Brad Battin's Booting Is A Poll History Outlier

(Note for Tasmanian audiences: I will have the usual article about the latest EMRS poll up sometime tonight or tomorrow)

The last fortnight has seen the leaders of three of Australia's current crop of feeble oppositions displaced while a fourth, Sussan Ley, is precarious (especially after another shocker Newspoll).  First to go was ACT Liberal leader Leanne Castley, who after an irregular (by Liberal Party standards) attempt to kick backbenchers Elizabeth Lee and Peter Cain out of the party room for crossing the floor over parliamentary sitting hours, resigned suddenly on November 10.  Victorian leader Brad Battin didn't recontest after a spill motion was passed 19-13 on Nov 18, and NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman quit on Nov 21 facing the same fate.  In the ACT the leadership has passed to an old hand in third-term MLA Mark Parton, but both Victoria and NSW have gone for first-term female MPs, Jess Wilson and Kellie Sloane.  

The removal of Speakman requires no explanation following the NSW Liberals' run of poor polling and a terrible result in the Kiama by-election.  But the case of Battin is very unusual.  Since assuming the leadership in the final days of 2024, Brad Battin had led Jacinta Allan as better Premier in every single poll that asked such a question - eight in all by four different pollsters, with an average margin of 8.75%.  There have been occasional cases of Opposition Leaders being rolled who had sometimes led as better Premier (including Battin's predecessor John Pesutto who had led by a pyrrhic single point in his final Resolve sample) but an Opposition Leader who was leading solidly being removed is unprecedented, at least in the Newspoll era.