Newspoll: Coalition vote gets burnt by fires, rorts

EXCLUSIVE | The Coalition has taken a damaging hit from the bushfires and sports rorts ­saga as Scott Morrison’s popularity flatlines.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to the media in Sydney on Saturday. Picture: AAP

The Coalition has taken a damaging electoral hit from the bushfire crisis and sports rorts ­controversy that forced the resignation of cabinet minister Bridget McKenzie as Scott Morrison’s popularity flatlines.

An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows popular support for the Coalition tumbling to 38 per cent, with the Prime Minister battling to ­recover from the voter anger over his initial handling of the ­national bushfire emergency late last year.

Tennis great Martina Navratilova with Anthony Albanese at Midsumma Pride March in St Kilda, Melbourne, on Sunday. Picture: AAP

The fall in support has resulted in a two-point turnaround in the two-party-preferred vote to 52-48 per cent in favour of Labor.

The latest result comes ahead of the return to parliament on Tuesday and the first Liberal party­room meeting since early ­December, with Liberal MPs likely to be rattled by the numbers.

The Liberal-Nationals primary vote is down two points from the first poll of the year, conducted three weeks ago, and is now down 3.4 points on the May election ­result.

It marks a significant reversal of fortune for the Coalition, which had bucked a historical trend to dominate the polls for the first six months of its third term in government.

But voter approval of Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has also fallen sharply, as has Labor’s primary vote, which is down a point to 35 per cent, with the Greens gaining a point to a long-term high of 13 per cent.

Mr Morrison’s approval ratings plummeted in early January when Newspoll conducted the first voter survey of the year, falling eight points to 37 per cent while dissatisfaction with the Liberal leader rose 11 points to 59 per cent.

Those numbers remain unchanged in the latest poll, which surveyed 1510 voters across the major capitals and country regions between last Wednesday and Saturday. Approval ratings for Mr Albanese have also fallen — three points to 43 per cent — having hit a post-election high of 46 per cent in the previous poll.

The Labor leader’s dissatisfaction numbers rose by the same to 40 per cent, marking a six-point turnaround in the net ­approval ratings that assess voters’ ­opinion of a leader’s performance.

In the head-to-head contest, Mr Albanese has consolidated his lead as the preferred prime minster, remaining at 43 per cent compared with Mr Morrison who dropped a point to 38 per cent.

At the end of last year, and ­before the uproar over his overseas holiday, Mr Morrison enjoyed a healthy lead over his rival: 48 to 34 per cent.

Support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation remained unchanged at 4 per cent, which is still marginally higher than the election result of 3.1 per cent.

However, there was a significant shift in support for other minor parties, which climbed two points to 10 per cent. This is still down on the 11.8 per cent recorded at the election, which was elevated due to the ­re-emergence of Queensland mining mogul Clive Palmer as a political force.

The Coalition won the election with a primary vote of 41.4 per cent compared with 33.3 per cent for Labor. It had built on this ­result throughout the last half of year to post a high of 42 per cent, while Labor had fallen behind its election result several times.

The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.