Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Essential Research yet again records a solid lead for Labor on two-party preferred, but finds Malcolm Turnbull moving clear as preferred Liberal leader.

The Guardian, which joins the fun by spruiking the result as the “eightieth straight loss” for the Turnbull government, reports that Labor holds a lead of 53-47 in the latest Essential Research poll, out from 52-48 a fortnight ago. The poll also features Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which find Malcolm Turnbull’s lead over Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister unchanged at 41-26 (a growing contrast with the narrow results from Newspoll); a 39% approval rating for Turnbull, down two, and a disapproval rating of 42%, down one; and a 35% approval rating for Bill Shorten, down two, and a disapproval rating of 43%, down one.

A question on preferred Liberal leader finds Turnbull moving clear of Julie Bishop since the last such result in December – he’s up three to 24%, with Bishop down two to 17%. Both are well clear of the more conservative alternatives of Tony Abbott, on 11% (up one) and 3% (down one). Scott Morrison scores only 2%, unchanged on last time. When asked who they would prefer in the absence of Turnbull, 26% opted for Bishop and 16% for Abbott, with Dutton and Morrison both on 5%. Also featured is an occasional question on leaders’ attributes, but I would want to see the raw numbers before drawing any conclusions from them. Those should be with us, along with primary votes, when Essential Research publishes its full report later today.

UPDATE: Full report here. The primary votes are Coalition 38%, Labor 37% (up one), Greens 10% (up one), One Nation 7% (down one).

Also today, courtesy of The Australian, are results from the weekend’s Newspoll which find support for a republic at 50%, down one since last August, with opposition up three to 41%. With the qualification of Prince Charles ascending the throne, support rises to 55%, unchanged since August, while opposition is at 35%, up one.

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.

2,361 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

Comments Page 5 of 48
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  2. Steve777 @ #172 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 11:47 am

    Australia’s political history does seem to move in eras, with periods of stability separated by periods that are more or less chaotic.

    { }

    Then the Hawke-Keating era. I’m not sure whether we have a Fraser-Hawke-Keating era.

    Howard marked a definite break. His nearly 12 years in power changed Australia to the smaller, meaner and far less fair and equal country it is today.

    Then Rudd, who started well but unravelled after two years. A chaotic era started late 2009 which is still playing out. At one stage it looked like a Turnbull era might have started, but his probably short reign will most likely just be lumped in with Rudd-Gillard-Abbott-Turnbull in a decade of chaos.

    I am hopeful and fearful about what comes next.

    I think there is room for optimism on two fronts –

    * people are tired of the chaos, and any RGR chaos public memories have been completely blitzed by the current mob, and Labor’s disciplined stability has taken root in peoples mind

    * and secondly, I think the pendulum swing, on top of the general drift, to the right has reached amplitude, and there is seen / felt to be a need to restore balance, under the banner of equality, fairness and social stability.

    The polls reflect that – Turnbull was hoped to deliver both and got high polling numbers when he took over with the RGR and Abbott shit still fresh in people’s minds, but the realisation that he can deliver neither now an entrenched reality sees him in the feckless position he is in now.

  5. zoomster says:
    Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 12:21 pm

    …”No, there were toxic times before that – the Hillary/Obama wars spring to mind – but the present nastiness pretty much began when you started posting”…

    I may have put out of joint, the noses of several people who are far more familiar with having their proselytism accepted here as gospel, but responsibility for exactly the same people having precisely the same argument today, in the same spiteful fashion, that they were having a decade ago, is a burden to great to bare.

    It is ludicrous for you to suggest that I am.

  6. Absence of Empathy @ #175 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 11:51 am

    A few of Confessions gems from late last night on the old thread, that I thought bare repeating here in case any of her many supporters might have missed them.
    Her bullying attacks were directed at both myself and one other person (not Bemused) and were both unprovoked and idiotic…

    Confessions says:
    Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 12:15 am

    “Oh please. Criticising Rudd’s comments is akin to giving the Liberals a pass? Where do you get this hysterical bullshit from?”

    “And speaking of hysterical bullshit, you seem to have a particular penchant for it.”

    “If that were true you wouldn’t be so sensitive to my criticism of you as just another hysterical moron and you would ignore me.”

    “Would you like me to hand you a tissue? Yeesh, grow a pair instead of carrying on like a whiny little hysterical so and so.”

    …
    Now I admit that early on in her tirade, I told her of she was a “dimwit” and told her to “fuck off”.
    But I claim a truth and self preservation defense.

    Now, a person who makes unwarranted, abusive attacks, then accuses the person they are attacking of abuse, and then tells that person they are a “whiny, hysterical, moron who should grow a pair”, that person is a bully, full stop.

