Newspoll: Slow, steady decline a worry for Labor, Anthony Albanese

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture: AFP

Two significant shifts have occurred in Newspoll that should be of deepening concern for Labor.

The Coalition’s primary vote of 40 per cent is the first time since June 2021 that it has had a four in front of what is the critical number.

It has now broken through a psychological barrier that has eluded the conservative parties since Scott Morrison’s decline.

Peter Dutton can claim this as a personal victory, as the question of his whether he is electable appears also to have been answered.

With only four points between the two leaders on the question of preferred prime minister, this puts Dutton in a highly com­petitive position should Labor seek to make leadership the defining question of the election campaign.

If you consider the fact that on this question there is a built-in premium for the incumbent, on the question of Dutton being electable the answer has to be: you bet.

There is a caveat, however, which favours Labor.

Labor’s primary vote has also lifted – two points to 33 per cent. The Coalition’s gain comes with a corresponding failure to suppress this.

And Labor has won an election from this position before – moreover most recently.

So, if you’re Anthony Albanese, and you’re looking at these numbers in the context of a political debate that has focused on his snout in the trough, you’d be saying ‘thank God, it could have been worse’.

Whatever the merits of his HECS debt policy, it has worked politically, by clawing back young voters from the Greens into Labor’s column.

And this goes to the heart of what the opinion polls are saying.

There is a continuing transference of votes between the right and left at the margins.

The Greens go down, Labor goes up. One Nation goes down, the Coalition goes up.

Those who decide the election in the middle appear to be unmoved. And largely because neither party is talking to their primary concerns.

Yet, on balance, this is a bad poll for Labor.

And it would surely put paid to the most recent rumours in Canberra that Albanese is gearing up to call a snap election in the new year.

How could it entertain going to an election on these numbers unless it knows something magical that the rest of us don’t on how it claws back three points on a two party preferred basis to sneak over the line?

On these numbers, applying the uniform method, Labor loses seven seats, and possibly eight, which reduces it to minority government.

In a tight election, it always comes down to the seat-by-seat contest.

But a three-point swing against Labor, as this poll suggests, is starting to get closer to the 6 per cent swing that the ­Coalition would need to change the outcome.

And it is the macro story of Newspoll that is the most in­structive for both major parties. There is a trend that is hard to ignore.

In both the June and July Newspolls, Labor was ahead in two party preferred terms 51/49.

In August and September, this narrowed to 50/50, in three subsequent polls.

The swing in favour of the ­Coalition began in October and now appears to be continuing. The last two polls have had the Coalition in front 51/49.

The margin of error notwithstanding, the movement toward the Coalition is evident, even if it remains within a band that on balance has the two parties virtually neck and neck.

What is significant is that the erosion of Labor’s support has been slow but it has been steady.

Newspoll has not seen wild fluctuations that you often get in polls.

Instead, it has been tracking a constant yet subtle drift away from Labor over the past six months.

If this trajectory were to continue at its current pace, by the time of the election the Coalition could well be in a position to be highly competitive.

On the issue of Dutton as leader, this now comes into play as a negative for Labor if its strategy is to go hard negative.

If Trump’s resurrection proved anything, this might well be the great folly.