Morrison’s big task is to spread his popularity to rest of party

Scott Morrison is proving the theory that the national leadership pageant is becoming increasingly detached from voting intention and party loyalty.

This has been the story behind the federal contest for the past decade. Morrison’s personal numbers are better than Malcolm Turnbull’s had been since 2016. They are way better than Bill Shorten’s.

But so what? There’s little point to One Nation voters thinking he is a good bloke if they aren’t going to switch back to the Liberals.

Morrison’s mission was to return the base without blowing the place up. He has achieved the first step, which was getting voters to listen. Now comes the crunch.

There have now been three significant wake-up calls for the federal Liberal Party this year. Longman was the first tremor and occurred under Turnbull’s leadership. The second was Wentworth. This by-election occurred because Turnbull’s leadership ended. The third and final is the misery pipe from Victoria that bugles confirmation that the Liberal Party brand is nationally trashed.

Every theory about the Victorian result “has a slice of the pie” as one senior Liberal figure put it. All of them are valid but not an explanation alone.

The Victorian Liberal Party was a defeatist outfit that began blaming the federal Liberals for its loss months ago. The fact is they had been behind in the polls for four years. Much of that was under a federal Liberal leadership of Tony Abbott and the rest under Turnbull. So they are to blame as well, presumably.

The Coalition lost the 2002 Victorian election, 2003 NSW election and 2004 Queensland election while John Howard was in The Lodge. He went on to win the 2004 federal election from behind.

The foundation of the Victorian Liberal Party’s problems can be found within the state division itself. Few people in Victoria could have even named the Liberal leader, Matthew Guy.

There are two stories out of the Victorian election. How much did the federal government’s collective narcissism play into the carnage and how much is the result a harbinger for what will happen next May? Morrison is interested only in the second story.

And he has had to face harsh realities. A Coalition primary vote of 34 per cent is catastrophic. This is worse than the Victorian Liberal/Nationals primary vote of 36 per cent. The two-party-preferred vote of 45-55 is identical to that in Victoria. All of this suggests a Victorian-sized shellacking.

The difference in the equation is Morrison. Voters may hate the Liberal Party but they don’t mind him. His margin over Shorten as preferred prime minister has doubled to 12 points over the past two weeks and he is now in positive territory. His obvious challenge is to convert his numbers into numbers for the Coalition. His hope lies in an ability to translate a strong economy into a delivery machine that fills the hip pocket, protects Medicare, funds education and eases congestion in Sydney and Melbourne all without smashing people with higher taxes.

Beyond the recrimination games about the Victorian disaster, cooler party heads are counselling ministers that the worst thing they could do in Canberra is panic.