    She did the same thing a week or so ago, has done it any number of times in the past to various people, most of whom don’t operate on the same sub-optimal mental plane she does.

    I repeat, she is ignorant, and a bully and should fuck off, or the bloke in charge of this blog should make her do so.

    William is actually one of her protectors, so you won’t see anything happen there.

    Anyway, good to see someone else on PB who can see right through this extremely shallow and pretentious person.

  7. I’ve been offline this morning. Perhaps it’s just as well. 😉

    After Mr Rudd’s crack at Shorten yesterday, it’s a no-brainer that he’d back Albanese, who was one of his ‘secret admirers’ during the Gillard era.

  8. Steve777 @ #178 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 12:01 pm

    “Centre Alliance”, yes, that name is a bit washy-washy. And anything with ‘alliance’ in its title sounds dodgy these days, given that’s often used by Astroturf groups to opposed to things like same sex marriage or tobacco plain packaging. ‘Australian Democrats’ is sort of still taken. There was the ‘Australia Party’ but that would now sound like some Far Right group. Ditto “Australia Best”.

    What X is trying to do is create a new version of the “Liberal” party which isn’t full of RWNJs. I’m not sure what a good name for that would be.

    “Dickheads Alliance” is a better fit.

  9. Barnaby Joyce’s eyebrow-raising Christmas deadline, by which he says the PM should step down if he hasn’t righted the ship, signals a dangerous new mood of abandon in intra-government dynamics.

    As do the frank admissions from a trio of Turnbull-loyal cabinet ministers (Peter Dutton, Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison) that each harbours ambitions for the top job should the current leadership teeter.

    Coming so closely on the back of Joyce’s extraordinary contribution to the government’s woes, the former Nats’ leader is perhaps the last person to be lecturing others on the delivery of unspectacular line-and-length governance. Joyce, let’s not forget, had fumed when Liberals reflected on Nats’ leadership issues. He promised never to do so regarding the Libs. Now he’s set the timer on Turnbull’s term.

    But we must look past such contradictions. Each of these forays, which are coincidental with Malcolm Turnbull’s 30-Newspoll losing streak, attests to the plausibility of a future leadership collapse.

    https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/for-malcolm-turnbull-christmas-is-the-new-30-20180410-p4z8pv.html

  10. zoomster @ #192 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 12:21 pm

    Absence

    No, there were toxic times before that – the Hillary/Obama wars spring to mind – but the present nastiness pretty much began when you started posting.

    As for myself, I’ve got to talk with people who were actually there, and I report what they say happened. Posters can accept that information or not, it’s absolutely no skin off my nose. I’d just suggest it’s more reliable that anything put out by the CPG.

    It happens to anyone who speaks the truth and doesn’t buckle when attacked by the mob.

    AofE is a welcome addition.

  13. Steve777 @ #178 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 12:01 pm

    What X is trying to do is create a new version of the “Liberal” party which isn’t full of RWNJs. I’m not sure what a good name for that would be.

    So you ditch the racism, keep the corporatocracy, and change the energy policy from “MORE COAL, RAWR!!!!” to “we don’t care, that’s for the market to decide”.

    I’d name that A Marginal Improvement.

  14. I think the name “Centre Alliance” will put paid to Rebekha Sharkie’s chances next election – even though she has built up a very good reputation in Mayo.

  16. More important news than fucking Rudd/Gillard

    TODAY

    —FBI raids Michael Cohen
    —Trump family biz and Panama
    —Mississippi gets first woman senator
    —John Bolton’s first day as NSA
    —Zuckerberg meets with senators
    —Trump teases Syria action
    —CBO says the deficit is exploding
    —Senator Duckworth gives birth
    —More Pruitt fallout

  17. For those waiting with bated breath for an update on my computer situation, I tried Bug1’s DNS settings and the TCP/IP thing that somebody else suggested. Neither worked. But thanks for the help.

  20. bemused says:

    Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 12:51 pm

    Scout @ #174 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 11:51 am

    Bemused – genuine? Do you have any concern with the letter Kevin Rudd submitted to the financial review?

    What useful purpose did it serve?

    Well I don’t see it as having done any harm so why all the fuss?

    Yep – the display of petulance is just that!

  21. It has been a while since I have posted, can some kind soul please remind me how I quote another post properly?

    thanks in advance

  22. Absence of Empathy says:
    Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 12:52 pm

    I may have put out of joint, the noses of several people who are far more familiar with having their proselytism accepted here as gospel, but responsibility for exactly the same people having precisely the same argument today, in the same spiteful fashion, that they were having a decade ago, is a burden to great to bare.

    It is ludicrous for you to suggest that I am.

