What’s a major political party to do?

At this year’s federal election, around one in three voters didn’t give them their primary vote.

Australia’s major political parties have not been this unpopular since World War II.Credit:Rhett Wyman, Alex Ellinshausen

They haven’t been this unpopular since before World War II.

While the Liberals fared worse in that popularity contest, the ALP didn’t benefit from that decline.

Securing only 32.6 per cent of the primary vote, it recorded its lowest result since the 1930s.

Of course, it won the election but this was despite a 0.8 per cent drop in its percentage of the primary.

However, there’s no doubt this was better than the Coalition’s performance, which saw its primary drop 5.7 per cent down to 35.7 per cent, losing 18 seats.

Though the Coalition’s primary is higher than Labor’s, it needs to be much higher if it is to win. Historically, it hasn’t been able to rely on the preference flow the ALP gets from the Greens and other left-wing minor parties.

While the ALP won a majority government and has ended the year with a higher primary than it recorded in May, both parties must be troubled by their shrinking base.

And with good reason. The ANU’s post-election survey, which it has conducted after each federal election for the past 35 years, found about a quarter of voters at the last federal election don’t have an attachment to a political party — the highest figure ever recorded in the study since it commenced.

Despite Anthony Albanese’s election victory, Labor’s supporter base is shrinking.Credit:Janie Barrett

That result shouldn’t surprise us given the results achieved by the teals and Greens.

But more startling for ALP and Liberal strategists must be the drop in the percentage of voters who say they always vote for the same party.

In 1967, it was 72 per cent; in May, it fell to an all-time low of 37 per cent.

Most commentary about these trends has focused on the downside for the major parties.

The good news, however, is that with so many more swinging voters, there have never been so many people potentially prepared to listen to them.

According to the ANU, the percentage of voters up for grabs during the campaign has never been higher, with 36 per cent saying they considered voting for another party during the election campaign.

But how to win them over?

Perhaps most troubling is the finding that policy matters less than ever before.

Just over half (53 per cent) of those surveyed said the parties’ policy positions were the most important factor in their voting decision. That’s a significant decline since the last federal election, when it was 66 per cent.

For those voters that ultimately landed in the ALP camp, what swayed them?

The answer lies, in part, in the ALP’s own review of the May election, also released last week.

Its conclusion was that Labor hadn’t so much won as done the work to ensure the Coalition lost by focusing on Scott Morrison.

The review found: “The focus on Morrison’s character was highly effective. Morrison’s unpopularity is the single most significant factor in Labor’s victory.”

This was backed up by the ANU’s analysis which has been tracking voters’ attitudes towards party leaders since 1987.

According to the survey, Morrison is the most unpopular major party leader it’s ever recorded, scoring a dismal 3.8 out of 10.

Anthony Albanese clocked a much more respectable 5.3 out of 10.

What should be worrying the ALP camp is that the PM’s popularity wasn’t that different to Morrison’s three years earlier in 2019, when he got 5.1.

Clearly, a lot can happen between elections as voters get to know leaders better and those leaders are battered by the crises facing the nation.

Scott Morrison was a deeply unpopular leader.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

In Morrison’s case, those crises were extraordinary — a once-in-a-century pandemic that completely dominated the last term.

According to the ANU, the Coalition didn’t weather that storm well, with only 30 per cent of Australians saying the federal government handled the pandemic well.

Albanese isn’t exactly facing calm waters either, with the spectre of high inflation returning after a 30-year absence and an energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

These challenges are clearly not of his making, but the question is: how will voters rate his handling of them in two and half years’ time?

As Morrison’s decline from 2019 to 2022 shows, voters can quickly turn on a leader when the country’s challenges intrude into their daily lives.

While the ANU found only 11 per cent of voters said their vote was ultimately shaped by the party’s leader, this group is more important than their size would suggest.

That’s because people who vote based on a party’s leader are more likely to be swing voters.

It follows the choice of leader makes a big difference to who ultimately wins government.

What does all of this mean for the Liberals?

There have never been so many votes up for grabs for the major parties.Credit:Brendon Thorne

While undoubtedly diminished, the party is not in some sort of irreversible decline.

As the ALP showed in May, a significantly reduced primary vote is no obstacle to winning a majority.

The challenges before the Liberals are immense, but so are the opportunities.

If the Australian Election Study is correct, there have never been so many votes up for grabs.

The only question is, will the Liberals do the work now to present a vision for the nation that captures them?

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