Julie Bishop knocks Malcolm Turnbull off popularity high in cabinet rankings

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/09/julie-bishop-malcolm-turnbull-popularity-cabinet

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Julie Bishop has overtaken Malcolm Turnbull as the federal government’s highest-performing minister, while the budget has dragged Joe Hockey into last place, according to a survey ranking each cabinet member.

McNair Ingenuity Research polled 1,004 voters late in August, just before the first anniversary of the Abbott government’s election victory. Participants were asked to rank each minister on a scale of 100 for excellent, 75 for good, 50 for average, 25 for poor or zero for terrible.

Bishop, the foreign affairs minister and the only woman in the 19-member cabinet, was ranked the highest with an overall score of 57.6, up 13 points since McNair conducted a similar survey in December last year.

Bishop’s profile rose after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July. The minister won praise for her role building support for a UN security council resolution demanding a full international investigation and access to the crash site.

Coalition supporters gave Bishop a score of 72.2 while Labor voters scored her at 45.5 – among both groups she was ranked at the top of the list.

Turnbull, the communications minister and former Liberal leader, was the second-highest ranked minister with an overall score of 51.1, slightly higher than his score in the previous survey when he was the most popular.

But among Coalition supporters Turnbull slipped into third place behind the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, who has led the government’s hardline policies against asylum-seeker boat arrivals. Morrison was much more unpopular among Labor supporters.

Hockey appears to have suffered from the backlash over the government’s May budget, which has been attacked by opposition parties, community groups and economic researchers as “unfair” on the basis it disproportionately affects poorer groups.

The treasurer, who has been seeking to negotiate with crossbench senators over contentious budget measures that lack support in the upper house, was ranked lowest of all ministers with an overall score of 32.2 in the latest McNair survey.

It was a dramatic fall from third-most-popular position in the previous such survey in December. Hockey was placed at the bottom of the list among Labor and Coalition supporting groups.

The prime minister, Tony Abbott, scored 39.1 points overall, slightly lower than his result in the previous poll.

The McNair first-year scorecard, conducted between 27 and 30 August, involved a “nationally representative” selection of members of an online panel, the company said. It said the results were weighted to population statistics by age, gender and location.

The lead researcher, Matt Balogh, said it was not surprising that ministers were more well known to the public now than at the time of the last survey, taken at the 100-day mark of the government.

“In both cases we actually asked people whether they felt they knew each politician well enough to rate them and the ratings are only taken amongst people who said they knew that person well enough,” he said.