Voter study shows Coalition loses status as better economic manager

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A leading academic study into may's federal election has found that the Coalition no longer holds the advantage on economic management. The Australian Election Study has found a set of unpopular policies and a deeply unpopular leader contributed to the Coalition's historic defeat and Labor's comfortable majority.

Transcript

00:00This study done by the ANU is probably the most prominent and long-running study of voter

00:07behaviour in Australia.

00:09Every election since 1987, these researchers have gone out and asked a long list of questions

00:16of lots of voters, trying to get not just at how people voted, but why they voted the

00:20way they voted, what issues were important to them, and then they publish all of that

00:24and release all of the data to the public.

00:26There is a lot of information in this, it's volume one of the report, here's volume two,

00:30there's a lot in here, Ros.

00:32But it paints a picture and it shows us some of the many long-term trends that are affecting

00:37all parties in the Australian Parliament and those that are not.

00:40You know, the fact that voters are more volatile than they used to be, voters are less attached

00:44to political parties.

00:46Some of the generational changes in voting patterns that are emerging where younger voters

00:51are not drifting rightward as they age in the same way that previous generations did.

00:56So there's long-term trends that are being examined here, but also a long list of short-term issues

01:02and a particular list of challenges for the Liberal Party and the Coalition, helping explain

01:07why it is that they were defeated so resoundingly in May.

01:12First of all, a very deeply unpopular leader.

01:16Peter Dutton has been found in this study to be the least liked major party leader since

01:22this study commenced in 1987, nearly 40 years ago.

01:26The gap in likability and popularity between Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese is the largest

01:31this study has ever recorded.

01:34Obviously, Peter Dutton's not the leader of the Liberal Party anymore, but there are ongoing

01:37challenges still for the Liberals that this study outlines.

01:41And the key one, one of the big ones, is this almost an existential issue around what

01:46policies are the core strengths of the Coalition.

01:50For a very long time, we would have said it's a political adage that the management of the

01:54economy, issues around taxation, that is Liberal Party strength.

01:58And it has been true.

01:59It's been something that voters have believed for a very long time, until 2025.

02:05We had this campaign where the Coalition was campaigning to repeal a tax cut that Labor had

02:11introduced in the budget.

02:13We had a Labor Party that had, you know, not had any particularly large major blunders in

02:19terms of economic management in recent times in its first term.

02:23And what we have seen is where the Liberal Party used to have a commanding advantage on

02:28topics like management of the economy.

02:32Now, the Coalition is in the negatives, and that is a real challenge for the party to think

02:39through.

02:39And we're seeing in real time now, including with Ted O'Brien at the National Press Club

02:43this afternoon, how the Coalition is attempting to reframe itself to try and regain that economic

02:49credibility that this research is telling us quite clearly it lost in May.

02:52Conventional wisdom would say it's much easier to damage your reputation on some of these issues

02:57than it is to then to rebuild it.

02:59And so it could be, you know, more than a short term project for the Coalition to do

03:04that.

03:05We're seeing how the Coalition is framing its climate policy, its decision to scrap the

03:11net zero by 2050 policy more as a cost of living power prices issue to try and kind of

03:16regain the front foot on some of these economic and cost of living issues.

03:21We've heard from Ted O'Brien making the case today around bracket creep and other topics.

03:28But what this study today, being released today, has found is of the 10 policy areas that the

03:36ANU researchers have looked at, Labor had the preferred set of policies on nine of them.

03:41The Coalition only had the advantage over Labor on national security.

03:46And the researchers, and that was not a particularly high salience, high importance issue in this

03:49May federal election.

03:51And the researchers say that domination, the fact that Labor had the preferred set of

03:55policies in nine of 10 policy areas, that is unprecedented in the history of this study.

04:00And that is a real challenge for the Liberal Party.

04:02They, at the moment, don't really have anything they can point to as their core strength.

04:06If they're looking to rouse support, if they're looking to frame issues on their terms, well,

04:12they don't have many issues that they, to use the political parlance, they don't have

04:15many issues that they own at the moment.

04:17And so how do they find those issues back?

04:19How do they regain that credibility?

04:21It might be easier said than done now that they've lost it.

04:24This survey, since 1987, has asked voters to rank leaders of all major parties on a scale

04:30from zero to 10.

04:31Zero being most disliked, 10 being most liked.

04:35And Peter Dutton has had the lowest average rating by quite some margin.

04:39The second lowest rating was Scott Morrison, three years earlier in 2022.

04:43Go back to the fourth lowest rating on record, and that's Bill Shorten in 2019.

04:49There is a little bit of a pattern where more recent political leaders tend to have lower

04:53popularity ratings than the leaders of the 90s, who are much higher on that list.

04:59Kevin Rudd in 2007 has recorded the highest ever rating in this study.

05:04And there is a bit of a trend line there that more modern, as we've moved through time,

05:09political leaders have got less popular.

05:10Now, whether that's because voters are expecting more of our leaders than we were in the 90s,

05:16whether it's because they are genuinely, you know, seen as less competent these days,

05:20there's a bit of research to be done there, I think, around exactly why that is.

05:23But the general trend that we don't like our politicians as much as we used to is definitely

05:29holding, that is notwithstanding, this is a very poor result for Peter Dutton,

05:35who's obviously left the parliament, was defeated in his seat.

05:38Voters did not rate him as a particularly charismatic or inspiring leader,

05:42and that was a definite contributor to their election defeat.

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