Newspoll: Voters mark down Scott Morrison’s handling of Covid-19

The Covid incumbency factor for the federal government is beginning to soften.

Scott Morrison during question time last week. Picture: Martin Ollman

Voters have marked down Scott Morrison’s handling of Covid-19 in the wake of the fourth Victorian lockdown and uncertainty over the vaccine rollout, but a majority of Australians still maintain confidence in his management of the pandemic.

An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows that 61 per cent of voters believed the Prime Minister was still handing the crisis well compared to 70 per cent in April.

But this is significantly down on the 85 per cent approval rating Mr Morrison enjoyed at the height of the pandemic’s first wave in April last year.

While the fall suggests that the Covid incumbency factor for the federal government was beginning to soften as a net positive, however, it has not yet translated into a fall in popular support for the Coalition.

In a separate question asked to gauge attitudes to the opposition, 25 per cent of voters believed a Labor government led by­ ­Anthony Albanese would be handling the crisis better with 36 per cent believing it would be about the same.

A further 27 per cent believed an Albanese government would be worse at dealing with the crisis. It is the first time Newspoll has asked this question.

 

The poll was conducted between last Wednesday and Saturday, after a three-week period in which Victoria went into its fourth lockdown following an outbreak, and covering only the initial first few days of restrictions in Sydney before it plunged into an official Covid red zone.

It also captured voters’ ­response to the lifting of the age barrier for the AstraZeneca vaccine after the regulators concerns about the very rare incidence of blood clotting disorders.

Despite this, and the likelihood that the vaccine rollout would be further delayed as a consequence, confidence in the Morrison government’s handling of the vaccine rollout remained relatively stable.

A slight majority, 50 per cent, of voters said they were satisfied with the Morrison government’s handling of the vaccine rollout compared to 46 per cent claiming to be dissatisfied. This was a small drop from 53 per cent and 43 per cent in April when the same question was asked.

The results of the primary question around Mr Morrison’s handling of the pandemic more broadly suggest that the strong ­bipartisan support for the Prime Minister’s management of the ­crisis has waned.

 

While even a majority of Labor voters believed he was handling it well – at 51 per cent – this was significantly lower than the 84 per cent of Coalition voters.

A total of 27 per cent of all voters believed Mr Morrison was doing “very well” while 37 per cent chose the “fairly well” option.

Younger people were more likely to claim he was not handling it well.

Greens’ voters were more likely than Labor voters to believe an Albanese government would be doing either a better job or similarly well as the Morrison government.

Mr Albanese said on Monday that the Morrison government had given up on vaccine targets and instead committed to “horizons”, something that they’ll “never meet”.

“What’s extraordinary about last week is that the government gave up on targets and now they have something called horizons. Now, a horizon is something that you never meet. As you move the horizon moves with you,” Mr ­Albanese told Sky News.

 

“The government needs to ­acknowledge that it has been complacent, that it hasn’t put in place appropriate measures, present it hasn’t delivered it hasn’t ­delivered on its targets, and now it’s given up completely.”

Additional reporting: Max Maddison