Coalition's popularity narrows among advisers, new survey reveals

A new survey run earlier this month has revealed a dip in support for the Coalition government and its leader Scott Morrison among financial advisers and wealth management professionals in the aftermath of the federal budget and Labor’s reply.

According to the second reader survey conducted by Momentum Media’s research house, Momentum Intelligence, while advisers still prefer a Coalition government over Labor, support for the government has dipped by 13 per cent in the 4 months since the initial survey took place in December.

Conversely, the primary vote figures showed a 6 per cent lift in support for Labor, while survey respondent who are now either undecided or are voting for “others” increased by 8 per cent.

And while Anthony Albanese still only holds the sympathies of 34 per cent of the surveyed advisers and wealth managers, the Labor leader’s popularity did increase by 9 per cent in the 4 months to April, while that of the current PM Scott Morrison dipped by 6 per cent.  

The shift towards Mr Albanese has been described as “major” by the director of Momentum Intelligence, Michael Johnson.

"The financial advice industry has long been frustrated with the challenge regulatory and policy environment of the Coalition government and as the election approaches, we are seeing this play out in the primary vote statistics of this poll,” Mr Johnson said.

"According to our latest results, many financial advisers are dissatisfied with the current level of support, financial and otherwise, they are receiving from the government,” he continued.

In fact, the survey revealed that advisers and wealth managers are the least satisfied when asked to evaluate the support offered by the federal government.

As many as 31 per cent of the 255 respondents said that the support offered to the industry has been “very poor”, while 23 per cent evaluated it as “poor”. Conversely, only 15 per cent of respondents found the backing appropriate.

Looking into the industry’s voting considerations also revealed slight changes since December. The most is the placement of climate change which now garnered 49 per cent of votes compared to 38 per cent in December.

The economy, however, still remained the number one consideration with 67 per cent, followed by taxation with 58 per cent.

Gender issues (14 per cent), sexual harassment (16 per cent) and humanitarian concerns (19 per cent) remained on the other end of the scale.

More insights to come.