If Sigmund Freud were around to observe the 2019 federal election he might have reckoned that sometimes a dud leader is just a dud leader.
The first longitudinal study on what happened to cause the election result almost everyone got wrong says increasing public antipathy towards Labor leader Bill Shorten was the single biggest driver of support towards the Coalition during the campaign period.
The Australian National University’s Centre for Social & Research Methods has just dropped its initial findings on the election, a look at how and why sentiment changed between its regular surveys held in April and June — a timespan covering the whole of the campaign leading to the May 18 poll.
This regular panel of 1844 respondents found the predominant reason for vote-switching was voters’ view of Shorten, with almost 28% of previously Labor-inclined voters giving this as their motivation. This was more than double any positive impact Labor received from Shorten’s leadership during the campaign — meaning for every two who were turned off Shorten, he could only inspire one voter.
This data set is the first scientific confirmation of the anecdotal evidence during the campaign and feedback after the poll. It explains why the Coalition’s focus was aimed so forcefully at Shorten himself, especially on social media. The ANU study also presents evidence that flies in the face of the conservative narrative that Labor’s policies were its death knell. Opposition policy announcements, generally, were in the fourth grouping of vote-switching drivers, ranking below views of the local candidate, views of Shorten and views of Scott Morrison.
The study, in fact, shows Labor had a net gain from its policies during the campaign with 20.7% of former Coalition voters saying this was one of the reasons for switching to the opposition. This compared to 11.9% of voters who had previously voted ALP, moving to back the government.
Interestingly, of those who shifted their support from Labor to the Coalition because of ALP policies, the biggest share represented those in the lowest economic group — people who were the least likely to be impacted by the opposition’s plans on taxes and dividends but were the most risk-averse of those surveyed.
Overall, the ANU study concluded the Coalition’s vote grew by 7.2% during the campaign, Labor recorded negligible change, Greens’ support shrunk by 2.6% and “others” lost a whopping 42% of their intending voter pool.
Those who were inclined to switch to the Coalition tended to be older Australians, women, non-Indigenous, non-university educated, and living outside the most disadvantaged areas of the country.
The ANU study includes a longer view of sentiment, looking at its panel’s attitudes from November 2018. The broader story here is that voters moved away from the Coalition from November 2018 until April 2019, and then subsequently switched back over the course of the campaign. This confirms the Coalition’s campaigning skills — approaching the 2019 election as an event where they had forensically identified Labor’s key weakness, Shorten’s leadership, and maximised their attack on it when it mattered.
The lesson from the ANU study for the polling companies is they need to find a way to chart volatility and include it in their surveys. After all, Australia’s usually “most trusted” poll, Newspoll, was 3.5% out from the election result just weeks before May 18, numbers that are at the extremes of the margin of error.
The ANU study shows Labor needs to use the net positive approval of new leader Anthony Albanese — plus seven points in the last Newspoll — to establish a connection with voters. Also, some of the kneejerk calls to junk its suite of 2019 campaign policies should be treated with caution. The policy story is clearly much more nuanced and needs a considered response.
Also, if the Coalition wants build on its own success they will need a serious policy agenda and political strategy which extends beyond “we’re not Bill Shorten”.
Dennis Atkins is a freelance writer based in Brisbane where he was a national political editor during the Howard government. He is filling in for part of the time while Bernard Keane is enjoying a break.
What do you make of these latest findings? Let us know by writing to boss@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name for publication.
It’s the default message from the Murdoch press and the shock-jocks that any Labor leader is unpopular and unfit to govern, whilst glossing over the deep character flaws of the likes of Abbott and Morrison. So surprise, surprise, Shorten was unpopular. It’s the Australian media that lost this election for Labor, not Shorten.
Well, yes…but Labor’s failure to go completely feral against the lies and propaganda of the Murdoch media, the LNP bullshit professionals, and the demented IPA talking heads, sheets home predominantly to Bill and his inner circle of strategists.
Trying to play Mr Nice Guy against this mob of scoundrels was never going to fly. And the warnings of the polls not shifting further in Labor’s favour were there to see for a long, long time…..
Going completely feral would have lost votes as well, though.
Agree completely. Where did the waverers get the last minute stuff on Bill that swung it Dennis? The article is a sneaky “Don’t blame us” ploy from a media mainstreamer. That aside, Shorten was a loser ever since the parliamentary vote elevated him – speech impediment, man boobs jogging, stilted delivery, dopey photo ops – the 85% of completely uninterested punters (reported in The Guardian) notice just about everything but policy.
It was pretty clear on the ground that people didn’t like Bill Shorten and his tendency to play both sides on a whole host of issues merely cemented people’s impressions of him: that he is untrustworthy, two faced, etc. He was never particularly liked because of his role in bringing down a popular Prime Minister when Labor were last in government.
If Labor don’t continue moving to the Left–and nobody’s saying they need to go full communist, old style social democracy that puts working-class people at the forefront would be great–and present themselves as an alternative to the Coalition, instead of trying to out-right the Right (a political dead-end, because doing so is impossible), they will never win the next election and Anthony Albanese’s personal likability won’t even come close to saving them.
