From Mark Kenny who has been pretty good in recent times:
Off the back of the most left-leaning, interventionist budget ever handed down by a Coalition government in Canberra, Turnbull now has a net approval rating of 1 per cent – small but positive. His second, “corrective”, budget also has a net approval rating of 1 per cent. This might be a coincidence, but the two numbers are hardly unrelated.
…Labor-lite it may be, but Turnbull’s calculus is that most voters live in the middle ground, and it is to them that he has shifted his attention, hoping to rebuild his party’s battered image.
…Conservatives will complain that Turnbull’s formula is one of over-correction, producing a perverse existential irony: more people may now support the Liberal Party because it is has stopped being the Liberal Party.
Nonetheless, there’s no gainsaying that the Coalition’s all-important primary vote has climbed by a statistically significant 4 percentage points since March.
The shape of the 2017-18 budget shows that for Turnbull and even the more conservative figures around him – such as Mathias Cormann, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton – the penny has finally dropped.
Another leadership change is unthinkable.
There is clear denying it, Mark. IPSOS was operating outside of the margin for error of all other polls when it had Labor ahead 55-45. Today’s bounce has pulled it into line with the broader average of a Labor lead of 53-47. Right now IPSOS is still far out of line with all other polls on One Nation, seeing just 2% support versus 10% everywhere else. Not reporting this is basically fake news.
The Coalition may opt for honorable suicide but not based upon highly questionable IPSOS polling!
The question before Government is simple. Either it sticks with Do-Labor Malcolm, loses in a landslide and the Loon Pond takes over in Opposition with an embrace of anti-immigration platform (and god only knows what else). Or, they do it before the election with or without whatever Malcolm turns into next.
In terms of raw political calculus, everything else is rubbish.
