NSW Newspoll: Dominic Perrottet needs to pull several rabbits out of hat

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. Picture NCA Newswire/ Gaye Gerard

Dominic Perrottet is in the fight of his life.

Despite being NSW Premier for only 12 months, Perrottet faces an It’s Time factor that is weighing down the 11-year-old Coalition government.

Half of those surveyed in an exclusive Newspoll for The Weekend Australian, indicated it was time to give someone else a go.

Six months out from the election, Labor holds an eight-point two-party-preferred lead over the Coalition, making it odds-on favourite to win in March. It is Labor’s best poll in 15 years, right before it won its last NSW state election in 2007.

The Coalition is facing a six per cent primary-vote swing against it, which appears to be transferring directly to Labor.

But it’s too early to write off the government. Perrottet with an approval rating of 47 per cent and a disapproval rating of 41 per cent, retains personal support despite a string of political disasters, including the Barilaro trade job scandal, the Coalition’s loss in the federal election, rail shutdowns and the looming spectre of an economic downturn.

He also leads Chris Minns by 39 to 35 as preferred premier.

While Perrottet retains positive satisfaction ratings, voters are yet to make up their minds about Minns, whose satisfaction rating of 42 compared with 27 per cent dissatisfaction gives him the most impressive figures for a Labor contender in many years. But 31 per cent of voters remain uncommitted. At the same time 26 per cent of voters remain uncommitted on whether Perrottet or Minns are the better premier.

Labor needs to win 10 seats to take majority government in its own right. These poll results don’t guarantee that.

This is something that the ­Coalition will likely seek to exploit as the campaign nears. The Greens are polling 12 per cent and Perrottet will raise the spectre of a Labor-Greens Coalition.

The “others” vote of 13 per cent – down from 15.5 per cent at the 2019 election – also indicates the “teal’’ wave that swept federal ­Coalition MPs from office at the May election is yet to materialise.

The Premier will have to pull several rabbits out of a hat to stay in office past March.

His disapproval rating of 41 per cent is still worse than Gladys ­Berejiklian’s dismal last poll at 38 per cent.

But Minns will need to take the fight to Perrottet aggressively to win the seats he needs.

And he’ll need come down hard on the kind of factional bloodletting on his own side that resurrected the ghost of Eddie Obeid this week, a whiff of Labor’s unhappy record on corruption he could well have done without.

Minns is trying to position himself as underdog “with a difficult hill to climb”.

In truth, the election is his to lose.