It's unhappy work being a Coalition voter – the world is a more threatening place, one's prospects are bleaker and it's all going to get worse. So depressed are Tony Abbott's supporters that they took the overall level of Australian consumer sentiment down this month.

Unreported in Wednesday's Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment survey was that the political chasm has widened again and, again, it is Coalition voters calling the confidence tune.

A happy bunch ... sentiment split along party lines.

Consumer sentiment increased among people who said they would vote Labor at the next federal election - up 6.4 points to a strong 123.7 – but among Coalition voters it dived 12.1 points to 84.9, taking the overall seasonally adjusted index down 4.1 to 100, the break-even point between pessimism and optimism.

Often sentiment is what you make of it, and that could be seen in some of the reported interpretations of the survey.