Mortgage lending industry prefers Scott Morrison as PM

A new survey has revealed that the majority of the mortgage and finance lending industry are intending to vote for the Liberal-National Coalition at the upcoming federal election, with the majority believing that Scott Morrison would make a better Prime Minister than Anthony Albanese.

The findings came following an election poll from Momentum Intelligence (one of the divisions of Momentum Media Group, the parent company of The Adviser), which has revealed voter preferences from professionals across a number of sectors: mortgage lending, real estate services, financial advice and wealth management, defence and national security, accounting services, aviation, and legal services.

The second edition of the Industry Insight Report involved 2,553 professionals across seven sectors responding to an online self-administered survey between 1-14 April 2022.

Of the respondents, 255 were from the mortgage and finance lending industry (including brokers, lenders and aggregators).

Respondents were asked to outline their voting preferences and election priorities for the upcoming federal election on 21 May, as well as their attitudes to the federal budget 2022 and the opposition’s reply.

As was the case for the first edition (from December 2021), the mortgage and finance lending industry favours the Liberal-National Coalition.

When asked their primary voting preference (i.e. who they would vote for if the election was held today), 52 per cent of industry said it would be the Liberal-National Coalition.

However, this proportion was down on the first edition, when 63 per cent of respondents had said their primary voting preference was for a Liberal-National Coalition (or 71 per cent, when asked about their political preferences [not specific to primary voting preferences]).

There was a 7 percentage point swing in the Australian Labor Party’s favour (24 per cent of respondents having ALP as their primary preference), with the remaining 4 percentage point difference due to respondents suggesting they would either vote for “others’ or were ‘undecided”.

When asked: “If you had to choose, who do you believe would make a better Prime Minister?” 61 per cent of the mortgage lending industry said the current Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, would. Only 19 per cent of this sector had a preference for Mr Albanese, the lowest of all seven industries surveyed.

Regarding the top priorities for the election, the economy remains the top factor for the mortgage and lending industry (73 per cent), followed by small-business interests (56 per cent).

However, housing affordability has increased in importance for the industry since the first edition, coming in as the third most important voting consideration (52 per cent), replacing taxation (51 per cent).

Speaking of the findings, Momentum Intelligence director Michael Johnson noted that changes to Labor’s stance towards broker remuneration may have caused a “slight shift” in the primary vote from the Coalition towards Labor and other parties.

“By clarifying their position on this critical issue, it has released the dependency some brokers were feeling to vote for the Coalition and enables them to vote based on other factors such as climate change,” he said.

“However, it appears that overall the Coalition and Scott Morrison are still preferred generally across the mortgage lending sector.”

When looking across all seven industries surveyed (mortgage lending, real estate services, financial advice and wealth management, defence and national security, accounting services, aviation, and legal services), the Liberal-National Coalition was coming out top in primary voting responses.

However, less than half of all respondents flagged this as their primary vote (49 per cent), with just over a quarter leaning towards Labor (26 per cent) and the remaining 24 per cent either voting for “others” or undecided. 

Only the legal services sector had voted a preference for a Labor Party government led by Mr Albanese, with 43 per cent of lawyers suggesting their primary vote would lean that way (compared to 31 per cent of this profession leaning to a primary vote of Liberal-National Coalition) and 60 per cent believing Mr Albanese would make a better Prime Minister than Mr Morrison.

As a whole, the top three most important voting considerations across all industries were: the economy (69 per cent), taxation (49 per cent), and defence and security (47 per cent).

[Related: Economy, climate change trump housing affordability for industry votes]