Essential Research leadership ratings and preselection latest

A second pollster suggests Scott Morrison’s recent slump to have been short-lived, as Eric Abetz gets dumped from his customary position at the top of the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket.

First up, note two posts below this one dealing with ongoing electoral events: the resolution to the Tasmanian election count and the New South Wales state by-election for Upper Hunter on Saturday week.

The Guardian today reports on the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll, which includes the monthly leadership ratings. As was the case with Newspoll, this finds Scott Morrison pulling out of the slump that followed the Brittany Higgins and Christian Porter episodes, with his approval up four to 58% and disapproval to five to 32%, without quite restoring him to the respective 62% and 29% he recorded in the March poll. The recovery has been particularly pronounced with women, among whom he is up nine points on approval to 55% and down eight on disapproval to 34%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister has widened from 47-28 to 50-24; Anthony Albanese’s ratings are said to be “constant compared to his standing last month”, when he had 39% approval and 34% disapproval.

The poll also finds 48% support and 27% opposition for the India travel ban, with 41% supporting jail time and fines and 33% opposed. However, 56% said they would support allowing citizens to return “provided they complete the necessary quarantine procedures when they arrive”, with 22% opposed. There was also a suite of questions on budget priorities that are probably better saved for the full poll release, which should be along later today.

UPDATE: Full report here. Albanese turns out to be steady on 39% approval and up one on disapproval to 35%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1092.

Some notable preselection action to report:

• The Tasmanian Liberal Senate preselection has seen Eric Abetz, long the dominant figure in the state branch, dumped to the loseable number three position behind fellow incumbents Jonathon Duniam and Wendy Askew. A source quoted by Sue Bailey of The Mercury said Abetz won the first round of the ballot for top position with 29 votes to Duniam’s 26 and Askew’s 12, before Duniam prevailed on the second round with 36 votes to Abetz’s 31. Askew then defeated Abetz in the ballot for second position by 37 votes to 30.

• Labor’s preselection for the new seat of Hawke on Melbourne’s north-western fringe is in limbo after the Victorian Supreme Court ruled a challenge by ten unions against the federal party organisation’s takeover of the process should proceed to a trial on May 26. This complicates former state secretary Sam Rae’s bid for the seat, which was set to be signed off on by the national executive under the terms of a deal reached between elements of the Left and Right, with Rae being a member of the latter. The Age reports Rae “will be challenged by Maribyrnong councillor Sarah Carter and former Melton council candidate Deepti Alurkar” – I’m not sure where this leaves state government minister Natalie Hutchins, earlier identified as Rae’s chief rival. Hutchins is an ally of Bill Shorten and the Australian Workers Union, who have been frozen out of the aforesaid factional deal.

• Barnaby Joyce has easily seen off a challenge for the Nationals preselection in New England from Tenterfield army officer Alex Rubin, whom he defeated in the local members’ ballot by 112 votes to 12.

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.

2,861 comments on “Essential Research leadership ratings and preselection latest”

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  1. Rossmcg @ #198 Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 – 12:55 pm

    Sorry Rex, the Abbott style of opposition only works if you have a media cheersquad backing your every move.

    Abbott donned the helmet and glasses and high-vis every day for the media circus. They probably send the work experience kid for Albanese.

    The three word slogans were very effective at those daily events. Labor already has a collection of them to run with. On yer bike Albo.

  2. Well, it’s good to know Vic officials know the primary source.

    How on earth can you say that? – he has become symptomatic at least 18 days after arriving in Australia. Hopefully this is an atypical presentation but infection from within Australia is not ruled out.

  3. Poroti, if you’re still waiting for the op, give the doctors and nurses a dose of your sense of humour & put them in a good mood for their theatrical performance.

  4. How will Morrisons handling of China and India effect the LNP vote. Will he have lost or gained voters in these cohorts at the next election?
    Will he have gained more voters in his traditional base to offset any loss.

  5. Sadly many people on here will have been born under the Liberals (Menzies ) come of age under Howard and will die under ScoMo.

    ————————————————————————-

    Don’t overlook those of us who were born under turncoat Joe Lyons and came of age under Menzies.

    Maybe not Paris, but we’ll always have John Curtin and Ben Chifley.

    Morrison be damned. We’re going to hang around until Labor is returned to government.

  6. Tim Watts MP
    @TimWattsMP
    ·
    1h
    Andrew Laming returns to the floor of the House of Representatives as a member of the Liberal Party on the government benches.

