Guardian Essential Report shows voters fatigued with political antics as Turnbull gets worst approval rating as PM and Shorten’s rating hits low for year

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Cory Bernardi’s new Australian Conservatives party could win support from 18% of Coalition voters according to the latest Guardian Essential Report, which also shows the two major party leaders in the doldrums with voters.



The new poll for Guardian Australia suggests voters are profoundly fatigued with the zero-sum political antics in Canberra, with Malcolm Turnbull recording his worst net approval rating as prime minister, and the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, marking his worst rating since March 2016.

With the government doubling down on efforts to keep disaffected conservative voters in the tent, and with a Liberal/One Nation preference deal in Western Australia paving the way for new alignments federally on the right, the latest Guardian Essential Report suggests 14% of voters are likely to vote for Bernardi’s new conservative party and 62% aren’t interested – but 18% of Liberal/National voters said they would be either very likely, or somewhat likely, to support the new breakaway movement.

While this is a sizeable proportion of people at a time when the Turnbull government has suffered a four-point decline in its primary vote in the most recent Newspoll – it seems Bernardi isn’t as an attention-grabbing figurehead as Tony Abbott would have been.

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A similar question asked by the pollsters at Guardian Essential Report last December about a new conservative party which included Abbott produced a voting intention of 23% likely – including 41% of Liberal/National voters – and 58% not likely.

Voters were also asked whether they thought the Bernardi split was bad or good for the Liberal party, with 26% of the sample saying it was bad, and 17% thinking it was good. Among Liberal/National voters 28% believe the development is bad for the party and 23% good.

The data also indicates a number of voters haven’t yet got their head around the change, with 29% unable to rate the development as either good or bad, and 28% saying they didn’t know.

The latest poll has Labor leading the Turnbull government on the two-party-preferred measure by 52% to 48%, which compares with Newspoll’s snapshot last week where Labor led 54% to 46% on a two-party-preferred basis.

While Labor is leading on the head to head, the poll also underscores profound voter dissatisfaction with both Turnbull and Shorten.

The data shows 34% (down 3% from four weeks ago) of respondents approved of the job Turnbull is doing as prime minister and 49% (up 1%) disapprove – a change in the prime minister’s net approval rating from -11 to -15.

That result is Turnbull’s worst net rating as prime minister.

Shorten’s approval rating also dived seven points in four weeks. His approval rating in the latest poll is 30%, and 47% of voters disapproved, which represents a change in his net rating from -7 to -17.

This is Shorten’s worst net rating since March 2016.

Turnbull still leads Shorten on the poll’s better prime minister measure, with 39% of respondents nominating Turnbull as the better prime minister compared with 25% who back Shorten.

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The Guardian Essential Report measure compares with Newspoll’s preferred prime minister measure, where Turnbull remains clearly in front of Shorten as preferred prime minister, with his support rising one point to 42% while the Labor leader fell two to 30%.

The thumbs down follows the resumption of parliament for 2017, which has quickly descended into partisan brawling about energy, childcare and company tax, as well as a personal face-off between Turnbull and Shorten last week.

