Bennelong sits on knife edge as voters warm to Keneally
John Alexander and the Liberal Party are facing a tight race to try and hold sway in Bennelong, according to a Newspoll.
The Liberal Party’s primary vote in Bennelong has collapsed, leaving the Coalition and Labor in a tight race for the previously safe Liberal seat and the Turnbull government’s slim command of parliament in the hands of Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives.
A Newspoll, conducted exclusively for The Australian a week out from a by-election that if lost could force the Coalition into minority government, has revealed an 11-point slide in the Liberal primary vote since last year’s election.
The results, if repeated this Saturday, would propel Labor’s Kristina Keneally into a competitive 50-50 two-party-preferred contest with incumbent John Alexander, with the Liberal Party having to rely on preferences from right-wing fringe parties to hold on.
In what will come as a blow to the Liberal Party’s campaign strategy to shame Ms Keneally’s record as NSW premier, almost two thirds of voters in the safe Liberal seat believe she was an average or above average leader.
The scandal surrounding Labor senator Sam Dastyari, who has strong links to the large Chinese community in the northern Sydney electorate, will continue to be a key factor in the final days of the campaign, with almost three-quarters of those polled backing the Turnbull’s government’s treason laws aimed at cracking down on foreign political agents, which have been perceived as being directed at China.
The erosion of the Liberal Party’s conservative base in a seat once held by former prime minister John Howard has also been confirmed, with the Australian Conservatives securing 7 per cent of the primary vote in their first electoral test at state or federal level.
The poll of 527 voters conducted last weekend showed the Liberal Party’s unassailable 50.4 per cent primary vote recorded at the last election by Mr Alexander, the popular former tennis champion, had been slashed to 39 per cent.
If repeated on Saturday, it would be the lowest primary vote the Liberal Party has recorded in Bennelong since the seat’s formation in 1949.
The margin of error for the Bennelong poll was a maximum of 4.3 per cent due to the sampling size. A senior Labor strategist told The Australian last night that while the Labor campaign had begun strongly, the Dastyari controversy was biting and could tip momentum back towards Mr Alexander.
Both parties’ internal tracking data point to a win for the Liberals, but have recorded primary vote support for the Australian Conservatives of between six and eight percentage points.
In what Bill Shorten will regard as a vindication of his decision to ask Ms Keneally to run, the poll records a 10.5 per cent primary vote swing to Labor, putting it on an equal footing with the Liberal Party at 39 per cent.
This would mean the government would need the majority of preferences from the Australian Conservatives and the Christian Democrats to keep the seat.
Malcolm Turnbull, who was not appraised of the Newspoll results at the time of publication, told The Australian yesterday in an interview to mark the end of the year: “It is a tight contest and there is a lot at stake.
“Labor has thrown an enormous amount into it … they are doing everything they can to take him on. The point we make again and again … don’t let Kristina Keneally do to Bennelong what she did to NSW as premier.”
One Liberal source said that a sleeper issue in the electorate might be the government’s Gonski 2 school funding policy that has ignited a backlash from the Catholic education sector, which operates 11 schools in Bennelong. Labor has run hard on Ms Keneally’s profile as a conservative Catholic who has committed to restoring the previous school-funding model under Labor.
While marginal-seat Liberal MPs across the country are likely to be concerned about the leakage of votes to Senator Bernardi, the Bennelong poll suggests that the Liberal Party is also bleeding a significant percentage of primary votes directly to Labor.
Senator Bernardi has directed preferences to the Christian Democrats before the Liberals, which would favour Mr Alexander ahead of Ms Keneally. Liberal insiders say it cannot be predicted where they would then go as the Australian Conservatives are an untested party. The Christian Democrats, which polled 6.4 per cent at the election, have been reduced to 2 per cent in the poll. Much of this vote is assumed to have gone to Senator Bernardi’s candidate, 25-year-old Joram Richa, who campaigned against same-sex marriage in a seat that recorded a comparatively high 50.2 per cent No vote.
The Greens retained their primary vote of 9 per cent.
A senior Liberal source conceded that an upset Labor victory was possible. “It is impossible to say what the real numbers are,” the Liberal source said. “But the primary vote will be noticed by every sitting Liberal MP in Australia.”
Analysis of the Newspoll question around Ms Keneally’s record as premier revealed that voters in Bennelong had largely rejected the government’s portrayal of her leadership from 2009 to 2011. Only 19 per cent, the majority Liberal supporters, said Ms Keneally had been one of the worst premiers NSW had had. This compared with 26 per cent who said she had been average, 23 per cent who said she had been above average and 10 per cent recording her as one of the better premiers.
The numbers, combined with 73 per cent of voters supporting the Turnbull government’s foreign interference and treason laws, suggest that the Dastyari scandal has not damaged Ms Keneally’s campaign.
More Coverage
Women egged in anti-Semitic attack at Bondi Beach
Three men allegedly set upon a number of women on Saturday night in Sydney's east, throwing eggs at them, with police believing they were targeted because of the clothes they were wearing.
Nation ‘must not go down road’ of faith-based parties: PM
Parties founded on religion would undermine social cohesion, according to Anthony Albanese, as he reminded rogue senator Fatima Payman that she owed her election to Labor pre-selection.