Labor MPs use purple and blue branding, as Liberals hide Dutton

A proven campaigner whose seat of Bennelong is notionally Liberal after a boundary redraw, Laxale featured the prime minister on his social media several times this year, but an analysis of MPs’ social media feeds in the 20 most marginal Labor seats shows sparing use of Albanese.

Unlike in Western Australia, where Premier Roger Cook is gracing pamphlets in marginal seats, federal MPs’ printed advertising does not feature Albanese, although few party leaders in recent history have been popular enough to become the face of local campaign material.

Laxale said the prime minister had frequently visited Bennelong but Dutton was largely absent. “I would welcome my opponent using Peter Dutton in his material,” he said, noting what he said was the opposition’s reluctance to air its nuclear policies.

Frontbencher James Paterson, who will be Dutton’s campaign spokesman, said it was “no surprise so many Labor MPs are running away from a toxic Labor brand and an unpopular prime minister conspicuously absent from so much campaign material”.

Paterson declined to comment when asked about the lack of Dutton imagery in some candidate materials.

Dutton’s performance rating was +5 per cent in February’s Resolve Political Monitor, while Albanese’s was -22 per cent, while both had negative likeability ratings.

At the 2022 election, some Liberal candidates in seats being targeted by teal independents ditched Liberal blue to use lighter colour blue that mimicked teal branding.

Resolve’s Jim Reed said neither leader was a major drawcard for voters.

“They cannot be ignored or wiped from the campaign, of course, but this does mean they can be de-emphasised compared to candidates, policy and the more popular state premiers,” he said.

“The leaders are more likely to feature in their opponent’s negative ads than their own, the idea being that it’s easier to bring the other guy down than to build your own rapport with disengaged or disaffected voters.

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“The problem is that politics is no longer a zero-sum game, so rather than negative attacks winning you vote share, people are more likely to flow to a third-party or independent option. If they want to win big, they need a positive agenda voters can get behind.”

According to polling analyst Kevin Bonham, there had been four examples in recent decades when a prime minister who recorded worse approval ratings than Albanese had won an election: Bob Hawke in 1990; Paul Keating in 1993; John Howard in 1998; and Howard again in 2001.

Although, as Bonham wrote in a January analysis, those previous leaders had shown an ability during their term to turn around the trajectory of polling and claw back support, which he said Albanese had not done since early 2023.