Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

Essential Research records a tick in the Coalition’s favour on voting intention, and finds an even balance of opinion on car industry support, drawing on superannuation to buy a home and United Nations criticism of Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.

It’s been a very quiet week for federal polling, leaving the regular weekly Essential Research result as the only game in town. The fortnightly rolling average on voting intention ticks a point in the Coalition’s favour, with Labor’s lead narrowing from 53-47 to 52-48. However, the only change on the primary vote is a one point drop for Labor to 39%, with the Coalition, Greens and Palmer United steady on 40%, 9% and 2%.

Further questions relate to the Intergenerational Report, of which 45% of respondents professed no awareness. When prodded about one of its findings, 41% offered that more older people in the workforce would be good for Australia (notably higher among older cohorts of respondents) versus 31% for bad; and in relation to one of its non-findings, 46% agreed climate change should be a priority versus 33% for not a priority. Strikingly, quite large majorities said they expected children, young adults, families, the middle-aged and retirees to become worse off over the next 40 years.

Opinion on the government’s reinstatement of funding for the car industry was evenly divided, with 38% approving and 39% disapproving, which slightly surprises me in that industry protection usually gets the thumbs up in opinion polls, rightly or wrongly. Joe Hockey’s short-lived notion that people should be allowed to access their superannuation to buy a home went down better with respondents than with some of his colleagues, with 41% supportive and 46% opposed. The poll also suggests Tony Abbott was not on exceedingly dangerous ground with his response to United Nations criticism of Australia in relation to asylum seekers, which was found to be of concern to 44% of respondents and not of concern to 48%.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

754 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  3. The Mordor Orcs are taking the LNP defeat in the Senate well 😆

    [Chris Kenny
    SENATOR Jacqui Lambie has finally banished into history the outdated concepts of democracy and meritocracy. ]

  4. [ Sadly for Tones, the crossbenchers with the most to lose in a DD are those that already typically side with the government, plus Clive Palmer. ]

    all i can say to that is…Har Fwarking Har. 🙂

  5. [ The Mordor Orcs are taking the LNP defeat in the Senate well 😆 ]

    Wow, just had a read of that. Kenny is a bitter and twisted little waste of space isnt he?

  9. And more:
    [ GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes · 3h 3 hours ago

    #Morgan Poll WA State 2 Party Preferred: LIB 49.5 (-0.5) ALP 50.5 (+0.5) #wapol #auspol]

    Within MOE, too close to call, etc., etc.. but on the right track.

    Not sure whether that’s due to “it’s time” factor for Barnett or just general toxicity of brand LNP.

  15. Truly hilarious. Last week Chris Kenny banged on about some great media conspiracy to “get Abbott” and the unfair press coverage of his gov.

    Flicked over to see what Paul Murray is caterwauling about these days and guess what ? Same as Chris Kenny.

    Mordor Orcs crying about everyone picking on widdle Tones.

  17. State Government changes to TAFE are already showing results, a 3 year diploma now squashed into 2 years, fees $600 to $1,200, and students level of work dropping away.

    You have to give it to these Libs, they know how to shaft education.

  19. mikehilliard

    I recently had a look at courses with a view to a diploma in an area that would have been a handy new area to have . Choked on my Wheaties to see the new fees. Just on $10,000.

  21. Poroti 584

    Was very interesting reading the tweets between The Kouk and other journos. Waiting to see what they write about now. Laura Tingle is the best chance to follow up

  22. While on the Guardian site – following the link to the DD article was this gem, from way, way back in in July 2014:

    Tony Abbott says all senators were ‘legitimately, democratically elected’
    an excerpt:
    [Tony Abbott has described each of the new crossbench senators as “legitimately, democratically elected” – despite a likely overhaul of the voting system to counter the rise of micro-parties.
    ]
    Has it really just been just 8½ months since the senator’s took their seats?

  24. [GhostWhoVotes @GhostWhoVotes · 2h 2 hours ago

    #Morgan Poll WA Preferred Premier: Barnett LIB 39.5 (0) McGowan ALP 60.5 (0) #wapol #auspol]

    I blame The Abbott Factor.

  25. poroti

    Yeah, I’m talking from a NSW perspective but until recently it was free, I don’t remember voting for it otherwise.

    I see it as the private sector wants TAFE to cost the equivalent of their fees, just another case of the Libs looking after their mates, need I mention Whitehouse.

  27. It has long been my view that apart from policy decisions that I think are just bad , which is probably my left bias showing the Tories are just a bunch of political babes in the woods,

    So much of what they do is simply bad politics and it blows up in their faces.

    The news that Abbott floated the idea of a DD is the latest example of this.

    Regardless of Credlin’s influence over Abbott, surely Loughnane would be telling him what a BAD IDEA this would be if your aim was to get a friendlier Senate.

    dumb and dumber springs to mind

  29. GG

    I noticed in an earlier post that you said you thought if a DD was called by Abbott this year it would be a close run thing.

    Perhaps it would, but Labor would have some devastating stuff to throw at the Libs. All they would have to do is remind the great unwashed of everything nasty thing Abbott has tried to get through the senate over the last eighteen months and point out that if they vote him back that’s what they will get. (Medicare co-payment,$100,000 university degrees, cuts to the old age pension, six month waiting period for unemployment benefits etc). And if Abbott responds with the tired old “dead, buried and cremated porky Shorten can remind them about all his broken promises last time and what a compulsive liar he has shown himself to be.

    Add to that the fact that more than sixty percent of the electorate don’t like him anyway and it’s hard to see how he could persuade enough of them to risk voting for him again.

