Dutton faces eject button as dogfight for seat tightens
Jacob Shteyman |
Peter Dutton is in danger of becoming the first opposition leader to lose his seat in a federal election, with polling showing a drop in his primary vote in his seat of Dickson.
Mr Dutton is ahead 55-45 over Labor’s Ali France on a two party-preferred basis, but his primary vote has fallen from 42.1 per cent to 40.3 per cent, latest YouGov polling provided to AAP shows.
The Liberal leader has held the marginal electorate in Brisbane’s north since 2001, but has come close to losing his grip on multiple occasions, including surviving by just 217 votes in 2007.
His margin was cut to 1.7 per cent at the last election in 2022.
On the figures, if minor party and independent voters preference him at a lower rate than the national average, he could be in trouble, said YouGov director of public data Paul Smith.
YouGov’s seat poll surveyed 253 Dickson voters between April 17th and April 24th.
Because of the relatively low sample size, the results were weighted against a national sample of 7086 voters to match the demographics of the seat as a whole.
But the method still leaves it with a fairly high six per cent margin of error – larger than Mr Dutton’s five per cent buffer.
The Dickson two-party preferred figure doesn’t account for the possibility voters could preference against Mr Dutton at a higher rate in a concerted effort to oust him.
Prime ministers and opposition leaders tended to get a large vote boost in their electorates, Mr Smith said.
“However, the only two prime ministers to lose their seats – John Howard in 2007 and Stanley Melbourne Bruce in 1929 – both lost their seats because they were opposed to people’s fundamental rights at work,” Mr Smith told AAP.
“It will be interesting to see if Mr Dutton’s stance on working from home will have the same impact.”
Mr Dutton was forced into an awkward about face over the coalition’s plan to force public servants back into the office, which proved less popular than he hoped.
Another complicating factor in Dickson is the presence of a strong independent challenger, Ellie Smith, who is predicted to pick up 16.5 per cent of the primary vote.
That could dilute Mr Dutton’s primary take, although most of the votes Ms Smith has picked up have come from the Greens, whose primary share has fallen from 13 per cent to 5.1 per cent, according to the poll.
For Labor’s Ali France, who polled 24.2 per cent of first preferences, she’s hoping third time’s the charm after building her profile in the electorate at the 2019 and 2022 elections.
But the former journalist’s campaign hit trouble after it emerged she re-tweeted a doctored image of Mr Dutton wearing a Nazi uniform in 2017.
Asked about her tweets at a press conference, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Ms France – whose leg was amputated after being hit by a car – was an “outstanding human being”.
“I don’t know what your tweets are like more than a decade ago,” he told reporters in Perth on Thursday.
AAP