    How can Morrison accept this tainted mans vote ..??

  7. Craig Platt
    @CPtraveller
    ·
    59m
    If you’re like me, your first response has probably been to hit up Google and find out where the hell Wollert is
    _____________________
    For those of you who don’t know, Wollert is an Epping long way away from most of us…

  8. mundo @ #168 Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 – 12:02 pm

    Player One @ #51 Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 – 11:41 am

    Labor’s “on your side” has to be the lamest political slogan since “we are us”.

    No, on second thoughts, it’s actually worse – at least “we are us” tried to de-emphasize the fact that politicians are so out of touch with ordinary voter’s problems that they may as well be a different breed, whereas at best what “on your side” implies is “yes, we are different from you, but that’s ok because we are ‘on your side’”. At worst, it sounds like a command to docile voters – “Sit! Stay! On your side! Roll over! Vote Labor!”

    Who dreams this stuff up? More to the point, who looks at it, thinks to themselves “Yeah, that encapsulates Labor values” and approves it?

    I hope they at least got a money-back guarantee from whatever ad agency dreamed it up 🙁

    Been thinking the same thing.

    Oh, so that’s why the Coalition adopted it then?
    Because Player One and mundo think it’s lame.
    Actually, that’s probably the best reason I can think of.

  9. Rex Douglas @ #205 Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 – 1:14 pm

    Tim Watts MP
    @TimWattsMP
    ·
    1h
    Andrew Laming returns to the floor of the House of Representatives as a member of the Liberal Party on the government benches.

    How can Morrison accept this tainted mans vote ..??

    To be added to by the return of Christian Porter on the front bench next week.

    LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS, CANBERRA!

  10. This “Green”voter wants to be crystal clear. I want Labor to be the government.

    We know from polling 80% of Greens voters want the same.
    Why?

    It’s called accepting reality. Of the two major the base the Greens cater to want Labor as the government not the LNP.

    So every time you see a Labor partisan say the Greens want the LNP in government they are lying.

    So let’s be crystal clear and destroy this Labor myth with facts known through polling on a psephology blog

  11. guytaur @ #191 Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 – 12:35 pm

    A lesson from Biden.

    When Labor wins and they will at some point. The attacks calling you communists and socialists give you lots os scope to be exactly that.

    You won the campaign voters did not buy the communism socialist tropes the right uses.

    Edit: So note the attacks on Andrews Palasczcuk McGowan and Barr. Those attacks failed. Note why that’s different for NSW Victoria and South Australia. There is how you frame your campaign

    Sorry, guytaur, it works for the Reactionary Conservatives:

    They don’t print up the banners if it doesn’t work and hasn’t been workshopped through a 100 focus groups. As above, so below here in the Southern Hemisphere.

  12. Lars Von Triersays:
    Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 12:14 pm

    “The all time record for wasted money must be the actu your rights at work campaign in 2019. What was it 30 mill ?

    The ad agency must have seen them coming from a mile away.”

    ………..

    Might be a good idea if you go ask Great Aunt Whats-Her-Face for a history lesson.

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00236561003654735

    “The unions’ Your Rights at Work campaign became the most significant political campaign mounted by a non-party political group in Australian history.”

    “The campaign was a major influence over people’s votes and the Australian Labor Party’s victory in the November election.”

  13. Cat

    They try. They don’t win elections without voter suppression.
    Like it or not. Those attacks failed. Trump with incumbency failed to win against Biden.

    So your example only proves with voter suppression the Democrats still won.

  14. Senator Murray Watt
    @MurrayWatt

    Today the Govt that says it’s fixed casualisation in mining is in the High Court, backing the big mining companies & labour hire firms that are abusing it. They like dressing up as miners, but they’re not on miners’ side.

    Watch what they do, not what they say.

  15. guytaur @ #215 Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 – 1:31 pm

    Cat

    They try. They don’t win elections without voter suppression.
    Like it or not. Those attacks failed. Trump with incumbency failed to win against Biden.

    So your example only proves with voter suppression the Democrats still won.

    Which is why EVERY Republican-run state in the US is enacting Voter Suppression laws right now! So it doesn’t happen again.

  16. Cat

    Yes. Proving my point. The GOP propaganda failed. It’s still failing. So the GOP is resorting to undemocratic means to suppress the vote.

