Newspoll: How Albanese and Labor could win the next election by default

While ALP support shows a positive long-term trend and Coalition support a long-term negative, a crucial third trend emerges.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese could win the next election by default. Picture: Getty

The splintering of the centre-right vote is beginning and Anthony Albanese is the beneficiary who could win the next election by default.

While ALP support is showing a positive long-term trend and Coalition support a long-term negative there is a crucial third trend that threatens to deliver the Opposition Leader an indirect victory in what is expected to be a tight election.

That third trend is the fracture of Coalition support as former Liberal voters move to support so-called progressive independents with former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as a champion or conservatives move to more extreme independents which former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott has warned against.

Most seats in federal elections are decided by preference votes and most modern federal elections are decided on preferences - raw political support in primary or two-party preferred vote is not enough to guarantee victory.

Thus, as bad as the latest Newspoll figures are for the Coalition government there is an even greater and more insidious threat - negative protest votes from both ends of the spectrum feeding preferences to Labor in marginal seats.

Don’t forget that at the last election Labor MP for Hunter Joel Fitzgibbon’s was saved for Labor against the Coalition by preferences from One Nation.

The latest Newspoll confirms a positive trend in support for the Labor Party and a real decline for the Coalition since April-May, up four points in primary vote and down five points respectively.

An election must be held by May next year at the latest and Scott Morrison must reverse these trends in voter support if he is to win.

The Newspoll shows that last weekend the Coalition’s primary vote had fallen to 36 per cent - a low for this term - and Labor’s had risen to 40 per cent - a high for the term. The calculated two-party preferred vote puts Labor in front 54 to 46 per cent as part of another long-term trend.

On these figures the Prime Minister would be a clear loser but all sides recognise that opinion polls are broad national guide and elections are decided seat-by-seat and it is here the fault lines are obvious.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

Since April-May, when Labor has gone up and the Coalition down, the Greens have gone down from 12 to 10 per cent primary vote and One Nation has remained steady at three per cent.

Apart from the major parties it is the “others”, independents of all shades and causes, that has shown movement, up from eight per cent to 11 per cent, back to where it was at the last election.

Given that the personal contest between Morrison and Albanese has shown little real movement it is this party breakdown and where the preferences will go that are crucial.

Greens’ preferences go to Labor at about 80 per cent but One Nation only go to the Coalition at about 60 per cent and “others” are even more fractured particularly if it's a progressive, climate change friendly independent or a former Coalition MP.

The twin threats to a preference flow giving Labor victory in a tight election have been personified by Turnbull who appears as an alternative opposition leader appealing to progressive independents and Abbott who has warned splinter conservative parties will “deliver a Labor-Greens government”.