(Cross posted from What the people want)
If they had a vote in the Liberal Parliamentary Party room Malcolm Turnbull would be the favoured choice of most Australians. Their second choice would be Peter Costello who resigned from parliament yesterday.
After preferences Turnbull would have won 59% of the vote.
We ran a virtual ballot using full-preferential voting as part of our last survey weighted to reflect voting preferences in the community. It included Tony Abbott, Julie Bishop, Peter Dutton, Joe Hockey, and Peter Costello on the ballot and instructed voters to number all squares.
Turnbull scored 40% on primaries and Costello 29%.
First out was deputy Julie Bishop followed by Peter Dutton (both on 3%). Tony Abbott, who won 8% of the first preferences, went out next followed by Joe Hockey (17%). Preferences favoured Turnbull over Costello by a margin of approximately 5:3.
Interestingly, when a similar ballot was conducted using just Liberal Party voters ,Turnbull’s margin decreased to 56%. A closer look at voting intentions showed that the main reason for this was that Costello was favoured over Turnbull by Liberal National Party voters.
Liberal National Party voters were also the least likely to vote for Peter Dutton, which may explain his loss in the MacPherson preselection recently.
The ballot confirms that as far as the public is concerned Turnbull is safe as Liberal Party leader. His only real competition was Peter Costello who is now definitely leaving parliament. 34% of those who gave Costello a first preference gave Turnbull their second preference.
Without Costello Turnbull should therefore have had a majority on first preferences alone.
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