Northern Territory voters serve notice on Adam Giles and CLP

SUPPORT for the scandal-­plagued Northern Territory government has crashed, according to an ­independent poll.

The CLP government of NT Chief Minister Adam Giles is polling badly.

SUPPORT for the scandal-­plagued Northern Territory government has crashed, with the Country Liberal Party team and its unpopular leader facing electoral wipeout, according to an ­independent poll.

The Labor opposition is cruising towards a landslide victory that could see the CLP reduced to a rump of as few as three seats if the poll results were replicated in the next election, due by the middle of next year.

The CLP would lose government with a massive 20.8 per cent fall in first-preference support alone, compared with results from the 2012 election at which the party retook power after more than a decade in the political wilderness.

The CLP’s first preference support is 30.2 per cent, down from 51 per cent averaged across the sample area at the last election and ­adjusted for population.

The damage appears to be largely self-inflicted, as Labor’s first-preference support has rallied by a meagre 1.7 per cent from 36.3 per cent to 38.0 per cent since 2012.

The Greens’ support was 6.9 per cent among those surveyed, with 11.3 per cent favouring independents and 13.7 per cent undecided.

Undecided voters showed no strong leaning to either major party and those votes have not been redistributed in the poll. The ReachTEL poll, conducted exclusively for The Australian and the Northern Territory News, is the first major independent poll since the 2012 election.

A key obstacle to conservative electoral progress appears to be the party’s leader, Chief Minister Adam Giles, who the poll suggests is derided by voters.

Mr Giles’s personal net ­approval rating is minus 23.8 per cent, down even further from a similar poll published almost a year ago that estimated his net approval rating at minus 11 per cent.

Labor leader Delia Lawrie is not popular, with a net approval rating of minus 5.2 per cent down from minus 4 per cent almost a year ago. But Ms Lawrie now outstrips Mr Giles as preferred chief minister, 36.4 per cent to 29.9 per cent, where previously she trailed him.

The phone poll of 1036 residents was conducted on Sunday afternoon. The sampling area covered 18 electorates in the greater Darwin and Alice Springs regions. The poll’s error is 3 per cent, with the results adjusted for population distribution, age and gender. Remote and regional areas of the Territory were excluded from the poll for logistical reasons.

The poll comes after more than a month of political turmoil, in which Mr Giles was temporarily rolled as leader on February 2, only to cling to power by refusing to ­resign.

The CLP has had two leaders, five deputies, 14 reshuffles and several botched coup attempts in the first 2½ years of its first term, as well as a succession of scandals ­involving political donations and favours for mates.

Mr Giles replaced the party’s elected leader Terry Mills — who led the CLP from a rump of four members in 2005 to a landslide 16-seat victory in the unicameral 25-seat legislative assembly in 2012 — just seven months into office in early 2013.

Two-party preferred support puts Labor ahead on a massive 61.8 per cent to the CLP’s 38.2 per cent, a huge 17.8 per cent swing to Labor compared with results from the 2012 election for the polling area.

The poll does not calculate two-party preferred support using preference flows from the last election because doing so would be inaccurate without precisely polling the entire territory.

If reproduced territory-wide, the swing would see the CLP, elected to govern with 16 seats under Mr Mills, reduced to just three seats under Mr Giles.

The CLP would no longer hold a single territory seat north of Katherine, and Labor would have a foothold in the party’s heartland of Alice Springs.

The CLP appears to have made the right choice by dumping coup proponent Willem Westra van Holthe, who at a 1am press conference on February 3 announced himself as “chief minister designate”.

Only 11.6 per cent of those surveyed chose Mr Westra van Holthe as preferred chief minister from a field of four candidates.

In total, 49.9 per cent of those surveyed rated Mr Giles’s performance as poor or very poor, with 33.3 per cent in the latter category.

Only 26.1 per cent rated his performance as good or very good.

Ms Lawrie’s negative performance rating was 35 per cent and her positive rating 29.8 per cent.