Election 2022: Both leaders face uphill campaign task

Scott Morrison needs to have a better election campaign than all his predecessors this century if he is to have any chance of winning on May 21.

Labor has started five of the past six campaigns ahead but won only twice, while the Coalition has lifted its vote across all six campaigns.

Scott Morrison needs to have a better election campaign than all his predecessors this century if he is to have any chance of winning on May 21.

An analysis of Newspoll surveys during election campaigns since 2004 shows the Coalition has historically benefited from a so-called “shy conservative vote” that is not detected in ­national polling before the election, while Labor suffers a fall in support as the polls tighten.

Labor has started five of the past six campaigns ahead but won only twice, while the Coalition has lifted its vote across all six campaigns.

Anthony Albanese has to campaign better than Kevin Rudd did in his 2007 winning election ­because, although Labor is the polling favourite, the ALP primary vote in Newspoll is much lower than it was for Rudd – nine percentage points.

Not only does the Opposition Leader have to do better than the Rudd campaign, he’s also going to have to outperform Bill Shorten’s electioneering in 2019 because Labor’s current primary vote in Newspoll of 37 per cent is the same as Mr Shorten’s.

Labor’s primary vote is also the same as Labor’s before the losing campaigns of 2016 and 2013.

Traditionally, Coalition leaders benefit from a rise in primary and two-party-preferred support in Newspoll surveys from the beginning of the campaign to polling day. This is between 1.1 and 5.6 percentage points and 1.5 and 4.9 percentage points respectively.

Since 2004, the Coalition’s support has risen during every election campaign and Labor’s support – primary vote and two-party preferred – has fallen between the calling of the election and election day. But in 2022, the Coalition is starting the campaign with the lowest primary vote in Newspoll of any election since 2004, that is 36 per cent, and the lowest two-party-preferred support since John Howard’s losing 2007 campaign of 44 per cent.

In federal elections the major parties have had to essentially reach a primary vote at the election of 40 per cent to win government in their own right.

 

At the beginning of this campaign the Coalition’s primary vote support of 36 and Labor’s 37 per cent suggests the Coalition will have to pick up four percentage points during the campaign and Labor three points.

The Coalition’s best result from a campaign was Tony ­Abbott’s 2010 effort, with a primary vote rise during the campaign of 5.6 percentage points when Labor, under Julia Gillard, dropped four points and lost ­majority government with 50.1 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote.

The Coalition’s worst result across a campaign was a rise of just 1.1 per cent in 2016 under Malcolm ­Turnbull when the Liberals lost all the gains made under Mr Abbott and Mr Shorten had the smallest fall in a Labor vote in a campaign since 2004. In 2019, Mr Morrison started with a primary vote of 38 per cent and two-party-preferred support of 48 per cent, and picked up 3.5 points to have a primary vote of 41.4 per cent and a winning two-party-preferred figure of 51.5 per cent.

With both the major parties at the lowest or equal-lowest primary vote at the beginning of the campaign, both leaders are going to have to outperform all their predecessors to win on election day.