There's only one type of voter who prefers Morrison over Turnbull, Vote Compass data shows

Updated

Having weathered six prime ministers in the past decade — four of which were installed at some point by party machinations — Australian voters cannot fairly be said to suffer from "buyer's remorse".

"Gift with purchase remorse" probably comes a little closer.

Elections come frequently enough in this glorious democracy, which unlike many of its nearest relatives around the world actually compels its citizens to vote.

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So when its elected representatives — much like drinkers halfway through a round — order a "wedgie" and install a new prime minister out of sequence, it's pretty obvious that voters are predisposed to take a dim view.

Three leadership changes before a vote

Here's something interesting, though: The ABC's Vote Compass has been harvesting the opinions of Australians for three elections now.

As bad luck would have it, each of the past three elections has taken place fewer than 12 months after a memorable iteration of Australia's now-famous prime ministerial asset recycling scheme.

In 2013, Australia went to the polls to consider the newly-reinstated Kevin Rudd, about nine weeks after he escorted Julia Gillard to the pavilion.

In 2016, voters narrowly chose the government of Malcolm Turnbull, 10 months after he overthrew Tony Abbott.

And on May 18 this year, the nation will have the opportunity to endorse Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, 10 months on from his party's decision to relieve Mr Turnbull of his responsibilities.

Of those three leadership changes, according to Vote Compass, there's only one of which the Australian public violently disapproves: The most recent one.

Voters think it was the wrong call

The vast majority of respondents — 78 per cent — think that the decision to remove Malcolm Turnbull in August last year was the wrong call. That conclusion is drawn from 153,354 responses to Vote Compass between April 10 and April 16.

This is an unusually high degree of consensus among a population which can agree — it seems — on little else.

The previous two removals of prime ministers that came by way of internecine machinations rather than the will of the people actually earned broad support.

During the 2013 election campaign, 60 per cent of Vote Compass respondents thought that the Labor Party made the right call in replacing Julia Gillard with Kevin Rudd.

And in 2016, 81 per cent thought replacing Tony Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull was the right thing to do.

All participants in Vote Compass — while anonymous — are asked their gender, age, education level, language, region and past voting patterns, and the results are weighted to account for these factors to ensure that the results are properly representative of Australia's actual population.

One Nation voters stand alone

The results reveal that across all voting groups apart from One Nation, respondents were of the majority view that punting Malcolm Turnbull was a bad idea.

Among One Nation voters, 59 per cent approved of Mr Turnbull's removal, while 41 per cent disapproved.

Labor voters almost universally opposed the leadership change; 96 per cent of Labor respondents said it was the wrong decision, as did 97 per cent of Greens voters.

Among the most relevant cohort — voters who identified themselves as Coalition supporters — opinions were more evenly divided, with 42 per cent approving of the leadership change, and 58 per cent disapproving.

Participants were also asked how the leadership change affected their voting intentions.

Now, this is always a dicey finding. It's asking respondents to make a decision based on a hypothetical; never an especially scientific process, especially among those respondents who would never vote for the Coalition anyway.

But for what it's worth, 43 per cent said they'd be more likely on the whole to vote for the Coalition if Malcolm Turnbull were still Liberal leader, while 16 per cent said they'd be less likely.

A substantial 38 per cent said that they were just as likely to vote Coalition notwithstanding the change.

Again, One Nation voters were the only political grouping for whom Mr Turnbull's removal seems to have been politically productive; 50 per cent of them declared that they would be more likely to vote for the Coalition as a result.

Across the results, there were slight variations along gender, age, and educational attainment lines; Turnbull supporters skewed younger, female and higher-educated, but only marginally, and the pattern of disapproval of the Liberal Party's leadership change was consistent across all age groups, levels of education and genders.

Wider implications

Evidence a-bounds that the widespread disapproval of the leadership change is also being detected in the private research conducted extensively by the political parties at election time.

In a historically unusual development, Peter Dutton — who initiated last year's leadership challenge — is a major campaign figure in Victoria.

The Home Affairs Minister is battling to retain his own marginal seat in outer-metropolitan Brisbane, but he's all over billboards an 18-hour drive to the southwest, where Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar is defending his Melbourne seat of Deakin.

Deakin should, in normal circumstances, be an easily defensible proposition for the Liberals, but Mr Sukkar's status as a key supporter of Mr Dutton in last year's leadership challenge is being used energetically against him.

Similar tactics are in play against Health Minister Greg Hunt, who also backed Mr Dutton and is hard-pressed to retain his seat of Flinders, which has a margin of seven per cent.

Topics: government-and-politics, political-parties, federal-election, federal-elections, elections, scott-morrison, rudd-kevin, gillard-julia, abbott-tony, turnbull-malcolm, australia

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