With the clock ticking down to a federal election a sense of instability is infusing the primary protagonists in the political drama that is federal politics.

What seemed like a settled plotline where two well-established leaders would go to the polls presenting a stark choice between economic management and economic fairness seems less certain than it was a few weeks ago.

Voters sceptical energy plan will bring down bills, Guardian Essential poll finds Read more

It was a ratty week for opposition leader Bill Shorten starting with some none-too-subtle pro-business product differentiation from Anthony Albanese, spiced with a bit of policy freelancing that landed so poorly with his own troops that it was promptly reversed.

While the prime minister was delighting in his adversary’s misadventures, he was confronting his own dissident rump with their by now ritual hostility to even token efforts to manage down carbon emissions and another aborted attempt to shepherd through tax cuts to Australia’s largest companies.

Despite the relative stability in leadership of both parties over the cycle the media was all ready to lather up storylines of houses divided, casting the upcoming byelections as litmus tests of one or both leaders and their respective policies.

But what’s interesting from this week’s Essential Report is how little impact all this noise has had from the vantage point of the punters.

The national two-party preferred vote this fortnight was unchanged, in fact Labor’s primary vote rose marginally as did the Coalition, after falling minor party support. While there has been a bit of movement within the margin of error, the consistent story over the past two years has been Labor in this election-winning position. Just as stable has been the prime minister’s ascendency in the personal approval comparisons and preferred leader matrices.

While Turnbull’s lead has been sustained, it is driven by the low level of enthusiasm towards Shorten by Labor and Green voters. In both instances around a third of voters who support the party are unconvinced about the leader. A further 16% of avowed Labor voters say they prefer Turnbull to Shorten.

Taken together the findings reflect the key arguments for leadership stability being advanced by both incumbents.

For Shorten it’s the simple proposition that Labor maintains an election-winning lead, and any change of direction could only risk the polls heading south. After five years of stability, much of the trauma and mayhem of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years may have passed but it would not take much to remind voters of the chaos inherent in fratricide.

For Turnbull, the arguments are nearly as simple. His personal appeal provides the Coalition with its best hope of turning the tide in an election campaign, that it would be impossible to run a campaign as bad as the last one; and that his main challenger Tony Abbott is about as popular as eczema.

Special analysis of leadership and 2PP data by Essential’s research director Andrew Bunn suggests both propositions are right.

The first table shows that over the last decade there has been a clear correlation between the primary vote of governments and their leader. But conversely, the second table shows virtually no correlation between the fortunes of oppositions and their leaders.



The implication is clear, people only really pass judgment on leaders when they are actually leading; the mythology of Kevin 07 aside, governments are removed when they cease to deliver for the Australian people.

Think about it and it makes sense. Labor won in 2007 because John Howard had overreached on industrial relations and generally outlived his welcome. Tony Abbott won in 2013, not because he was loved, but because he convinced Australians that Labor could not govern themselves, let alone the country – and with all due respect, it was hardly a stretch of logic.

All the major opinion polls have reflected the public view for some time that the Turnbull government has outlived its usefulness. It is seen to have failed on energy policy, funding basic services and holding big business to account.

Shorten's original decision to scrap tax cuts supported by voters, poll finds Read more

The current tax splash is its last throw of the dice, a direct pitch for people who have lost faith in government to take the money instead. It sends the subtle message that the economy is travelling well and there’s money to spare.

But it’s the inability of a decentralised wages system to share the growth, and the overreach in destroying Australia’s progressive tax system, that remains the ultimate hand-brake for these cuts to be the path to redemption for the government.

If it can hold its nerve, Labor remains in the box-seat.

• Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential and a Guardian Australia columnist