Politics
Opinion polls – not much movement, but Albo is travelling OK as preferred PM
If Labor was expecting a jump in its support following the Dunkley by-election it didn’t get it. But then media reports of Labor’s support having slumped last year were overstated.
Opinion polls reported on William Bowe’s Poll Bludger, however, show Albanese’s lead over Dutton as preferred prime minister to be improving.
The average of the five most recent polls recorded by William Bowe suggests that if an election were held today Labor’s primary vote would be 0.4 percent higher than it was in the 2022 election, the Coalition’s 1.5 percent higher, and the Greens 0.7 percent higher. These small movements simply show a normal reversion to the main parties in opinion polls taken outside election campaigns.[1]
The latest fortnightly Essential Report has a number of questions on foreign relations, revealing that Australians are more in support of our being “an independent middle power with influence in the Asia-Pacific region” than “primarily an ally of the US”, and a quarter of respondents believing “Australia should do its best to not engage in world affairs”’.
One question directly relevant to parties’ political fortunes asks respondents to assess which of the two main parties is better on international relations. On all four aspects surveyed “no difference” scores highly – between 37 and 44 percent, which is not unusual on foreign policy. On two questions – “dealing with complex global conflicts like Gaza and Ukraine” and “advancing Australia’s relationship with the Asia-Pacific region” people see little difference between Labor and the Coalition. People rate Labor more highly on “managing Australia’s relationship with the Asia-Pacific region”, but they rate the Coalition more highly on “protecting Australia’s borders and national security”.
It seems that Dutton’s mishandling of the Home Affairs portfolio, which saw a loss of control over people coming to Australia by air, has been overshadowed by overblown media reporting of two very minor incidents – one about rectifying the Coalition’s legislated stuffup relating to a handful of asylum-seekers with criminal records and the other about a few unfortunate bewildered men who paid rather a lot to be dumped on a remote Western Australian beach.
1. They can’t all be higher. can they? Yes they can, because there are independents and small parties, who come to people’s attention only during election campaigns. Opinion polls between elections tend not to pick up their support . ↩
What chance for a Dutton-led Coalition to win enough seats to form government?
That’s the question asked by Mike Seccombe in a Saturday Paper article Can Peter Dutton actually win enough seats to form government?. If you’re not a Saturday Paper subscriber you can hear Seccombe covering the same ground in an interview on the Schwartz Media 7am podcast, with the more conclusive title Why Australia is heading for a minority government.
The tide is going out on the Coalition and isn’t coming back in. Younger people have turned away from the Coalition, and as they age they are staying attached to Labor, Greens or independents. The demographic shift is not favourable for either established party, but it is tougher on the Coalition, because while both parties have primary vote support down in the thirties, Labor can rely on a reasonably solid flow of preferences from the Greens who get around 13 percent of the vote, while the Coalition has to pick up preferences from small parties on the hard right, whose preferences don’t necessarily flow strongly to the Coalition.
Dutton seems to be intent on picking up votes from “blue collar blokes”, and is probably having some success, but as Seccombe goes through the electoral prospects state by state, he cannot see any path to victory for the Coalition, mainly because the strategy that may pick up outer suburban seats isn’t going to lead them to a recovery in the well-off inner-city seats they lost to independents. The Coalition is particularly unattractive to professional women. By Seccombe’s analysis the Coalition’s chance of forming a majority government seems to be on a par with the chance of Putin losing the Russian election next week.
Seccombe is particularly mystified by the Coalition’s latest proposal for nuclear power stations to replace coal-fired stations, a policy that would require keeping coal-fired stations open for many tears – perhaps 15 years or so – while we develop mucear expertise, plan the projects, negotiate a social license and build stations. On Late Night Live on Monday night Amy Remeikis of Guardian Australia suggested that the nuclear proposal is “almost as if the Coalition has run out of dead cats to swing”.
People over-estimate the risk of nuclear power, but that fear isn’t going to dissipate, and it makes for an effective fear campaign. And people will slowly come to realize that renewable-based power, even with firming, is already cheaper than nuclear power, and that it is on a lower-cost trajectory.
Seccombe wonders why the Coalition isn’t more focused on issues where the electorate is concerned, such as economic insecurity and housing. Perhaps it’s because in these areas there are no policies that would be compatible with their broader small-government-low-wage agenda. Or as Seccombe suggests, they are too focused on their own internal party politics, having become a right-wing echo chamber out of touch with the concerns of most Australians.
Seccombe is pretty relaxed on the prospect of minority government, where the balance of power is held by a quality crossbench. That’s the prospect for next year’s election: “get used to it” he says.