New research shows immigration is not driving voter anger, yet the Coalition is targeting it anyway – risking further losses in the diverse, urban seats it must win back.

There is a question worth asking before any analysis of Tuesday’s ‘Australian Values Migration Plan’: what problem, exactly, is it solving?

Taylor’s announcement to the Menzies Research Centre was a calculated pitch to the One Nation flank – ICE-style deportation taskforces, social media vetting, a “safe countries” list, and “values” made legally enforceable. The language barely concealed its audience: migrants from liberal democracies, Taylor said, have a “greater likelihood of subscribing to Australian values” than those from “places ruled by fundamentalists, extremists and dictators.” Chinese Australians may have good cause to be concerned.

The premise was that immigration is a core driver of voter anger, and that the Coalition could recapture voters drifting to One Nation by hardening its position.

Our research, conducted with Accent Research across a nationally representative sample of 2,016 voters in March, tells a different story, and it is one the Coalition’s strategists should be reading carefully.

When we asked voters who they blamed for rising prices and interest rates, only 6 per cent pointed to immigrants. Politicians led on 40 per cent, followed by CEOs of big businesses at 20 per cent. Nearly a quarter, 24 per cent, said no one in particular; it’s just the market.

The One Nation numbers are particularly instructive. Among One Nation voters, 59 per cent blame politicians and 9 per cent blame CEOs. Just 14 per cent blame immigrants, a figure that rises somewhat above the national average but still leaves immigration as a secondary explanation for the cost-of-living crisis even among the voters most receptive to anti-immigration politics. The primary emotion driving One Nation support is a profound institutional fury, not an immigration grievance dressed up in economic clothing.

This matters enormously for how we read Taylor’s play. The One Nation vote is, at its core, an expression of total distrust in the political class. Our data shows net trust in politicians at -90 among One Nation voters, an almost complete rejection of the entire institutional framework. The statement “almost anything is better than the way things are going now, I just want to vote for change” returned a net agreement of 81 among One Nation voters.

They want to burn the system down. They are not, in the main, waiting for an immigration policy from the Liberal Party.

The Coalition cannot compete with One Nation on this terrain. One Nation owns the........

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