  31. [“Fess

    Yep. The electorate has become rather jaded with the Abbott”]

    Actually we are seeing a pattern….

    When Labor is in power federally, the punters kick them out of the States.

    When the Coalition is in power federally, the punters kick the out of the States.

    So in other words… situation normal

  32. Find those leadership numbers in WA a bit hard to believe.

    I know The Emperor is not travelling well at the moment – and his total turn around on the Max Light Rail and other promises has made him look even worse – but it was a little while ago that McGowan was being bagged for not coming out with “policies”.

    The West in particular has been harping on about McGowan’s invisibility.

    But then, two elections ago, Barnett was on the verge of retiring until Alan Carpenter gave him the government.

    It may well be a truism that governments lose office rather than oppositions win them.

    The fact that the shivers are going down the spines of many here in WA due to lose of jobs, potential loss of jobs and the boom being over all adds to the gloom for the conservatives.

    Having said that there is still a Federal election to go before the State one and two years is a lifetime in politics.

    Still, with Nahan hanging on to straws in the wind about greater shares for WA of the GST cake, hope lives eternal.

    There is, of course the new stadium to come as well as Betty’s Jetty as a sign the government is delivering.

  36. With Abbott as a leader, the Libs really have little,chance.
    With someone (really anyone) else, a good campaign and a helpful media (sigh), they are a rea,l viable chance.
    This is the crux of their dilemma.

  38. The chance of a DD is vanishingly small. Not even Tones is nuts enough for the nuclear option (he says, nervous about completing any sentence starting “Not even Tones is nuts enough to…”)

    But, if there were, while minors would be favoured, and the number of minors would probably not fall, there would be no real advantage in the GVT preference snowball lottery to existing Senators and so the current ones would not likely be returned.

    Specifically:

    X would be in in a canter.

    Leyonjhelm and Muir would have very little chance of reelection with no effective base; Madigan and Day would be slightly better but still low. Lazarus as an independent would have great name recognition but little base otherwise.

    Lambie I would give somewhat better than 50-50 odds.

  39. Tricot

    I take little notice of The West’s harping, and I know you don’t either.

    It must be a terrible thing being a political reporter there knowing that there are two years before the next election and apart from Barnett backflips and the parlous state of WA’s finances there is precious little to write about and fewer and fewer readers care anyway.

    They would no doubt dearly lobe some Labor infighting to report on bit that probably won’t happen until closer to the election when we will again be treated to meaningless speculation about preselections and the Missos and the Shoppies and the new left, the old right, the centre and the left right out.

    Never mind, footy season is only a week or two away. People in other states might be interested that The Big News in The West Australian today was the scandal over high food prices at the footy.

    Always tackling the big issues, The West.

  41. [Dunno why Kate Carnell bothered turning up for 7.30. Sabra did a perfectly good job of putting her case for her.]

    Yes indeed. Don’t know if I was imagining things, Ged Kearney appeared to be glaring at Lane at the end of the interview. If she was it was certainly justified.

    Sabra Lane is just another coalition shrill infesting our ABC.

  44. We were better off when the top tax rate was 80%.

    [To return to my original point. The problem with wealthy people is that they don’t spend it. They can’t. It isn’t humanly possible. What wealthy people do is hoard their cash in property, paintings, commodities, gold and other forms of speculation, which is why we have real-estate bubbles.

    Grossly unequal distribution of wealth deflates effective demand. Or, in layman’s language, because ordinary people haven’t money to buy stuff, the stuff doesn’t get made and the economy declines.

    There’s no secret why the 1950s and 60s were boom times. After the Second World War, governments used the taxation system to redistribute wealth and created consumer capitalism. Working people could buy washing machines, fridges, TVs and cars. They never had it so good. Yet, top tax rates in the UK and US in the 1950s were over 80 per cent.

    …….. The super-rich need to be saved from themselves.]

    https://iainmacwhirter.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/tax-isnt-just-a-moral-issue-inequality-is-inefficient-and-deflationary/

  46. BSA BOB
    [Dunno why Kate Carnell bothered turning up for 7.30. Sabra did a perfectly good job of putting her case for her.]

    Agree totally, what a disgraceful effort from Sabra Lane.

  47. Swamprat 694______
    __________
    I agree with your thesis re postwar world and the economy of the times after 1945

    High taxes of the rich and corporations, and a wider welfare network helped save capitalism for itself
    One UK historian I read,said that the Cold War and the fear of communism when in Italy,and France there were powerful communist parties…made the conservatives worried and they were prepared to except the post-war settlement as he called it
    In France De Gaulle carried out a big program of social welfare and nationalisation as did the Labor Govt in the UK and else where in Euro land

    Here Menzies never sught to destroy the works of the Curtin/Chifley after 1949

    but with the end of the Cold War Reagan Thatcher..and later Howard…all opened up the gates to unrestrained capitalism //let the feral banksters loose like so many wolves…which always brings disaster as happened in the “Twenties”

  49. deblonay

    Yes.

    I just wish the ALP in NSW would purge their right wing trickle-downer neo-liberals……………….

    Opps…..Obviously they can’t as if they did they wouldn’t have a “party”.

  50. [Yep. The electorate has become rather jaded with the Abbott]

    Abbott is a running joke. Someone posted on Facebook a link to an article about how some Naval ship docked in Sydney has blocked the multi million dollar Sydney harbour views of the Potts Point hoi polloi. Multitude of comments in response are about lifestyle choice, thereby mocking Abbott’s comments in relation to Australia’s most disadvantaged people, only applied to its wealthiest.

    It’s only a matter of time before the Liberal party wake up and smell the turn off when it comes to their federal leader.

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