Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is smashing it in the popularity stakes.
The latest Fairfax/Ipsos poll has his Prime Ministerial approval sitting at a whopping 69 per cent.
The last PM to have numbers that high was Kevin Rudd, who hit 69 per cent as preferred PM in March 2009 against Malcolm Turnbull.
In that same (now defunct) Neilsen poll, Rudd’s personal approval rating sat at 74 per cent, sailing just under Bob Hawke’s record of 75 per cent.
But approval ratings and preferred PM numbers are not the same, so the figures are not directly comparable.
Either way, it’s bad news for Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, who has watched Labor’s election-winning poll lead evaporate since Turnbull ousted Tony Abbott from the top job.
Turnbull is riding higher in the polls than any PM in the past six years.
Shorten, on the other hand, is languishing at 18 per cent in the preferred PM stakes, his lowest number yet and a long way from the 45 per cent he was sitting on in August, when Abbott was Prime Minister.
Top Comments
I have to confess I'm loving MT at the moment, he comes across as an intelligent, caring yet socially and financially responsible. I suspect he will have a long run as PM (let's hope so anyway). I also think we will see more balanced policy coming through as time goes on which will keep many on the left pretty happy I think.
Turnbull is definitely a solid statesman and it's nice having someone who can represent Australia competently on the world stage. He's compromised a lot when it comes to social issues and we haven't seen any major financial decisions yet. If he is able to present a reasonable Budget in 2016, he could be PM for quite a while.