Newspoll: Coalition faces election wipeout with 40th straight loss

Scott Morrison is favoured PM but he leads a Coalition facing an election wipeout with the potential loss of up to 30 seats.

Morrison has received a “honeymoon” boost to his performance ratings. Picture: AP

Scott Morrison has emerged as the favoured prime minister over Bill Shorten and a more popular leader than Malcolm Turnbull after just two weeks in the job but he leads a decimated Coalition that faces an election wipeout with the potential loss of up to 30 seats.

An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows that Mr Morrison appears to have been quickly embraced by voters with a majority believing he is ­already presenting as a more ­decisive leader than Mr Turnbull.

He is also regarded as considerably more likeable and trustworthy than the Labor leader.

However, the positive start for the former treasurer has been overshadowed by the post-coup collapse in popular support for the Coalition and a failure to claw back any favour from an eight- point losing margin recorded in the days following the August 24 Liberal leadership spill.

Continuing its advance into Liberal Party territory, Labor’s primary vote has lifted a further point to 42 per cent on the back of the continuing turmoil surrounding the government.

It marks the strongest support for the party since the days following Kevin Rudd’s dismissal in July 2010 and is almost at the level of popular support that led to Labor’s 2007 landslide victory over John Howard.

The results, ahead of the Wentworth by-election expected next month, will jar with expectations of senior Liberal figures, who were confident there would be some improvement in the ­Coalition’s fundamental numbers as parliament returns today for the first time since the week of the coup.

Mr Morrison, who will map out an agenda this week on the economy, power prices and the drought, has already moved quickly to remove key policy drags for the government since becoming leader, including dumping the national energy guarantee and abandoning the plan to lift the pension age to 70 while making significant infrastructure announcements.

None of this appears to have assuaged voter anger with the Liberal Party, however, with a one-point gain in the Coalition’s primary vote to 34 per cent failing to translate into any improvement in its overall electoral position and confirming it remains among the lowest levels it has recorded in government.

On the key election indicator of the two-party-preferred vote, the Coalition trails Labor 44-56 for the second poll in a row.

This rivals its worst result since February 2015 and would lead to the potential loss of 30 seats at an election if distributed evenly across all electorates. It marks a dramatic fall since the final poll of Mr Turnbull’s leadership, which had the Coalition trailing by a small margin of 49-51.

With the latest results marking the 40th successive Newspoll in which the Coalition has trailed Labor, the task for Mr Morrison is to return the government to a competitive electoral position before an expected poll next May.

He will convene his first formal cabinet meeting tonight, where the dumping of the NEG will be formalised in the first of a series of significant policy shifts for the government.

The Newspoll revealed voters rated energy prices (22 per cent), hospitals and aged care (21 per cent), assistance to farmers (21 per cent), budget deficit (16 per cent), national security and asylum-seekers (11 per cent) and school funding (5 per cent) as the issues for Mr Morrison to prioritise.

Coalition voters listed the budget deficit as their top priority at 22 per cent, while Labor supporters rated hospitals and aged care their top issue at 29 per cent.

The new Prime Minister, consumed with healing a fractured partyroom and a government with a single-seat majority, will face a barrage from the opposition when parliament resumes.

Labor’s manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, signalled the opposition would be seeking an explanation from key Coalition frontbenchers as to why Mr Turnbull was dumped.

Labor will also seek to deny Mr Morrison any clear air to set out his agenda by exploiting the au-pair scandal surrounding Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.

The poll of 1653 voters was conducted nationally across the ­cities and regions from September 6-9 and showed no shift in the Greens’ primary vote of 10 per cent, which has remained unchanged since June.

One Nation dropped a point to 6 per cent while the total vote for other minor parties and independents also fell a point to 8 per cent.

While the Coalition remains mired in a poll slump, Mr Morrison’s personal ratings have already exceeded both the Labor leader’s and Mr Turnbull’s in his past two years in office. He leads Mr Shorten as the preferred prime minister 42 to 36 per cent. While a smaller margin than Mr Turnbull’s, whose last poll had him ahead of the Labor leader by a margin of 12 points, it reverses the first poll for Mr Morrison conducted immediately after he was elected Liberal leader and when he was six points behind Mr Shorten.

Significantly, Mr Morrison’s approval ratings are the highest for a prime minister since March 2016 and put him in positive territory with a net rating of plus 2 per cent, which marks the difference between satisfaction and dissatisfaction levels. Mr Turnbull had been consistently in negative territory, dropping to minus 10 in the middle of June this year. Mr Shorten recorded his best satisfaction ratings in the latest poll since May 2016 but he still has a net satisfaction rating of minus 14 per cent.

A poll of nine key leadership attributes reveals Mr Morrison is ahead of his rival Mr Shorten as a stronger and more decisive leader, more likeable and less arrogant.

It also reveals that Mr Morrison’s pledge to scrap the NEG and any plans to legislate the Paris emissions-reduction target has extended the Coalition’s lead over Labor as the best party to drive down prices.

Newly appointed Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, the chief architect of the NEG as energy minister under Mr Turnbull, continued to defend the policy yesterday, disputing that it played any role in the downfall of Mr Turnbull. “It went through the partyroom three times, so it wasn’t the factor in his downfall,” he said.

Mr Frydenberg, who was elected deputy Liberal Party leader following Mr Turnbull’s demise, said yesterday the focus of the Morrison government would be “delivering more jobs, lower taxes and the essential services that they need”. “Every Australian is more interested in getting those essential services in health and in education and in the NDIS that they need,” he said.