    I doubt that anyone’s nose is out of joint, and certainly not for anything you may have said. It is wise not to think that any one person has a huge influence on this blog.

    One thing I have learned to accept as a direct result of more than ten years on this blog (and that time scale gives no special privileges or insight, I hasten to add) is that different people have different opinions, and I am grateful that William allows us to express those opinions without fear or favour, intervening mercifully little, except for a nudge now and then when somebody gets above themselves.

    Many of us express opinions here, but expecting them to be influential is drawing a long bow.

    There’s nowt so queer as folk.

  23. Absence, your advice on how the blog should be run is most unlikely ever to impress me. The exchange you describe would be seen as give-and-take faults-on-both-sides by any reasonable person.

  24. Computer situation?

    Wild guess – if you’ve switched to Google’s DNS and are still getting some sort of weirdness after running some third-party troubleshooting tool, try disabling IPv6.

    Start -> Settings -> Network and Internet -> Change adapter options -> <Right-click on your network adapter> -> Properties, then uncheck the ‘Internet Protocol Version 6’ box and hit ‘OK’.

    Additionally, try an Incognito window to confirm that it’s not some plugin or extension or cookies or similar that’s causing the weirdness.

  25. I will be drawing a line under accusations of bullying and stalking and suggestions that other comments should fuck off.

  26. As a student of history, I suspect that 100 years from now, this period will be remembered as the Rudd/Abbott era of instability because their actions in and out of power will be seen as the main game historically.

    Turnbull and Gillard will likely only get cameo mentions.

  27. Scout says:
    Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 1:37 pm
    It has been a while since I have posted, can some kind soul please remind me how I quote another post properly?

    _________________________________________

    There is an additional script you can add which makes posting easy, KayJay is the expert, and no doubt will post instructions when he sees your request.

    I use the ‘plain vanilla’ unchanged version of the blog, and it suits me well enough.

    Quoting can be as simple as highlight the post, copy, and paste into the ‘Leave a Reply’ box.

    You can then leave a shift – minus line like so:

    _________________________

    and then type up your reply, and press ‘post comment’.

    If you want, you can make the person’s quote in italics by using less than and greater than brackets around an i and a /i like so:

    (i) this is in italics (/i)

    But using the less than and greater than symbols instead of round brackets.

  29. Scout says:
    Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 1:37 pm
    It has been a while since I have posted, can some kind soul please remind me how I quote another post properly?

    There is an additional script you can add which makes posting easy, KayJay is the expert, and no doubt will post instructions when he sees your request.

    I use the ‘plain vanilla’ unchanged version of the blog, and it suits me well enough.

    Quoting can be as simple as highlight the post, copy, and paste into the ‘Leave a Reply’ box.

    You can then leave a shift – minus line like so:

    _________________________

    and then type up your reply, and press ‘post comment’.

    If you want, you can make the person’s quote in italics by using less than and greater than brackets around an i and a /i like so:

    (i) this is in italics (/i)

    But using the less than and greater than symbols instead of round brackets.
    _

    Thanks Don

  31. William, I believe last night a command ‘ping http://www.pollbludger.net‘ was failing , hence the dns suggestions.
    Try (I think it should work on both PC or Mac):

    C:>nslookup http://www.pollbludger.net
    Server: ip-10-132-0-2.ap-southeast-2.compute.internal
    Address: 10.132.0.2

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name: pollbludger.net
    Addresses: 2407:e700:3:26::2a
    103.18.109.167
    Aliases: http://www.pollbludger.net

    Also for example

    C:>nslookup http://www.crikey.com.au
    Server: ip-10-132-0-2.ap-southeast-2.compute.internal
    Address: 10.132.0.2

    Non-authoritative answer:
    Name: http://www.crikey.com.au
    Addresses: 2400:cb00:2048:1::6819:336b
    2400:cb00:2048:1::6819:346b
    104.25.52.107
    104.25.51.107

  32. jenauthor says:
    Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 1:44 pm
    As a student of history, I suspect that 100 years from now, this period will be remembered as the Rudd/Abbott era of instability because their actions in and out of power will be seen as the main game historically.

    Turnbull and Gillard will likely only get cameo mentions

    It hurts me to say this, but I fear you are right. That is a good insight, thank you.

    That such people as Rudd and Abbott have had such a huge and lasting influence on the Australian political scene is sad indeed.