Spot on.The Fan Club will never let Shorten cop the just comment he deserves. His role in removing Kevin Rudd from office is an albatross around both the neck of Shorten and that of the Labor party so long as they stay in denial. Playing both sides was another main reason for failure. Mostly though it was his total lack of being able to connect with anyone much but his own ego and those fans who stroke it.
I would tell anyone who would listen that Shorten would make the difference. Not one person agreed with me – not one.
Australian politics is presidential in nature. The appeal of the leaders is everything so we’d better get used to the idea that charisma, whether we like it or not, needs to be an essential element of a leader’s character and personality. Shorten definitely didn’t have it and Albo doesn’t have it.
Love him or loathe him, Morrison does. He’s extremely good on his feet, his presentation is always confident and his language always connects. Labor leaders are always preaching to the choir – without inspiration I might add.
It took a panel of 1,844 people to come to this conclusion. They could have just asked me.
Governing is not just a matter of how well you sell yourself.
You actually have to have policies and enact them.
Soon we’ll see if Morrison has any substance.
Across Australia outside Queensland, Labor won 62 seats to the Coalition’s 54. Therefore it seems the real issue to understand is what was different in Queensland. Was it Adani, fake death tax fears, or Clive Palmer? Or something else?
My wife, always a Labor voter, held her nose at the last election because “I just don’t like Shorten”. There was no specific reason – just the “vibe”, or perhaps “women’s intuition” – call it what you will.
Re charisma – note that only three Labor PMs have won power from the conservatives since WW2, they being Whitlam, Hawke and Rudd. Regardless of how they finished, they all started, and were elected, with an oversupply of The Vibe. Not exactly Messianic, but certainly with great hope on their shoulders.
While it could be said that Morrison has charisma, he does not inspire. He just comes across as a safe pair of hands who will not rock anyone’s boat.
My comment was shifted to replying to DJS’ comment above Rob’s, for which it was intended, by technological gremlins in a not yet-NBN area.
@DF Your comments looked like they responded to mine. In any event, your points are well made, except for the Scott Morrison one. He is charismatic for the very reason that he does inspire – he singlehandedly inspired a majority of voters to vote for him and, by extension the LNP. The rest of the party hid under a rock for the entire campaign and left it to him. I get that he didn’t inspire you, or me, or anyone else who dislikes his politics, but he did inspire most voters. That’s almost the very definition of charisma.
Yes, but it is the media who normally define “charisma,” usually focussing on a bright shiny face preaching continuing optimism and eschewing (except perhaps for Whitlam) any reference to reality. As Clifford Geertz, the American anthropologist, showed–in a number of essays–charismatic figures are usually disastrous leaders unless they have a good, boring, administrator behind them. Perhaps Shorten was the latter. The problem is that he had dark hair and looked serious most of the time.
Given that charisma is now so strongly defined by the MSM and hyper-reality television, Shorten probably had no chance of overcoming the shallowness of the media scrum and the dominating culture of optimism. The latter is, of course, now being rejected by the main stream Australian who senses real problems on the horizon, even if he/she cannot articulate them. It is this reality of climate change and neo-liberal inequity that the ALP must begin communicating, if the MSM will allow it, which I doubt.
The risk aversion of main stream Australia is a real problem as we need drastic steps now to mitigate the effects of anthropogenic climate change and this will involve risks. By not taking calculated risks and by abrogating their responsibility on the environment and the economy, the LNP, paradoxically, risks doing major damage to the next generations.
Totally agree DF, with the caveat that the bar for the Liberals is much lower than for Labor: no-one saw Howard as charismatic and possessed of “the vibe”. Don’t see a Whitlam, Hawke or Rudd in the current caucus. And Rob G, exclude the WA seat numbers (along with Qld’s) and you’ve got a decent Labor majority. We are at some risk of generalising nationally and ignoring some very specific (and long term) problems for federal Labor in the frontier states.
Totally agree DF, with the caveat that the bar for the Liberals is much lower than for Labor: no-one saw Howard as charismatic and possessed of “the vibe”. Don’t see a Whitlam, Hawke or Rudd in the current caucus. And Rob G, exclude the WA seat numbers (along with Qld’s) and you’ve got a decent Labor majority. We are at some risk of generalising nationally and ignoring some very specific (and long term) problems for federal Labor in the frontier states.
All of those, I think. Throw in the lunatic Hanson supporters, Bob Brown’s insane caravan to mining towns, the one newspaper state, and the general sophistication of Queensland voters generally. Flying over Queensland from Cairns, the number of large holes you see from the air is surprising.
I always wonder what makes Bill Shorten so unpopular. It’s not that I was a huge fan of his, but I found that generally people who have heard him actually speak have a positive or neutral opinion of him. The problem is that in the Australian media the actual person of Bill Shorten was almost invisible. He rarely got a word in (that was actually reported). Instead, for most people he was completely defined by what other people said about him.
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, it really felt like there was a concerned effort from a large part of Australian media to make sure that people do not get to know the person itself.
All the negatives that people usually mention about why Shorten was unpopular, e.g. his role in a previous leader’s downfall, bland, being non-committed on issues, too focused on his own advancement rather than having a vision for the country, etc. can all be equally well applied to Morrisson.