Voter study shows Coalition loses status as better economic manager

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A leading academic study into may's federal election has found the coalition no longer holds the advantage on economic management. The Australian election study has found 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.

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

00:36all 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

00:50are 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

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

01:06explain why it is that they were defeated so resoundingly in May.

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

01:15Peter Dutton has been found in this study to be the least liked major party leader since this

01:22study 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.

01:33Obviously, 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 policies

01:46are the core strengths of the Coalition.

01:49For 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

02:10introduced in the budget.

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

02:18terms of economic management in recent times in its first term.

02:22And what we have seen is where the Liberal Party used to have a commanding advantage on

02:28topics like management of the economy.

02:31Now, the Coalition is in the negatives.

02:33And that is a real challenge for the party to think through.

02:37And we're seeing in real time now, including with Ted O'Brien at the National Press Club

02:41this afternoon, how the Coalition is attempting to reframe itself to try and regain that economic

02:47credibility that this research is telling us quite clearly it lost in May.

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