Newspoll: Pain from leadership coup revealed as vote slides nationwide
EXCLUSIVE | Polling analysis shows a collapse for the Coalition in every mainland state and the loss of 25 seats.
Scott Morrison faces an epic challenge to restore confidence in his shattered government, with new polling analysis showing a collapse in support for the Coalition in every mainland state and across every demographic group since the leadership spill.
Analysis of four Newspolls since the August 24 leadership spill casts a bleak picture for the government six months out from an expected May 2019 election.
The data, based on the two-party preferred swings since the 2016 election, reveals the Coalition faces the prospect of losing 25 seats across the nation, eight held by current frontbenchers.
The polling figures come amid recriminations and infighting over the 19 per cent swing against the Liberal Party at the Wentworth by-election, with several Coalition MPPs blaming former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull for the disastrous result after he failed to support Liberal candidate Dave Sharma.
Mr Turnbull’s son Alex, who urged Wentworth voters not to vote for Mr Sharma during the by-election campaign, yesterday tweeted “my work here is done”.
my work here is done. back to the dumpster fire of asian capital markets. pic.twitter.com/9bOj4rsBmf
— Alex Turnbull (@alexbhturnbull) October 21, 2018
In the latest counting, the Australian Electoral Commission had independent Kerryn Phelps leading Liberal candidate Dave Sharma by 1626 votes, almost guaranteeing her victory.
While senior Liberals insist that the Wentworth result was not a harbinger for a general election, the national polling results reveal voter anger, rather than being isolated, was widespread and reflected both in regional and city areas and across every age group.
Ahead of today’s partyroom meeting in Canberra, cabinet ministers Dan Tehan, Simon Birmingham and Christopher Pyne yesterday called for unity, following pushback from moderate Liberal MPs over the government’s climate change policy.
Conservative MPs rejected suggestions there were broader lessons from Wentworth, which is now almost certain to be claimed by Dr Phelps despite postal votes still being counted. Mr Morrison has resisted calls for a shift in policy as a consequence of the likelihood that the Coalition will be forced into minority government.
Crossbench MP Cathy McGowan, who Mr Morrison is hoping to rely on to support his government, yesterday lashed out at the Liberal Party following the Wentworth loss. “I saw John Howard get out there blaming us, me,... members of the crossbench for our instability,” Ms McGowan said. “Not so, it is the Liberal Party that has to sort it out.”
Senior Coalition moderates and conservatives were united in their assessment that the window was closing for the government to convince the electorate it was a unified team.
Since the spill, the national average swing against the government in primary vote was 3 per cent. This has returned the Coalition to the position it held under Mr Turnbull in the last quarter of last year, wiping out the incremental gains made throughout this year and leaving the Coalition’s vote 7.1 percentage points behind its result at the 2016 election.
The most recent Newspoll on October 14 showed signs that the Coalition was beginning to recover ground but the first comprehensive analysis of the electoral consequences of the leadership change confirms that it faces an uphill struggle to repair the electoral damage.
The analysis, which averages the poll results for the quarter, shows wild swings in some states as high as 5 per cent in Queensland and 7 per cent in South Australia. The smallest contraction in popular support was recorded in NSW, the home state of both Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison.
According to the Newspoll data, Mr Morrison has emerged as a more popular Prime Minister than Mr Turnbull was at any time since the 2016 election and has begun to rally the Liberal Party’s older base behind his leadership.
Despite the anger directed at the Liberal and Nationals parties, Mr Morrison enjoys personal satisfaction ratings higher than Mr Turnbull’s in every state except Victoria where he was level with the former prime minister.
While Mr Morrison was less favoured than Mr Turnbull among 18 to 34-year-olds and a single point down with the 35 to 49-year-old bracket, he was dramatically more favoured by the over-50s, who the Liberals regard as a core constituency. Mr Morrison scored 10 points higher than Mr Turnbull with a 48 per cent satisfaction rating among over-50s.
Party officials claim this is a sign that the party’s base could return to the Coalition under Mr Morrison, with the new prime minister enjoying a net approval rating of plus 12 with over-50s compared with a net negative satisfaction rating for Mr Turnbull of minus 15 .
In another sign that Mr Morrison could win back conservative voters more generally, One Nation’s vote in the bush dropped three points since the spill. However, Pauline Hanson remains a major threat to the Coalition with its primary vote of 6 per cent nationally still more than four times what it was at the last election.
The Newspoll analysis, conducted exclusively for The Australian, shows that in the battleground state of Queensland, the Coalition has suffered an average 5 per cent primary vote swing since the spill, and a 10 per cent fall since the election. The two party preferred swing against the government of 8.1 per cent would result in the potential loss of 10 seats including cabinet minister Peter Dutton.
In two-party-preferred terms, Victoria has suffered a three point drop since the spill, and 5.2 per cent since the election, which would result in four seats being lost including that of frontbencher Sarah Henderson.
In NSW, a three-point drop in two-party-preferred vote to 46 per cent, down 3.9 per cent on the last election, would limit the losses to only four seats in the key state but would see newly appointed Immigration Minister David Coleman lose his seat. Four ministers including Attorney-General Christian Porter and Human Services Minister Michael Keenan would be lost from Western Australia on the back of an 8.1 per cent two-party-preferred swing since the 2016 election and a four-point fall since August.
The greatest wrath was delivered in South Australia where the two-party-preferred vote fell nine points to 42 per cent, although this reflects only a 5.7 per cent swing against the government since July 2016 and is less significant than other states with only two seats falling under this scenario.
The most recent Newspoll reflected a potential recovery underway for the government. Having trailed Labor 44-56 on a two-party-preferred basis in the days following Mr Turnbull’s forced resignation, a week ago it had reached 47-53.
Senior government sources yesterday talked down the need for the Prime Minister to shift his focus including on the important question of energy prices and climate change. Mr Tehan urged the government to “walk the walk” rather than simply talk about unity following the Wentworth loss.
“We’ve got to do it now,” the Education Minister told Sky News. “We’ve got six months until the election and we can talk but we have got to walk the walk now, and that’s the key test for us. There can’t be a cigarette paper’s difference between any of us. We have got to have a sense of unity, a purpose that is absolutely unified. And we have got to deliver.”
Mr Tehan said the Coalition partyroom needed to have a “frank” and “fearless” discussion about climate change policy.
Senator Birmingham, the Trade Minister and leading moderate, said the government needed to ensure voters understood how the Morrison government’s policies would help Australia meet the Paris target.
The South Australian senator said the removal of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister was the biggest factor in the expected loss of Wentworth.
Mr Pyne, the Defence Minister and a senior moderate whose seat would hang in the balance with a 5.7 per cent swing in South Australia , said the Liberal Party wasn’t a “party of the far Right” and urged colleagues to stay within the political mainstream to ensure they were positioned to win the election. “I think the message from Wentworth is very clear: disunity is death and it is critical to be in the mainstream of politics if you want to win,” Mr Pyne told ABC.
“The Liberal Party is a party of the centre Right.”
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