  33. with the commands above do not add the http:// – that was added by the blogging software, so it should be command http://www.pollbludger.net:

    nslookup -hostname-

    eg.
    nslookup http://www.pollbludger.net

    Also look at the text file: c:Windowssystem32driversetchosts

    it should look like this:

    C:Usersjohn.reidy>type c:Windowssystem32driversetchosts
    # Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
    #
    # This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
    #
    # This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
    # entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
    # be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
    # The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
    # space.
    #
    # Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
    # lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
    #
    # For example:
    #
    # 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
    # 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

    # localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
    # 127.0.0.1 localhost
    # ::1 localhost

  37. John, I entered what you suggest in command line, and got responses that look like what you have provided. I’m not sure where that leaves me though.

  38. Zoidlord @ #216 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 1:24 pm

    More important news than fucking Rudd/Gillard

    TODAY

    —FBI raids Michael Cohen
    —Trump family biz and Panama
    —Mississippi gets first woman senator
    —John Bolton’s first day as NSA
    —Zuckerberg meets with senators
    —Trump teases Syria action
    —CBO says the deficit is exploding
    —Senator Duckworth gives birth
    —More Pruitt fallout

    Typical of you to miss the biggest news story of the day!

  41. Any thoughts that Rudd might yet publically damage shorten ? He didn’t do so in 2016 but he is more independent now .. The constant Rudd defamation evidenced on pb – typifying internal party opinions – will only fuel this possibility ..the party made a monumental mistake in 2010 and the public and Rudd are owed an apology ..unfortunately shorten does not seem rhetorical gifted enough or magnaminous in attitude to do this … Or at lease make due regards of Rudd

  43. I read back through sams post last night. Seems the reason we send stock on boats is that it is cheaper put them on a boat alive, fatten them up and slaughter in the overseas destination than fatten them up and slaughter them here and transport the packaged meat.

    Not so much about cultural factors.

    Perhaps the solution is to subsidise either the fattening or the slaughter (or both) here in Aus under the guise of a humane subsidy. But I wonder how much of this is just maximising profit than real world competition dictating the choice. What next – shipping all our grapes to China to have them turned to wine?

  45. BK
    “I think the name “Centre Alliance” will put paid to Rebekha Sharkie’s chances next election – even though she has built up a very good reputation in Mayo.”

    Sharkie may face an election sooner than most. If Gallagher falls afoul of the High Court re citizenship/”reasonable steps”, then Sharkie will be one of the dominoes to fall. A Mayo by-election would be in the offing.

  46. Geoffrey – why the , should Shorten apologise to Rudd??? Seriously

    As stated previously – 99.99% of people go through some sort of trauma but they do not have a platform that Rudd does AND would have moved on by now instead of acting like a petulant child.

    I like others have been sucked in to this as distraction – can not believe the immaturity and self indulgence.

    The battle should be about fighting the huge tax cuts to those who don’t need it, lack of wage growth, etc etc

  47. don @ #230 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 1:53 pm

    jenauthor says:
    Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 1:44 pm
    As a student of history, I suspect that 100 years from now, this period will be remembered as the Rudd/Abbott era of instability because their actions in and out of power will be seen as the main game historically.

    Turnbull and Gillard will likely only get cameo mentions

    It hurts me to say this, but I fear you are right. That is a good insight, thank you.

    That such people as Rudd and Abbott have had such a huge and lasting influence on the Australian political scene is sad indeed.

    I think a historian might even start the period earlier or at least identify warning signs. The Latham – Rudd LOTO period was a harbinger as was the Costello period and of course the Nelson, Turnbull Abbott LOTO.

  48. Scout @ #244 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 2:09 pm

    Geoffrey – why the , should Shorten apologise to Rudd??? Seriously

    As stated previously – 99.99% of people go through some sort of trauma but they do not have a platform that Rudd does AND would have moved on by now instead of acting like a petulant child.

    I like others have been sucked in to this as distraction – can not believe the immaturity and self indulgence.

    The battle should be about fighting the huge tax cuts to those who don’t need it, lack of wage growth, etc etc

    Actually Scout the real issue RIGHT NOW is will we have WWII sometime in the next two months.

    The rest is pretty meaningless.

  50. An apology to Rudd and Aussies? Puhlease …

    You jump into the oven, you might just get burned (actually, you’re almost certain to).

    Politics is not for the faint-hearted or for those who need apologies.

    Besides, few here actually know the inside story – most operate on their own allegiances and in some cases ‘fandom’ which might or might not be based on facts.

    Media foment different arguments and beliefs to garner ‘good stories’ to fill ‘column inches’. Truth matters little, and the more unsavoury, the more distorted the better because it’ll get the public’s attention.

    The pro/anti Rudd/Gillard/Albanese/Shorten/Turnbull … etc etc stuff is moot when you really think about it. It is fun to discuss and argue about, but most of the time we’re all just blowing hot air.

    We’re tribal creatures, and politics is the ultimate tribal sport.

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