Does Peter Dutton have a Donald Trump-style route to power

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Teal, schmeal, they whisper. We need Woollahra and Toorak as much as the Business Council of Australia.

Populist policies

Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton and deputy Sussan Ley on Monday.Alex Ellinghausen

Not everyone is on board. Menzies Research Institute executive director Nick Cater, who is aligned with the right parties, says he prefers a broad church approach that doesn’t abandon wealthy suburbs.

The Trump strategy holds that Dutton should move the Coalition further to the right, based on the assumption populist policies could win over conservative Labor voters uneasy with the Albanese governments inner-city focus.

The options include opposing some climate change and free trade policies, and staking out conservative positions on social policy.

So, is there a path to power for Dutton through Australias meat-tray towns? Could a One Nation-lite approach work?

The new electoral map suggests the strategy would be challenging for two main reasons: there arent many seats available; and few embraced the conservative signals sent by Scott Morrison in 2022.

Less hostile

Scott Morrison campaigning in Braddon, Tasmania, which has the lowest socio-economic status of any seat. James Brickwood

Classified by socio-economic group, the Labor Party holds only five of the poorest 30 seats, or quintile, according to the latest counts and a ranking by Roy Morgan Research.

Braddon, in north-western Tasmania, is the most economically depressed electorate in Australia. It emerged from the election as a safe Liberal seat.

Overall, these poor seats swung 2.1 per cent against the Coalition, compared with a national swing of 5.3 per cent. This suggests that poor people didnt love Morrison, but were less hostile to him than other Australians.

If Morrison had campaigned more to the right, would any of these seats been won by the Liberal or National parties?

Perhaps, but they would not have saved the Coalition government. Only one of these electorates emerged from the election as marginal Labor: the Tasmanian seat of Lyons, by 0.7 per cent.

Given the Coalition needs 19 or 20 more seats to form a majority government, the poorest seats arent going to help much.

In the next quintile, the Labor Party emerged with 13 seats, and only two on a sub-5 per cent margin. These fourth-quintile government seats include Paterson (which Labor won by 3.2 per cent), Hunter (4 per cent), Holt (7 per cent), Calwell (12 per cent), Scullin (15 per cent) and Blaxland (15 per cent) cent).

Swinging right

There were some good signs for the Coalition conservatives, at least on the surface. Calwell and Scullin, which are based in Melbournes northern suburbs, swung hard right at the election.

But that wasn’t because Sydney Liberal candidate Katherine Deves had expressed concerns about teenage sex changes, which some political participants believe was used in an attempt to sway conservative women, or because Morrison promised to toughen legal protections for religious institutions.

The anti-Labor swings seemed to represent frustration with the tough pandemic lockdowns imposed by the Victorian Labor government.

Other suburban seats, including Holt, in Melbournes south-eastern suburbs, and Blaxland, which is in Sydneys western suburbs, barely budged.

With fewer than half-a-dozen Labor seats within reach among the poorest 40 per cent, even with a large national swing, a right lurch therefore looks like a risky strategy for the Coalition.

Which means that Dutton, after some consideration, might decide that his forgotten people are more Menzian than Trumpian.

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