Newspoll: Morrison swings the pendulum back

The Prime Minister during a visit to an Australian Indian Community Centre in Melbourne over the weekend.. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Daniel Pockett

Scott Morrison has started to build the bones of a positive election theme focused on the economic recovery and withdrawing government from people’s lives. And it appears to have paid early dividends for the Coalition.

After having presumably hit rock bottom with a 35 per cent primary vote last month, the electoral haemorrhaging to the right has been stemmed.

Following a week on the faux campaign trail across Victoria and NSW, Morrison recovered two points for the Coalition and marginally improved its two-party-preferred position.

This week, he’ll seek to keep building the momentum with a blitz of western Sydney. He will move on from climate change and narrow the focus to the engine room of the economy – small business.

This marks the first step in what Morrison hopes will be the road to recovery for his government. The ground the Coalition has made up over the past three weeks has all come from One Nation and the “others” pile – all other minor parties, including Clive Palmer’s Australia United Party.

Fears the conservative base would react accordingly over the commitment to a 2050 net-zero target have been tempered.

Presumably the changed messaging last week, with an emphasis on a return to less interventionist government, has resonated where it needed to.

The challenge now for Morrison will be to start chipping into the middle where the election will be won and lost.

The Coalition may have picked up but it is yet to make a dent on the enemy, with Labor and the Greens on a combined primary vote of 49 per cent.

But this is now a twin task for Morrison, as he is also faced with the challenge of rebuilding his electoral standing, now at its lowest point since March 2020.

The further fall this week in the Prime Minister’s approval ratings, at odds with the improvement for the party, has been fuelled by the campaign to portray him as a liar.

Note, there is already an in-built bias among voters that all politicians lie.

This was a gift to Anthony Albanese’s singular strategy of dismantling Morrison’s character. For Labor, it’s all about generating a cumulative impact. And by throwing punches at Morrison from outside the ring, the Opposition Leader is leaving Morrison a hard target to swing back at.

But it’s not all rosy for the Labor leader either. Albanese’s own approval ratings should herald at least some concern for Labor strategists.

At minus 11, Albanese is at his equal lowest standing since becoming leader in May 2019.