Beyond the sliding doors election

On the question of preferred Prime Minister, while Albanese went up from 50% to 57% Dutton fell from 45% to 38%, 7 percentage points either way, so a kinder judgment than that on performance, but again, very decisive.

And our two-party preferred vote was 57% Labor to 43% Coalition, better for Dutton's side than the preferred PM figures. (This result is skewed to the left, showing that despite our best attempts to adjust for political bias, the sample still had some).

A number of things appear to have turned possible change of government into a landslide towards the government. First has to be Peter Dutton.

He went into this election with the attribute of being strong. Some people also linked this to him being divisive and racist, and likened him to Trump, but these were voters who had never voted Liberal or Nationalist in their lives – they weren't issues that would swing an election.

When we took our second poll, the word "strong" was still associated with Dutton, but this time as a qualifier. "He doesn't appear to be as strong and naturally commanding as Albanese," and "He wasn't strong enough and didn't have good policies," are two representative comments from Coalition voters.

Dutton had walked back policies like work from home (which didn't register as an issue in our sample, so it was probably consigned to particular seats), not branded the government with its record, talked about where he was going to live when he was elected, or Welcome to Country ceremonies, rather than cost-of-living issues.

The issue that could have made a difference to either side, if they'd leveraged it properly, was housing – a cost-of-living issue that affects almost everyone under the age of 50 or 60 because they are paying-off a mortgage at suddenly massively higher interest rates; can't afford a deposit to get into a house where they couldn't afford the repayments anyway; have to pay high percentages of their income on rent; or have children, grandchildren, and friends who fall into any or all of those categories.

This issue was the most important to most of our respondents, but it was a side issue for both the major parties. While both had policies to address it none of them penetrated.

The issue Dutton was most clearly identified with was nuclear. At the end of the election it was most likely to be raised when making a personal judgment on him, and it was obvious, even from Coalition supporters, that he had not made out the case for its necessity.

Albanese was most closely associated with health, but despite the clear $8 billion on Medicare, and the promise to build more urgent care clinics and provide telehealth centres, they weren't specified by voters – they just referred to health in general.

The same thing happened with education, where forgiving HECS debt, or free TAFE weren't mentioned, but the issue of education was.

Those voting for Albanese were also very likely to cite interest rates and inflation. There was a sense that Australia had turned the corner and it was the government's doing, even though times were still tough. Labor didn't appear to attract the blame for the problems, so there was no need to punish them. Or if they did attract blame, so did the Morrison/Frydenberg stewardship.