As Victorians start to lock in to the choice before them at next month’s state election, the political contest is being fought overwhelmingly on the Coalition’s preferred ground, with the economy, financial management and crime the dominant issues on voters’ minds.
The latest Resolve Political Monitor conducted for this masthead shows that Premier Ben Carroll’s personal popularity has taken a 9-point dive to minus 11, suggesting voters have weighed up Labor’s newest leader and aren’t convinced by what they see.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson, by contrast, has established herself as one of Australia’s most popular political leaders, with her already strong personal likeability climbing 4 percentage points to 23.
Voting intentions are little changed since last month’s Resolve poll, with Labor stuck on primary support of 25 per cent, the Coalition unmoved on 28 and One Nation steady on 23 per cent.
While these numbers, if replicated on November 28, would almost certainly deliver a change of government, it is less clear whether the Coalition would be able to form a majority government without the help of One Nation or another minor party.
The only significant movers in this latest poll are the Victorian Greens, who for the first time in three years are showing signs of electoral growth with a 3-point boost to their primary support.
This has come at the expense of independents, who attracted support from only 4 per cent of the 1000 respondents surveyed. If replicated on election day, this could deliver stronger preference flows to Labor in some seats. Early polling in Victoria opens in just over six weeks.
Resolve founder Jim Reed said one of the key findings of the survey was that people were now paying closer attention.
“Fewer and fewer voters are telling us they are uncommitted each month, and the number of people undecided on their preferred leader is also dropping, which is evidence that they are starting to pay attention and lock in,” he said.
“Victorians were willing to give Carroll a fair go, but after a few months they are increasingly unconvinced. His net likeability and preferred premier metrics are both down. And Wilson is benefiting from that.”
The most encouraging news for the Coalition from this survey, other than the level of personal support for Wilson, is that its areas of perceived relative strength – economic and financial management, and crime and policing – are at the top of voters’ priority lists.
When asked what their highest priority issue was for deciding how to vote, 33 per cent of respondents nominated the state’s economy and finances, while 24 per cent said crime and policing. The second-highest priority – the traditional Labor strength of hospitals and health services – was nominated by 12 per cent of respondents.
When asked to nominate things that will most influence their vote from a list of more specific issues and policy announcements, 27 per cent chose government spending and debt, while 21 per cent went for youth crime.
Greens voters nominated artificial intelligence and data centres as their biggest vote-shaping concern.
The survey was conducted between October 6 and October 10, in the aftermath of One Nation’s Victorian policy and campaign launch, which featured a grab bag of uncosted promises.
The boldest policy announcement of the week was Jess Wilson’s $1.27 billion promise to halve the elective surgery waiting list by booking 25,000 additional patients into private hospitals to have surgery on the public tab.
This masthead on Monday revealed the policy involved bringing forward $1.1 billion of borrowed money earmarked for future capital investment over the next decade to cover the cost of the urgent surgeries. Previously unpublished budget figures show the opposition’s accounting would create an $880 million shortfall in its election costings.
Carroll leapt on the revelation on Monday, telling 3AW, “The opposition leader says she knows everything and can do both treasury and leader. That has now seen a billion-dollar budget black hole in her costings on health.”
Wilson defended the credibility of her costings by saying she would not be “lectured by the Labor Party on economic mismanagement in this state”.
“Budgets don’t just look at one policy in isolation. They don’t just look at the spend of one policy in isolation. They look at policies – that’s both savings and expenditure – in aggregate over those four years, taking into account the net debt position, looking at the forecast, and of course, the operating position in the state,” Wilson said.
She repeated her goal of returning the state’s finances to cash surplus by 2032 if elected in November, and said it was only at this point – when the state is raising more in revenue than it spends on operating expenses and capital investments – that reducing net debt becomes possible.
Reed said the electoral challenge before the Coalition – to gain an additional 16 seats required to form majority government – remained a big ask, but noted the dominant issues and the respective likeability of the leaders are pointing in the right direction for the Liberal and National parties.
“Things like potholes and the Suburban Rail Loop are handy icons for voters to talk about, but our polling is telling us that the foundational issues of economic health, debt and crime are what’s driving votes,” Reed said. “This is Coalition ground.”