Debate analysis shows how Morrison and Albanese stuck to their scripts

While plenty of journalists and commentators have offered their own “vibe” takes on the leaders’ debate this week, Isentia’s Campaign Insights data for Crikey has some actual evidence of how the leaders performed.

Isentia’s analysis of the debate shows how relentlessly Morrison stuck to talking about the economy and the government’s economic record: more than a third of Morrison’s remarks were devoted to the economy, nearly twice as much as his only other topic of interest, national security. The cost of living — a more contested economic space — was Morrison’s third most mentioned topic, which the prime minister raised 14% of the time.

The economy was an important topic for Anthony Albanese, too — it was the equal-second most commonly raised topic in the Labor leader’s remarks. However, Albanese focused his economic lines on issues favourable to Labor — manufacturing, wage growth and clean energy opportunities (this embodies the Fingerhut principle, named after US Democrat pollster Vic Fingerhut: that progressive parties should always focus the political conversation on managing the economy well for working people).

But Albanese focused on a wider array of issues than Morrison: clean energy was his dominant theme (20%), ahead of the economy and integrity (both 14% — Morrison tried to avoid all mention of integrity, and was forced to refer to it only 3% of the time). Albanese in fact preferred to mention “clean energy” rather than refer directly to climate change, obviously reflecting a tactical decision to exclude it from the debate vocabulary. Albanese also talked about aged care, education and the NDIS frequently, while Morrison ignored those topics.

As a result, the debate was partly an exercise in two men talking past one another: there were very few issues that both leaders wanted to discuss, except perhaps cost-of-living issues — but even that Morrison prefers to frame as “affordability” rather than “cost of living”, possibly because the latter is a more damaging term for an incumbent government. The graph tells the story of a mutually exclusive conversation: