The first impressions: Labor is getting momentum and a shaky start for the Coalition

While it’s far too early to claim that this election result is clear and it’s all over – it’s not – the early optics matter and set the tone for the campaign.

The opening days of the federal election campaign have revealed more than just policy announcements and talking points – they’ve exposed a difference between a government that appears match fit and ready to go, and an opposition still fumbling around and trying to find its balance. While the early parts of any campaign are marked by adjustments and recalibration – it’s only day four of a 36-day campaign – one major party has hit the ground running, and it’s not the Coalition. Of course, this will change – or, at least, it should change – but it should be of concern that the leader of the Liberal–National Party Peter Dutton seemed so unprepared. The prime minister Anthony Albanese didn’t call an early or a snap election and the final date that the election could be held was always going to be May 17, so this lack of preparation comes as a surprise.

Albanese seems to have made a confident start to the campaign, with a the populist pitch targeting the supermarket giants – Coles and Woolworths – many in the electorate have become increasingly resentful of. By promising to outlaw price gouging and create mechanisms to penalise excessive profiteering (after the election), Labor is trying to boost its cost-of-living credentials and positioning itself as a defender of everyday consumers. Albanese’s rhetoric of accusing supermarkets of “taking the piss” wasn’t trying to be deliberately crude, but it was politically calculated. At least a sweary Albanese and a willingness to be aggressive, populist and blunt in language, will cut through the abstraction that often grinds federal election campaigns down, where everyone tries to be the most inoffensive and obtuse. And this is one message the prime minister wants to put out: Labor will take on the corporate giants, whereas the Coalition will not. But will it work?

On the other side of the political fence, Dutton’s start has been marked by disarray and rhetorical backflips. Over the past few days, he’s floated the possibility of two separate referendums – four-year parliamentary terms, and stripping dual nationals of citizenship –only to backflip quickly, and this follows on from the constitutional recognition of Indigenous people that he promised in 2023, only to retract that proposal as well. It’s difficult for oppositions to be fully prepared for an election that is always the prerogative of the prime minister to call, but even still, it’s a sign that Coalition has not been properly war-gamed or grounded in a unified message.

The confusion has continued into other policy areas, particularly around the Coalition’s gas plan. Dutton has made bold claims about reducing gas prices through a form of domestic reservation, forcing Queensland producers to divert up to 100 additional petajoules to the east coast. Aside from the difficulties of trying to announce and debate the esoteric issues of petajoules to the electorate (and we’re pretty certain that ‘petajoule’ is probably at the point that an audience is going to start looking away), neither the modelling nor the mechanics of this proposal have been released.

Former ACCC chair Rod Sims has led the criticism, pointing out the flaws and impracticalities in this plan, while the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, accused Dutton of “making it up as he goes”. The absence of economic detail, industry backing, or a coherent regulatory strategy weakens what could have been a centrepiece cost-of-living pitch for the Coalition. It looks instead like a reactive move: a bid to grab relevance in a news cycle, rather than shape it – it’s possible to get away with this type of approach for most parts of a parliamentary term but during an election campaign, it instead puts out the message that they are just not ready to return to office.

It’s not just the policy vacuums that are hurting Dutton – it’s the tone and posture. For most of this parliamentary term, Dutton has avoided direct scrutiny, seeking media opportunities with right-wing commentators and Coalition-friendly journalists and he now finds himself exposed in the spotlight of a national election campaign. There is nowhere to hide during an election campaign.

Albanese, for the first few days at least, appears more comfortable, shaping the campaign narrative early with a confident media presence. Dutton, in contrast, has appeared flat-footed, reactive and unconvincing.

While it’s far too early to claim that this election result is clear and it’s all over – it’s not – the early optics matter and set the tone for the campaign. And right now, the Coalition is presenting itself as unprepared, fractured, and searching for a message. The latest opinion polls are beginning to reflect this sentiment, with little indication that Dutton is making meaningful inroads into Labor’s lead.

The latest polls show a change in the electorate

A series of new opinion polls – the Morgan Poll showing 53–47 per cent to Labor in in two-party-preferred voting, YouGov, Newspoll and Resolve all giving Labor a 51–49 per cent lead – continue with a pattern that commenced just over a month ago: the electorate is moving towards the government. While no single poll is definitive, the cumulative picture is one of a campaign drifting away from the opposition at precisely the moment it needed to be gaining traction.

