Decades long trends have reinforced the electoral salience and institutional power of political leaders like Prime Ministers. Simultaneously, parties of government are facing dealignment and are less able to rely on the support of loyal voters. Given a more volatile electorate, the performance of leaders may be under increased scrutiny from the public and party elites. The ability of leaders to garner widespread personal appeal is therefor of significant importance for the stability of governments. But how has dealignment affected assessments of leaders’ performance? Traditionally, leaders’ popularity has declined steadily over their tenures, notwithstanding boosts from favourable economic conditions, election victories or ‘rally around the flag’ events. However, the loss of a stable support base may mean that leader’s face a secular decline, or else the increased salience of leaders’ own political skill may mean that leaders’ popularity declines more steeply or changes with greater volatility in response to scandals, leadership challenges, and by-elections. Given this which of these factors is most important in shaping popularity and have they become more important over time? Utilizing a novel database of public opinion polls matched to political and economic variables from 1985-2025 in Australia, we ask three questions: 1) How has party leader popularity undergone changes in level, rate of decline and volatility over time? (2) Which political performance factors most predict leader popularity in the short term? (3) And how do these trends in leader popularity ultimately shape their longevity and electoral success? Using time-series analysis we find that partisan dealignment has not structurally harmed the popularity of leaders, rather while all leaders face testing times, only a few rise to meet the times through skillful crisis leadership. Our findings also suggest that although leaders tend to lose their appeal over their tenure, volatility can be managed through skillful performance.
