The Turnbull government would face a knife-edge battle to pass its legislation following a double dissolution election, according to analysis by new polling group MetaPoll.
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Based on a national two-party-preferred vote of 51 per cent, the Coalition would struggle to get bills such as the Australian Building and Construction Commission through a joint sitting of Parliament.
The modelling shows the Coalition winning 83 seats in the House of Representatives and 31 in the Senate, giving it a single-vote majority of 114 seats in a 226-seat joint sitting.
MetaPoll reached those figures by examining the state-by-state variation from national polling, to take account of long-term voting patterns in particular states (the Greens perform better in Victoria and Tasmania, for example).
"Based on a pretty good result for the Coalition, they would struggle to get a majority in a joint sitting of Parliament," said MetaPoll co-founder Osman Faruqi, a former Greens strategist.
"If the polls tighten slightly you could see a situation where Malcolm Turnbull has taken us to the first double dissolution in decades and the net result [is] he's unable to pass key pieces of legislation."
When applied to the Senate, the MetaPoll model shows Labor picking up 28 seats and the Greens 11, giving them a blocking majority in the new Senate. The Nick Xenophon Team is predicted to do well in South Australia and score four senators, while the current crossbench would largely be wiped out (with Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus tipped to retain their seats).
The results are similar to previous analysis by ABC election guru Antony Green, who warned of a "Phyrric victory" for the Coalition where it could find itself lumbered by a weaker position in the Senate after a double dissolution.
"The Coalition is very, very unlikely to get a Senate majority in its own right at the next election," Mr Faruqi said. "They'll face a similar issue that they've been facing for the last couple of years, which is a hostile Senate."
That would be compounded if the government dropped
further in the polls. The latest Fairfax-Ipsos has Labor and the Coalition at 50-50, while Newspoll has Labor ahead on 51. The MetaPoll analysis presumes a Coalition two-party-preferred share of 51 per cent.
The analysis is significant because Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has signalled his intention to call a double dissolution election for July 2, ostensibly to pass the ABCC bill and the Registered Organisations bill, which would more tightly regulate trade unions.
If the Coalition were to retain government but fail to win enough seats to pass the bills in a joint sitting, it would be a major blow for the PM, having described the restoration of the ABCC as "a critical economic reform". However, the government would likely receive support from the Xenophon senators, as Mr Xenophon voted for a second reading of the ABCC bill in the Senate this week.
MetaPoll was founded this year by Mr Faruqi and Matt Schiller, a former consultant at McKinsey. Its analysis was based on current national polling and an aggregation of state-by-state variations in national polls over the past quarter.
