As soon as one election is over, we start turning our attention to the next – and that will be Prime Minister Tony Abbott's appointment with the voters, due some time around September 2016.

If the opinion polls were consistently bad for the Napthine government leading up to its defeat, they are even worse for the Abbott government. The Australian tells us Newspoll last weekend found it trailing 45-55 in the two-party preferred vote –  an 8.5 per cent national swing since its election 15 months ago. Opinion polls are not elections, as the Howard government proved in 2001 and 2004. But between elections, they're the best guide we've got. The question is inevitable: could the Abbott government too end up as a one-term government –  the first at national level since the Great Depression?

By the way, it might not be the next one-termer. In 2012 Queensland Premier Campbell Newman won such a huge majority that Labor was left with just seven seats. But three polls in the past week show his government just ahead, just behind and level pegging with Labor. The election is due in March.

Victoria's state result, by itself, does not show a collapse in Liberal support. The average swing to Labor is about 3 per cent, no landslide, and the final two-party preferred vote will be close to 49-51 – which is the average for all elections in Victoria since 1980. (The Coalition's worst result at state level was the 42.2 per cent it won in 2002 against Steve Bracks, and the worst at Federal level was the 44.7 per cent vote for Abbott in his first tilt as leader in 2010. The high point was the 56.3 per cent that  elected the Kennett government in 1992.)

In fact, Saturday's result was only about 1 per cent worse than the 49.8 per cent Abbott's team won in Victoria last year. A swing of that size would not cost the Federal Liberals anything in this state; their most marginal seat is Deakin, in the suburbs around Ringwood, which it holds by 3.2 per cent.

But state Liberals say the Abbott government is now "poison" to the Victorian electorate, and the polls agree. Newspoll reports that for Federal voting intentions, this year its polling average for Victoria is 42-58 to Labor. That's a swing of 8 per cent. If we vote that way in 2016, it would be curtains for the Abbott government. Even on earlier polling it was facing the potential loss of 11 seats in Queensland alone, and in Victoria it stands to lose up to five: Michael Sukkar in Deakin, Sarah Henderson in Corangamite (3.9 per cent), Jason Wood in LaTrobe (4 per cent), possibly even the Minister for Small Business, Bruce Billson, down on the Frankston line in Dunkley (5.6) and Tony Smith up in the Yarra Valley in Casey (7.2).

Yesterday Labor strategists in Victoria were already moving on to the federal poll. Their list of winnable seats includes even Aston (8.2 per cent). The reality is that Victoria is now the Liberals' weakest link: in recent history, and in the current climate. Since 1980, the Coalition has won just three of the past 13 Federal elections here in seats won (not one, as I mistakenly wrote on Monday), and two out of 13 in votes won.

In 2010 it cost them government: Tony Abbott's team won a 59-54 majority of seats in the rest of the Australia, but only 14 out of 37 in Victoria. It is not inconceivable that there could be a similar outcome in 2016. Why has Liberal support in Victoria slumped since the decades of the 50s, 60s and 70s, when the Menzies, Bolte and Hamer governments made it "the brightest jewel in the Liberal crown"? It's a subject Liberals ought to be talking about, but they don't seem to be.