OPINION
I have good news and good news on the “Indigenous Voice” referendum.
The good news is that support for Yes continues to fall, with No now reaching an all-out majority for the first time.
The other good news is that the referendum is killing Labor, and Anthony Albanese personally.
The Coalition has leapt ahead of Labor on primary votes for the first time since last year’s election and Anthony Albanese has dipped into negative territory, as support for the voice dropped further following the referendum date announcement and the official launch of a six-week campaign.
An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows support for an Indigenous voice to parliament and executive government falling to 38 per cent and those intending to vote No rising to 53 per cent.
The Australian
Support is falling across nearly all demographics. Even the age group most likely to support the referendum, 18-34 years olds, now only holds a narrow margin in favour, with support declining. City-based voters are also rejecting the Voice.
The only two groups to increase support are females, who were always going to be suckers for a purely emotive campaign, and a slight rise in support among over 65s — but, considering that the latter are still 66% opposed, a slight shift is irrelevant.
Most ominous of all, Albanese has lost a key voting demographic.
What will trouble Labor strategists is the change over the past six weeks among 35 to 49-year-olds and their disposition toward the voice. With the Yes vote winning out marginally over the No until now, sentiment has shifted strongly the other way. This is a demographic focused on cost-of-living issues. And nothing gets up politically if you can’t convince them.
They won Scott Morrison the 2019 election, lost him the next.
While the No vote remains strongest in the regions, metropolitan voters are now also for the first time more inclined to vote No.
A deep partisan divide now exists, set against a renewed disconnection between the progressive movement and middle Australia.
Lest anyone doubt that Labor has thrown in their lot, part and parcel, with the former, they only need to take a look at the party’s recent national conference. Labor’s “progressives” hammered every pet far-left nostrum, from climate change and refugees to Palestinians and “super profits tax”. In case anyone missed Labor’s mission-from-God arrogance, Albanese declared, “We are here to change the country”.
Just a slight departure from his “minimal change” mantra during the election campaign.
Voters are noticing.
The political damage has begun […]
Labor for the first time has begun to show signs of electoral harm. As has the Prime Minister personally. This is playing out in the primary-vote contest. The Coalition now leads Labor by two points. It is the first time it has been ahead since the election. Only four months ago, Labor enjoyed a six-point lead.
This is significant, considering the broader state of the Liberal Party’s low support until now and Peter Dutton’s unpopularity. The Prime Minister’s approval ratings have also dipped into negative territory, just, in another post-election first, after a drift downwards since the start of the year.
While Labor is still polling ahead of its election result – and despite the latest numbers, Labor still enjoys a strong two-party-preferred lead – the reversal of the primary-vote dynamic will send a dose of reality through the Labor caucus. It has lost ground to the left and is facing the potential for a backlash from the middle.
Whether it is the voice, or the perception that the government is distracted from bread-and-butter economic issues, Albanese’s and the Labor government’s political dominance is being challenged.
The Australian
This all spells nothing but trouble for Albanese.
If, or as seems increasingly likely when, the referendum fails, Albanese will wear it all. It was, after all, his brain fart, sprung on the electorate the very day after the election, after never once being mentioned during the campaign. Even more damaging is that Albanese declared it his number-one priority: not electricity prices, not interest rates, not cost-of-living or supercharged mass migration. None of the issues that really matter to voters.
If anyone thinks Albanese or the rest of Labor’s hard left will learn a lesson in humility, think again. They’ll just screech racist! at voters, and double down on the bottom-of-the-garden leftist lunacy.
But if Labor are dancing at the bottom of the garden, the Greens are wallowing in the compost heap. The Greens’ biggest beef with Labor is that they’re not demented-left enough, and their slight rise in polling, at Labor’s cost, will only encourage them to keep torpedoing Labor for not being ideologically pure.
The biggest beneficiary from Labor’s fall, though, is the Coalition. The polls are an endorsement of Peter Dutton’s strategy. The Coalition’s primary vote is at 37%, which might sound dismal until you recall that Labor won government with just 32%. It’s still not enough to win the two-party-preferred vote, but a clear sign that voters are listening, and liking what they hear.