Voter study shows Coalition loses status as better economic manager

For the first time in decades, the Coalition has lost its perceived advantage on economic management, according to a leading academic study released on Wednesday.

The results of the Australian Election Study (AES) are a snapshot of the opposition's struggle to win over voters in this year's federal election campaign, suggesting the Liberal Party has lost its grip on one of its longest-held strengths.

It suggests several short- and long-term problems for the opposition to overcome, with voters preferring Labor's offering on economic management, taxation, housing affordability, and the cost of living.

The research also found Peter Dutton was the least popular major party leader the AES had ever polled, dating back to the study's beginning four decades ago in 1987.

The post-election survey of voters' attitudes and behaviour is conducted by the Australian National University (ANU) and Griffith University after every federal election and asks voters for their views on party policies and attitudes to democracy.

"The Liberals have really ceded the area of economic management to Labor," ANU politics professor Ian McAllister said. 

"What it suggests is that it's going to be very difficult for the Liberals to get an advantage back in that area.

"You really have to build up an area as your policy strength, and once you lose that, it's very difficult to get back."

As recently as 2019, the Coalition held a 26-percentage-point lead over Labor on management of the economy, but that lead slid in 2022 and again in 2025.

Now, the Coalition trails by four percentage points.

"By and large, people are looking for a party that really isn't going to do any short-term harm to them in terms of economic policy, and at the moment that's the Labor government," Professor McAllister said.

The study has only asked voters about economic management since 2010, but has tracked voter preferences on taxation policy since 1990.

The Coalition has also traditionally been preferred by voters in that policy area, with the 2025 election the first where Labor's tax policy was preferred.

The detailed survey was conducted by the ANU and Griffith University after the May 2025 election, with 2,070 respondents recruited from randomly selected addresses across the nation, as well as from participants in previous waves of the study.

When asked about the state of the economy, 42 per cent of Australians thought it would be worse in a year's time than it was today, with just 24 per cent thinking it would be in better shape.

While voters were generally pessimistic, they were less pessimistic than in the wake of the 2022 election, when 53 per cent of Australians thought the economy would worsen.

All up, voters preferred Labor's policies in nine of the 10 policy areas surveyed in 2025, with health, education and climate change among the government's strongest areas.

The only policy area in which Labor trailed the Coalition was national security.

The Coalition has acknowledged its need to improve its economic credentials since the election, when it campaigned on a promise to repeal tax cuts that Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced in March's federal budget.

The opposition has sought to frame its new climate emissions and energy policy around power prices and the cost of living, and Shadow Treasurer Ted O'Brien on Wednesday outlined his party's approach to the budget in an address at the National Press Club.

Dutton least popular leader on record

Unsurprisingly, the AES found Anthony Albanese was also the preferred major party leader over Mr Dutton.

In fact, Mr Dutton recorded the lowest levels of popularity of any major party leader since the study began in 1987.

"People didn't see him as a leader, he wasn't regarded as a strong leader, and they also saw him as lacking inspiration," Professor McAllister said.

"Certainly, that was a major factor in the lack of success for the Liberals in the election."

While voters are more likely to say that policy issues are the single biggest influence on their vote, the researchers have found that leadership does matter, and crucially, that swing voters are more likely to have their vote influenced by the party leaders.

The leader with the second-lowest popularity in the study's history is Scott Morrison in 2022, with Bill Shorten in 2019 coming fourth last in the ranking.

The most popular leaders in the history of the study were Kevin Rudd in 2007, Bob Hawke in 1987, Kim Beazley in 1998, and John Howard in 1996.

The findings show a pattern of steadily decreasing popularity of political leaders in general, although the research does not explain the cause.

"If you draw trend lines … you'll find that there's quite a significant decrease over the years," Professor McAllister said.

While the causes of the trend are less clear, it suggests the electoral challenges ahead may not lie solely with the Liberals.

"While [Labor] obviously won the election and got a historically large number of seats … their vote has been eroded as well if you look at the first preference vote," he said. 

"They aren't suffering as much as the Liberals, but there's potential long-term existential threats to the Labor vote as well."

Already-released findings from the 2025 survey found that millennial voters had bucked the trend of previous generations, who have trended rightward as they have aged. The researchers found that the Coalition picked up just 21 per cent support from that age group in May's election.

The study also found 25 per of voters said they did not feel close to any political party, a record high, suggesting Australians were increasingly detaching from parties.

The "non-partisans" for the first time on record exceeded the number of Liberal partisans, which fell to 24 per cent.

Trust in government and satisfaction with democracy remained relatively stable since the last election, but the share of Australians who said they would still vote if it were voluntary slipped to 74 per cent, the lowest figure on record.

The share of voters who support compulsory voting slipped slightly, but remained high at 67 per cent.