Newspoll: The Coalition regains ground with voters

Coalition regains ground after redoubling message on energy prices, as the PM widens his lead over Bill Shorten to 17 points.

Malcolm Turnbull has widened the gap between himself and Bill Shorten in the preferred prime minister stakes. Picture; AAP.

The Turnbull government has regained ground with voters after redoubling its message on energy prices, trailing Labor by 47 to 53 per cent in two-party terms compared to a horror gap of 46 to 54 per cent two weeks ago.

The latest Newspoll, taken exclusively for The Australian, shows a significant improvement in the Coalition’s primary vote from 35 to 37 per cent.

Labor’s primary vote has held steady at 38 per cent while the Greens are also unchanged on 9 per cent, while there was a small fall in support for others.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation saw its primary vote slip from 9 to 8 per cent in another sign of the “softness” of its vote, which reached a high of 11 per cent in June.

One Nation Queensland Senator Malcolm Roberts two weeks ago described a one-point increase in the party’s primary vote as a “surge” of support for Senator Hanson’s controversial decision to wear a burka in the Senate.

While the shifts in primary vote were within the margin of error of 2.5 per cent, the changes in preferred prime minister were greater than this margin.

Mr Turnbull widened his lead over Mr Shorten as preferred prime minister to 17 percentage points, the same gap he enjoyed in the Newspoll survey taken in the days before last year’s election. The gap between the two leaders was 10 points two weeks ago.

Voters increased their support for Mr Turnbull as better prime minister from 43 to 46 per cent, while scaling back their support for Mr Shorten from 33 to 29 per cent.

Mr Turnbull’s net satisfaction rating — the difference between those satisfied and those dissatisfied with his performance — was unchanged at negative 20 points.

While his satisfaction rating fell from 34 to 34 per cent, his disapproval rating fell from 55 to 54 per cent and the proportion of voters who were “uncommitted” on his performance rose from 10 to 12 per cent.

There was no change in Mr Shorten’s satisfaction, dissatisfaction or net satisfaction ratings. While 34 per cent are satisfied with his performance, 54 per cent are dissatisfied and he has a net rating of negative 20 points.

The combined support for the Greens, One Nation, other parties and the “uncommitted” vote reached 35 per cent at the end of February, in a grim poll for the government, but has fallen to 30 per cent in the latest survey.

The survey of 1606 voters was taken from Thursday to yesterday and has a margin of error of 2.4 per cent. It is the 19th consecutive Newspoll where the Coalition has trailed Labor, a tally that Mr Turnbull turned into a benchmark for leadership when he named the loss of “30 Newspolls in a row” as a reason for challenging Mr Abbott in September 2015.