Presenting Australians with a plan to crack down on migration would prove a "strategic error" for Opposition Leader Angus Taylor who faces a growing challenge from One Nation.
Mr Taylor will address the parliament on Thursday evening to deliver his first budget reply speech two days after Treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his fifth budget earlier this week.
Although the details are yet to be unveiled, the coalition has already outlined cutting the migrant intake to ease pressure off the tight housing market in its economic pitch to voters.
YouGov director of public data Paul Smith said polling undertaken has shown loyal coalition voters no longer identified with the conservative and country parties anymore.
"Angus Taylor must set out how he is on the side of the people who think the economic system is not working for them," he told AAP.
"The coalition needs to set out something new and different and copying One Nation's policies will make things worse and not better.
"Seizing on immigration is a strategic error as people think One Nation already does that well."
Mr Smith said voters tended to perceive the coalition as good economic managers, and that Mr Taylor needed to spruik his own product rather than be associated with One Nation on issues such as immigration.
The budget reply speech will be delivered in the context of right-wing political party One Nation winning its first lower house seat in the federal parliament at the election.
The minor party managed to wrest former Liberal leader Sussan Ley's seat, which has been held exclusively by the coalition since the electorate's creation in 1949, at the by-election last Saturday.
The election was seen as a litmus test for swelling support in the community for One Nation, which voters now rate higher than the coalition in opinion polls.
Coalition politicians are increasingly concerned they could face a wipe-out event at the next federal election, with regional seats in NSW and Queensland considered at particular risk.
Riding on community sentiment that Australia's migrant intake is too high, Mr Taylor has promised to only allow arrivals that are equivalent to the number of homes built in the previous year.
But the Greens and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson have accused the coalition of copying the party's policies on migration.