Betting markets are starting to reflect this reality too, with odds shortening in Labor’s favour: these markets should be ignored though and are quite often incorrect – betting agencies paid out early on Bill Shorten winning in 2019, only for Scott Morrison to go and win the election – but they do reflect some sentiment within the community, or at least those who are prepared to part with their money in a volatile market. These early trends don’t guarantee a Labor victory, but they signal trouble for the Coalition.

For most of this parliamentary term, Albanese has been a cautious, defensive prime minister but, so far, he’s embraced a sharper, more confident position on the campaign trail – and perhaps Albanese is a far better campaigner than he is as prime minister and, if the Labor Party does win this election, it’s something that they will need to address.

In recent exchanges with the media – asked irrelevant questions by Sky News’ Simon Love (about the removal of a Liberal Party sign by the husband of the independent MP, Monique Ryan) – Albanese highlighted the absurdity of the question and the triviality of the media’s priorities. In another exchange with the ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas, where she falsely claimed that Infrastructure Australia had deemed Victoria’s Suburban Rail Loop project unviable, Albanese called her out and set the record straight. Why has Albanese waited so long to push back against the endless attacks and mistruths spoken to him by the mainstream media? And, perhaps more importantly, why does the media always get things wrong or just make stuff up?

The contrast with Dutton couldn’t be more different: increasingly low-energy, jittery, defensive, reactive and arrogant, recently claiming that he will live in Kirribilli if elected, because he would “take Sydney any day over living in Canberra”. Perhaps they never had it anyway, but that’s the Coalition vote in Canberra gone for good.

His early campaign stumbles so far – the confused messaging around proposed referendums and a half-baked gas plan – have already sown doubt about his preparedness. But it’s his tone that now stands out: not assertive, not energised, but desperate. In media appearances, Dutton is relying on recycled attacks on Labor’s cost-of-living management and when challenged, he leans into old tropes about negative campaigns and media bias – not the behaviour of a leader with a compelling case for change and trying to govern for all people.

And then there’s the issue in Dutton’s seat: the electorate of Dickson has always been marginal, but this time it’s being targeted not just by Labor’s Ali France, but by a rising community independent, Ellie Smith, who is gaining traction among voters disillusioned with both major parties. That Dutton might be forced to fight for his political survival and spend more time in his own seat, while trying to sell himself as a future prime minister is a major disadvantage, and he probably knows it. It’s rare for an opposition leader or senior minister to be facing a real risk of losing their own seat in an election campaign – he only needs to refer to the difficulties the former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg had in trying to spread a message on the national stage, but holed up in Kooyong during the 2022 election campaign, trying to hold on to the seat which he ultimately lost to Monique Ryan.

Because of his insulation from media scrutiny, three days into this campaign, Dutton is being already tested in ways the past three years have not. For all the assistance offered by the conservative press, from Sky News to The Australian to sections of the ABC (for all of Sunday on ABC News 24, Dutton’s appearances and mentions outnumbered Albanese by a ratio of 2:1) – Dutton is still struggling to connect and the more voters see of him, the less convinced they seem to be, which is what the opinion polls are currently suggesting.

In politics, self-belief is critical. Leaders need to exude not just confidence, but purpose. At the moment, Dutton’s campaign feels that it’s missing both. Where once there may have been a longer-term strategy for the Coalition – lose this election, gain ground, then mount a serious challenge in 2028 – there is now visible panic. The spring in his step is gone, replaced with a sense of clinging on, not surging forward. Dutton has always been a front-runner and now that he’s struggling and has fallen behind, he’s not displaying the energy of a government-in-waiting; it’s more the actions of a man on borrowed political time.

Of course, campaigns can turn. Momentum can shift. Scandals can erupt, and established narratives can easily fall apart. In the 1993 federal election, the Coalition was leading by 53 to 47 per cent in the two-party preferred vote on the first day of that campaign – even holding a five-point buffer in the final week – only to lose on election day. And in a reflection of the 1993 election, the Labor Party lost the 2019 election, after leading nearly every opinion poll after the 2016 election. Things can always change, and the opinions polls can sometimes be wrong.

But with each passing day, it becomes harder to see how the Coalition can gain the support it needs to win majority government, or even position itself credibly as a minority government. The idea that this was going to be a ‘close-run contest’ in the parlance of horse-race journalism, and as many in the media have suggested, is fast evaporating. And while Dutton might still believe in his chances, belief alone doesn’t win elections – traction does. And right now, Dutton and the Coalition are just not getting it.