Malcolm Turnbull suffers drop as preferred PM in the wake of Barnaby Joyce’s baby scandal

EXCLUSIVE | Malcolm Turnbull’s lead over Bill Shorten has evaporated in the fallout from the Barnaby Joyce saga.

Malcolm Turnbull’s lead over Bill Shorten has evaporated in the fallout from the Barnaby Joyce love-child scandal.

Malcolm Turnbull’s lead over Bill Shorten as the preferred prime minister has evaporated, with the leaders now virtually neck and neck following the fallout from the Coalition crisis over the Barnaby Joyce love-child scandal and bungled personal ­attacks on the Labor leader.

The collapse in the Prime Minister’s personal ratings in the past month comes as Mr Turnbull approaches the benchmark 30 Newspolls behind Labor, which he set as a measure of failure when he challenged Tony Abbott for the leadership.

A Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian, the 28th poll in which the Coalition has trailed Labor on a two-party-preferred basis, has recorded a 12-point collapse in Mr Turnbull’s ascendancy over Mr Shorten since the first poll of 2018 conducted in early February.

Any hopes the Prime Minister may have had that a successful US trip would lift his personal stocks have been cruelled, with his numbers going backwards and the poll suggesting he is being blamed for the political mismanagement of the Joyce crisis.

Having returned from the summer break with a 14-point lead against Mr Shorten — 45 per cent to 31 per cent — the two leaders are now almost level pegged following revelations about the former Nationals ­leader’s affair with former staffer Vikki Campion, who is now having his child.

Having weathered an aggressive campaign by the government to expose his alleged hypocrisy over the Adani coalmine and his links to the militant union movement, Mr Shorten has lifted two points as preferred prime minister — and four points since February 1 — to now trail Mr Turnbull by 35 per cent to 37 per cent. The ­Coalition, however, appears to have been spared any further punishment, with voting intentions remaining largely unchanged.

Labor has maintained its 53-47 two-party-preferred lead over the Coalition, re-enforcing its dominance and confirming the erosion in the small gains the government made at the beginning of the year.

At the same time, both major parties appear to have been the beneficiaries of an unexpected ­decline among all minor parties.

A one-point drop in the ­primary vote for the Greens was ­reflected in a poor result in the Tasmanian election at the weekend. This translated into a one-point gain for Labor federally to a primary vote of 38 per cent in the latest Newspoll.

One Nation has also dropped back a point to 7 per cent — down significantly on its November 2017 high of 10 per cent — which has transferred to the Coalition primary vote, which gained a point to 37 per cent. But the dramatic slide in Mr Turnbull’s own numbers will hold the most concern for the government, which had been initially buoyed by a one-point bounce in the polls at the start of the year to a 52-48 two-party-preferred split, only to see it reversed within weeks.

The Prime Minister has now paid the price for his handling of the Joyce issue, which has dogged the government and taken the parliamentary wings of the Liberal Party and the Nationals to the brink of a Coalition crisis.

Also factored into the polling period was an ill-disciplined outburst at the end of last week by Minister for Jobs Michaelia Cash, who used parliamentary privilege to raise personal and unsubstantiated rumours about Mr Shorten.

With the crisis shows no sign of ending — Mr Joyce yesterday ­revealed that he was unsure of Ms Campion’s unborn child was his — Mr Turnbull’s rating as preferred prime minister has fallen three points in the past two weeks to 37 per cent. This adds to a five-point drop in the last Newspoll contributing to a collapse in Mr Turnbull’s 45-to-31 lead at the ­beginning of February.

The last and only time Mr Turnbull has held such a slim lead over Mr Shorten was in November following the citizenship crisis and gay marriage plebiscite.

Voters have expressed frustration with the performance of both leaders, with a two-point ­decline in those who claim to be satisfied with Mr Turnbull’s performance to 32 per cent and a one-point drop in the same for Mr Shorten to 33 per cent.

More voters are disappointed with Mr Turnbull’s performance than with the Opposition Leader’s, with Mr Turnbull rising three points to 57 per cent dissatisfied and Mr Shorten up two points to 56 per cent. The poll of 1657 people was conducted between Thursday and yesterday.