Tony Abbott has stumbled in his attempts to sell his budget, asserting wrongly that the Howard government "took a big hit in the polls too" after delivering its first budget in 1996.

Rather than take a hit, the Coalition actually experienced a bounce from what was the best received budget in a decade, despite one in three voters thinking they would be worse off because of the tough measures it included.

The first post-budget Newspoll in 1996 showed a three percentage point increase in the Coalition's primary vote, to 50; a lift in Howard's approval rating, from 47 to 51; and an increase in his lead over Kim Beazley as preferred prime minister to a score of 53 per cent against Beazley's 24.