Newspoll: Shorten trails Plibersek and Albanese among half of voters

Almost half of all voters would prefer someone other than Bill Shorten as leader of the Labor Party, Newspoll finds.

 

Almost half of all voters would prefer someone other than Bill Shorten as leader of the Labor Party with Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek more favoured to take the opposition reins.

But Mr Shorten still remains the clear choice for most Labor voters, reflecting a deep unwillingness within the ALP’s base to repeat the tortured leadership changes of the past.

With the Labor leader facing internal factional turmoil and forced by-elections due to the citizenship crisis, the first Newspoll of 2018 shows deputy leader Tanya Plibersek is the preferred leader among all voters, on 25 per cent, closely followed by Mr Albanese, on 24 per cent.

Mr Shorten was narrowly behind on 22 per cent, with 29 per cent of voters uncommitted.

However, among Labor voters Mr Shorten was a clear choice for leader, with 37 per cent backing him over Ms Plibersek on 27 per cent and 23 per cent support for Mr Albanese.

While Ms Plibersek is seen to be popular with inner-city Greens voters, Mr Albanese has strongest support among the Labor rank and file who backed him against Mr Shorten in the leadership ­contest following the 2013 election which was won by Mr Shorten with caucus support.

Asked last night if he would be surprised if voters preferred Mr Albanese or Ms Plibersek over him to lead Labor, Mr Shorten deflected the question, saying voters “want to know what we’re going to do for the people. They don’t want to hear us talking about ourselves.”

Malcolm Turnbull, meanwhile, has recorded a stunning turnaround since late last year when Foreign Minister Julie Bishop emerged as the clear frontrunner amid the citizenship crisis.

An overwhelming majority of Coalition voters claim to now prefer Mr Turnbull over all other contenders including Ms Bishop, Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton.

In November, when the Prime Minister was facing multiple crises, and questions over his leadership, 30 per cent of voters suggested Ms Bishop would make a better leader compared with 25 per cent support for Mr Turnbull, 16 per cent for Mr Abbott and 7 per cent for Mr Dutton.

Anthony Albanese

With the benefit of a two-month break from parliament, and a public more forgiving after the summer holidays, Mr Turnbull has reversed the mood with 30 per cent now backing him over Ms Bishop, on 26 per cent, with Mr Abbott on 13 per cent, and Mr Dutton still on 7 per cent.

More importantly for Mr Turnbull, Coalition voters overwhelmingly backed him with 49 per cent claiming to prefer the Member for Wentworth over Ms Bishop, who recorded just 19 per cent followed by Mr Abbott on 16 per cent and Mr Dutton on 6 per cent.

The Newspoll of 1616 voters, conducted from February 1-4, comes as Mr Albanese declared yesterday his loyalty was to the party rather than Mr Shorten.

Mr Albanese recently generated speculation he was angling for the Opposition Leader’s job when he proposed a joint referendum on the republic and indigenous constitutional recognition on January 26, after Mr Shorten had been ­silent on the Australia Day debate for several days.

When asked yesterday where his loyalty lay, with the party or Mr Shorten, he replied: “My loyalty is always to the cause of Labor and to the people that we represent, and that’s what I’m interested in, and I think that’s what Australians are interested in as well.”

Mr Albanese was later cheered by a crowd of several thousand at a festival in Sydney’s inner west.

Introduced by the Mayor of Leichhardt, Labor’s Darcy Byrne, as “the only politician other than Bob Hawke who’s had a beer named after him”, Mr Albanese said it was not a day for long political speeches. Wearing a T-shirt and blue chino trousers, the former Labor deputy prime minister mingled ­afterwards with the crowd. Asked by The Australian about his chances of becoming Labor leader and prime minister, Mr Albanese said he saw himself as “infrastructure minister in the next Labor government”.

Asked directly about Mr Shorten, he said: “He leads a Labor team that’s in a winning position.”