Dumping Sussan Ley may have been the answer, but One Nation has radically changed the question
Eventually the numbers got worse; No matter what Sussan Ley does.
These poll results are both a damning indictment of the final days of his leadership and a justification for the Liberal Party’s decision to sack him.
They also offer a glimpse of the significant challenge ahead for Angus Taylor, even if he has only marginally boosted the Coalition’s dwindling preselection votes.
The official opposition and One Nation each secured 23 percent of the primary vote; This is a record low for the Coalition and a record figure for Pauline Hanson’s party. Support in the polls has almost quadrupled since 6.4 per cent of Australians voted for their candidate in last May’s election.
This month’s Resolve poll was conducted between 8-14 February, starting with Ley negotiating with National Party leader David Littleproud to reunite the Coalition but ending with Taylor in charge of the Liberal Party. All 1800 participants were asked to express their first vote intentions, with Ley as leader and Taylor subsequently in charge, and the results were disastrous for Ley.
With Ley in office, the Coalition received only 20 per cent of the primary vote, while One Nation received the primary vote of 25 per cent of voters. In other words, things had gotten so bad under Ley that the Coalition was 5 percentage points behind One Nation in the Resolve poll for the first time.
That’s a statistically significant move outside the margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points, and underscores how far voters have moved away from Ley.
Voters began to leave the One Nation Coalition shortly after the last election, and the Coalition’s months-long civil war only accelerated the decline in Liberal preselection votes.
One Nation’s popularity has also created a new problem for pollsters predicting two-party preferred votes; This has led this imprint and others to hesitate to highlight these results.
When voters were asked to state their preferences, Labor had a 10 percentage point lead over the Coalition, 55-45, in the two-party preferred vote.
But these figures are potentially inaccurate because in some seats where One Nation voted well, a count of two candidates favoring Labor over One Nation or the Coalition against One Nation would have been more accurate.
One Nation support is generally concentrated in a smaller group of seats (rural and exurban), so it is not yet clear which seats should be voted on based on the two candidates’ preferences.
Avid Pollster Jim Reed said bipartisan voting “only works at the national level when it’s a two-way contest.”
“We always chose to focus on the primary vote, so we were able to declare victory for the Greens and the turquoises in 2022,” he said.
“Political change here is starting to look more like the experience of the UK, where Reformation started to cannibalise one side of politics, but then damaged both sides of politics.”
The preferred prime minister rating was also out of the spotlight this month, as usual, with the data only comparing Ley and Albanese rather than Taylor and Albanese.
Even if Ley were still leader of the opposition, this result would be a disaster, as Albanese had a significant 16 percentage point lead over Ley (38-22) while the rest were undecided. Last month, Albanese led Ley by 4 points, 33-29.
The continuing collapse of support for both major parties is evident here and in other polls. In the elections held in May last year, 33.6 percent of voters gave their first preference to other options such as One Nation, the Greens or independent.
Less than 12 months later, 45 percent of voters say they would vote for someone other than the major parties in the Albanese versus Taylor contest. Just under half of the electorate, 49 percent, voted for minor parties and independents, while Ley was still head of the opposition, an even worse result.
These figures show how discredited the Coalition has become. It is good that the opposition led by Taylor recovered by a few points in the first election, but in order to one day form a government, the opposition’s primary vote must be closer to 40 percent rather than 20 percent.
Oh, and before Labor starts boasting, Albanese should remember that his own party could be next as discontent with the major parties grows.
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James Massola is the chief political commentator. He was previously national affairs editor and Southeast Asia correspondent. He won the Quill and Kennedy awards and was a Walkley finalist. Connect securely to Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect with: X or email.
