Mon Apr 27

The times seem to suit Anthony Albanese. So why isn’t he more popular?

Written by Frank Bongiorno, Director, Vice-Chancellor's Centre for Public Ideas, University of Canberra

The times might be bad, but they have suited Anthony Albanese. The explosions on the political right since the 2025 election have, in electoral terms, resulted so far mainly in a rearrangement of debris between the Coalition and One Nation.

Support for the government had declined, but it has been insufficient to build a sense of crisis. The once hard man of the New South Wales socialist left, Albanese, now presents as a meek and mild figure in an international order driven by increasingly extravagant threats and the swift resort to deadly violence – on the part of certain of Australia’s allies, not only its enemies.

No serious pundit can imagine a change of government at the next federal election. Few can foresee one even at the election after that, even while they warn that there are traditional Labor voters turning to One Nation out of a sense that neither of the major parties is grappling with the issues that matter most to them.

Yet, for all of Labor’s electoral achievements, advantages and prospects, Albanese never seems to have broken through as a genuinely popular political leader. Famously, Bob Hawke’s approval rating weighed in at 78% in 1984.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter that Albanese is in no danger of getting within a cooee of these heights: after all, he is not deeply unpopular either. But it has been seen to matter that his Labor predecessor, Bill Shorten, was unable to break through as a personally popular leader ahead of the 2019 election he was widely expected to win.

Could things eventually turn sour for Labor on the back of Albanese’s mediocre approval ratings – especially if the Liberals were to find a leader with serious appeal?

It’s the economy … and some missteps

For the historically minded, the current political scenario might recall the second half of the 1950s, when the divisions on the Labor side of politics in the wake of the split of 1955 were of immense assistance to Robert Menzies and the federal Coalition in turning their incumbency into dominance. A major difference from the general affluence of the Menzies era, though, is that the Albanese government faces a large portion of the electorate that feels beleaguered by the economic difficulties of the times.

Persistent inflation, with its erosion of living standards, is one problem, now being compounded by a fuel crisis created by Australia’s primary ally, the United States. Another is housing affordability, a problem with a complex root system whose solution will be the work of decades, not a term or two of government.

These are some of the key policy vulnerabilities of the government. Is Albanese’s own leadership another? It was easy to believe so over the summer, as one witnessed his clunky response to pressures unleashed by the Bondi attacks. Academic Murray Goot’s analysis ^[1] of subsequent polling suggests Labor did lose support in the wake of that tragedy. But the episode also showed up Albanese’s, and Labor’s advantages, when the political race comprises two horses, for the two-party preferred vote hardly changed at all.

Sussan Ley overplayed the Liberals’ hand. Coalition politicians foolishly shunned bipartisanship for the sake of a hit on Albanese in the lead-up to Christmas but the effort to pin personal responsibility for the attack on him came across as unhinged. In the new year, he easily outmanoeuvred them when the extent of the divisions over what to do, rather than what to say, became clear. The Coalition broke again. Ley was soon out.

At the beginning of her book Earthquake: the election that shook Australia ^[2], Niki Savva says at the election of May 3 2025, Albanese “transcended from mere mortal to the pantheon of great Labor leaders, as close to heaven as any prime minister can hope to get”. Perhaps so, but Savva’s evidence also shows how lucky he was in his opponent.

The Australian Election Study ^[3] (AES) tracks the popularity of party leaders at each federal contest. On its ten-point scale, Albanese was at 5.14 in 2025 (to Peter Dutton’s 3.18) and 5.26 in 2022 (to Scott Morrison’s 3.77). Albanese’s rating in 2025 was identical to Morrison’s in 2019.

In 2022, Albanese was the most popular leader on this scale since Kevin Rudd in 2007 (6.31), but that only underlines the point that he has not been as popular as Rudd or Hawke – who was still a stellar 6.22 on his third election in 1987, the first for which we have AES figures.

Recent opinion polling has Albanese’s approval rating ahead of Liberal leader Angus Taylor but not by a long way. Newspoll has revealed a steady decline in Albanese’s approval ratings ^[4] between mid-November 2025 and mid-April 2026, from 47% to 40%. His dissatisfaction rating climbed from 47% to 57%. That tracks the decline in the Labor primary vote ^[5], from 36% to 31%.

Taylor’s approval rating in mid-April was 33%, with 46% dissatisfied and more than one in five voters uncommitted – presumably watching and waiting to see how the new leader performs. Albanese is rated the better prime minister, by 46% to 37% in Newspoll. But a Resolve poll ^[6] for Nine media had Albanese at 33% and Taylor at 32% as preferred prime minister, while a whopping 34% were undecided.

When it is considered that Taylor, who is hardly a figure with major name recognition, is competing for airtime on the right of politics with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, new Nationals leader Matt Canavan and rising Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie, Albanese’s lead over him hardly seems impressive.

Farrer, and the budget, will provide serious tests

That said, Labor has decided not to contest the Farrer byelection, whereas there are candidates for One Nation, the Liberals and the Nationals in the field, as well as the high-profile independent Michelle Milthorpe (along with another eight independent and minor party candidates).

Given the seat has been Liberal for a quarter of a century, Taylor is the leader with the most at stake, followed by Hanson (who will want to show One Nation is not a flash in the pan) and then Canavan (who will be keen to secure a respectable National Party vote in a regional seat, as an early tick against his ascension to the leadership).

Farrer is likely to come down to a contest between One Nation’s David Farley and Milthorpe, which is in itself an eloquent statement of how poorly the major parties are faring among voters.

Labor, meanwhile, will be looking to its budget next month to recover a sense of direction and purpose following its buffeting by unforeseen crises at home and abroad over recent months.

But, in the present international climate, whether it can do so successfully will depend in large part on forces well beyond its control. It is also seemingly beyond the control of the US – the ally Albanese and Labor have embraced so enthusiastically, even as they try to distance themselves from its ever more erratic leader.