Only one in five voters trust Albanese now as blame sticks for cost of living

November 8, 2026 — 6:00pm

Just 20 per cent of voters now say they trust Anthony Albanese, while the prime minister’s status as preferred leader and Labor’s two-party preferred vote are mired at record-low levels.

Voters are squarely blaming the Albanese government and its latest budget for the cost-of-living crisis. With 42 per cent holding Labor responsible, the grim result demonstrates that Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ insistence that global factors were the chief drivers of inflation has failed to cut through.

A quarter of respondents (26 per cent) blamed international causes such as soaring oil prices and the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran for the high cost of living, just 7 per cent of people pointed the finger at the Reserve Bank, 5 per cent blamed state governments and 3 per cent said it was the fault of businesses.

Those findings suggest Albanese’s pre-emptive and thinly veiled criticism of the Reserve Bank’s latest rate hike as a “blunt instrument” has not taken the heat off Labor.

The survey of 2250 voters was conducted by Resolve Political Monitor from November 2 to 7, and came while Albanese attended a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and the Reserve Bank lifted interest rates for the fifth time this year.

All the movement in support for the parties is within the polls’ margin of error of plus or minus 2.1 per cent.

The standing of the prime minister and Labor has been hit by a perfect storm of poor economic news, as interest rates rose to an 18-year-high of 4.85 per cent, September’s inflation figures came in higher than expected at 4.3 per cent, and Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock talked about Australians feeling like they were in a recession.

Opposition frontbencher Dan Tehan told ABC’s Insiders that Labor should heed the lessons from the Republican rout at the US midterms last week: “Prime Minister Albanese, Jim Chalmers, and Chris Bowen should be paying very close attention [to the US midterm results]. I mean, cost of living was a key issue there that drove the change there, and I think people didn’t feel like the government, the Trump administration, was really 100 per cent focused on that. And I think it’s exactly the same here in Australia.”

In an interview with the ABC published on Saturday, Albanese pointed to the Iran war and tariffs as key reasons for the Republicans’ many defeats.

Labor’s primary vote fell one point in the last month to equal a post-election low of 28 percentage points, down from 34.6 percentage points at the May 2025 election. But neither One Nation nor the Coalition directly benefited from the movement, with the Coalition also down one point to 22 per cent and One Nation steady on 25 per cent.

The Greens crept 1 percentage point ahead in their primary vote for a second month in a row, rising to 13 per cent after the switch of leader from Larissa Waters to David Shoebridge.

The scandal over a $6 million grant to the Marrickville Golf Club, in Albanese’s electorate of Grayndler, has also badly damaged voters’ trust in the prime minister.

Just 20 per cent of voters agreed they still trusted “what Albanese says and promises”, down 6 percentage points since September, while 22 per cent of people said they had lost trust in the prime minister. Of more concern was that 43 per cent agreed that “I did not trust Albanese before this anyway”, up a significant 9 percentage points since the question was last asked in September.

The picture is worse for Labor in the contest for preferred prime minister, with Albanese down three percentage points to equal a record low of just 29 per cent, previously recorded in September, while support for Coalition leader Angus Taylor as preferred prime minister continues to inch back up, rising by 3 percentage points to 25 per cent in the past month to 25 per cent.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson status as preferred prime minister fell two percentage points to 24 per cent over the last month.

Albanese’s net performance rating as prime minister – that is, the total percentage of people who said his performance has been good or very good, versus those who said it has been bad or very bad, has equalled a record low set in January this year in the wake of the Bondi massacre.

Just 34 per cent of voters said Albanese was doing a good or very good job, while 56 per cent said he was doing a poor or very poor job – delivering a net performance rating of -22 per cent.

In contrast, 42 per cent of voters said Taylor was doing a good or very good job, while 33 per cent said his performance was bad or very bad and the rest were undecided, continuing a trend of small monthly improvements for the opposition leader.

Hanson’s total “good” performance remained steady on 45 per cent, while the proportion of voters who rated her performance as poor increased 1 percentage point to 42 per cent.

Resolve Political Monitor pollster Jim Reed said the findings showed that “although Albanese, Chalmers and Labor are shedding personal capital at a rate of knots, their vote is holding up”.

“Most damaging is that the PM is only trusted by a fifth of voters now. This is part being seen as distracted from the priority issues, like tackling inflation, but also the cumulative effect of surprise tax changes and the local grant program that have some voters questioning what’s coming next,” he said.

The prime minister’s likeability rating has crashed to a record low, falling to a net negative score of minus 19 per cent, down four points in the past month. In contrast, Taylor rose 3 percentage points to plus 11 per cent – opening up a 30 per cent gap between the two – while Hanson’s net likeability score rose to plus 4 per cent.

At the same time, the net likeability of the Labor Party fell another two points to minus 13 per cent in the last month and the Liberal Party’s net likeability rose 7 per cent to plus 11 per cent – a 24 per cent gap between the two major parties.

Keeping the cost of living low remains voters’ top policy priority by an overwhelming margin, as it has been all year, with 41 per cent of voters nominating it as their number one issue.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.

From our partners