Those who believed it couldn’t get worse than the 31.8 per cent primary vote achieved by Peter Dutton at the May 3 election have been proven delusional.
The Australian has tracked the bleeding of conservative votes since the first post-election Newspoll in July, which showed the Liberals and Nationals plunging to a primary vote of 29 per cent.
That was the lowest level of support since Newspoll first counted primary votes in November 1985.
Damaged by the loss of talented parliamentarians and infighting over net-zero emissions by 2050, climate change and migration, the Coalition’s fortunes continue to sour. Core support fell again to 27 per cent in September.
Many Liberals believed that was likely rock bottom. Surely, they said, there was no chance the Coalition would continue its slide. They were wrong.
A Newspoll of 1265 voters conducted between Monday and Thursday last week shows the Coalition’s primary vote has fallen from 28 to 24 per cent in the past month.
The biggest winner in the Coalition’s downfall is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
Since winning 6.4 per cent at the election, Newspoll shows One Nation’s primary vote rising to a record 15 per cent, which exceeds the previous high of 13 per cent in June 1998.
Minor parties and independents are also picking up votes from the Coalition, Labor and Greens, who all went backwards. The combined primary vote for One Nation, minor parties and independents is almost 30 per cent.
Core support for the major parties is now at 60 per cent, the lowest level in Newspoll records.
Labor strategists will be concerned that none of the Coalition’s vote leakage is heading their way. Despite Anthony Albanese’s political dominance, the ALP primary vote has remained virtually static at 36 per cent.
As Liberals stumble in the dark searching for the beating heart that returns the party to the glory days of Robert Menzies and John Howard, the task of rebuilding a broken conservative movement has landed with Sussan Ley.
Ley, who despite being in parliament since 2001 has virtually no public profile, is struggling to cut through with punters as panic and loathing spreads across the opposition’s dwindling benches.
There is nothing positive in the Newspoll numbers for the Opposition Leader as she battles to instil unity in her ranks.
Amid constant bickering and public undermining of her leadership, voters have delivered Ley a report card worse than any of Dutton’s net approval ratings.
Ley, who many in Liberal ranks feel should be given time to have a decent crack, has watched her net approval rating deteriorate from minus-7 to minus-33 in the space of five Newspolls. Dutton’s worst net approval rating, recorded in the final Newspoll before the election, was minus-24.
With two parliamentary sitting weeks remaining until the Christmas break, Ley’s timetables for policy development are expected to be brought forward.
Her supporters are urging colleagues not to be concerned about bleeding support to One Nation because conservative voters will flock back once unity is restored and policies revamped.
They believe there is no credible rival actively circling Ley’s job, which at this stage of the political cycle is considered a poisoned chalice.
While her backers say rolling the Liberal Party’s first female leader would be political insanity, negative Newspoll trends could shift backroom criticism to a more co-ordinated effort aimed at bringing warring factions together and considering who could replace Ley.
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