    For Labor it’s the propaganda battle and McGowan Andrews et al all ran victorious campaigns against it. Whats so hard with using what’s worked for Labor?

  17. guytaur @ #218 Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 – 1:35 pm

    Cat

    Yes. Proving my point. The GOP propaganda failed. It’s still failing. So the GOP is resorting to undemocratic means to suppress the vote.

    For Labor it’s the propaganda battle and McGowan Andrews et al all ran victorious campaigns against it. Whats so hard with using what’s worked for Labor?

    Different mindsets in the electorate for State V Federal governments, for a start.

  18. Gareth Hutchens
    @grhutchens

    A few years ago, Australia’s federal budgets were promoted using the “household fallacy.”

    They made people think federal budgets operated within the same confines as household budgets.

    But after being mugged by reality in 2020, that fallacy’s been discarded as no longer useful.

  19. Question for the financially minded..

    Are there fixed term deposit accounts you’d recommend? The best I’ve seen are offering a whopping 1 (or thereabouts).

    Are there managed investments that do much better than this? Yes, I’m aware of super funds, but that also brings its own rules and complexity. Just straightforward investment.

  20. Cat

    The mindsets of people in the US UK and Australia are different. We look to common things in victories all the time. That means including looking at what has succeeded in the Labor victories in the states.

    That also means Labor in government not following the rights playbook on how to govern. Remember if Daniel Andrews had listened to the right Australia would be seeing the India scale disaster here with Covid.

    It’s exactly the same when the right calls Labor and the Greens for that matter, communists and socialists. Ignore them. Voters have shown they do.

    Take the lessons on the victorious Labor campaigns.

  21. guytaur says:
    Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 1:25 pm
    This “Green”voter wants to be crystal clear. I want Labor to be the government.

    You might want a Labor Government. 4/5 G-voters might want the same thing. However the party they support does not. The Greens campaign 24/7 against Labor. They run interference for the LNP whenever they can get away with it. They actively try to prevent Labor forming a majority Government. They do not represent the interests of their supporters.

  22. N

    So you assert.

    The facts from data we have say you are lying.

    Edit: of course the Greens want to be the government by winning the most seats they can.

  23. “But after being mugged by reality in 2020, that fallacy’s been discarded as no longer useful.”

    C@t

    The fiction that the Federal budget is the same as a household budget is still orthodoxy. The present government may be forced into “deficit” but that’s the whole point – its still seen as a “deficit”. The convention that Federal government spending must be matched by either tax revenue or issuance of debt is still being upheld.

    It does remind me of that chapter in Tom Sawyer where the slave is chained to a bedpost and stays chained despite the fact that you could easily lift the bedpost and free the chain.

    Consider what might have happened if the Federal government had responded in a different way to covid. Instead of issuing cash, it had instead issued loans. Income contingent loans the same as HECS. You pay it back once your income crosses a threshold. Ok so far?

    What happens here is that the accounting shows zero effect on “deficit”. Because the loan is itself an asset. Its the same as creating a GBE (like the NBN). The money you invest in it is “off budget” since its an asset.

    Now, having rescued the country by issuing loans, several years later the Federal government writes off those loans. (or it does so in stages – doesn’t matter). The “asset” that is the loans is written off. There’s no “deficit” involved (the asset simply disappears as its written off). And the economy goes on happily. What has happened here is that the government has effectively printed money (or rather keystroked it into existence) and spent it. That money has gone into the economy and magically, it doesn’t have to be “paid back” through taxes.

    This is just a round about method of pointing out that if you own the currency, you can create money and spend it, without maintaining the fiction of a “deficit” or “surplus”.

  24. Interesting.

    New data from Roy Morgan shows the preference for Australian-made goods increased during the COVID-19 impacted 2020, but fell for goods from Australia’s largest trading partner China. A huge majority of 93% of Australians said they are more likely to buy products made in Australia – up from 87% a year earlier. The big ‘loser’ during 2020 was Chinese-made goods with only 21% of Australians saying they’d be more likely to buy products made in China, a 9% points drop from 2019. Australian consumers are more likely to buy goods manufactured in nearest neighbour New Zealand on 55% than any other foreign country, despite a fall of 4% points from 2019. Right behind New Zealand is the UK on 51% (down 4% points), USA on 47% (down 7% points), Japan on 46% (down 7% points) and Germany on 46% (down 7% points). Of Australia’s top ten two-way trading partners in 2019-20* preferences for goods rose for four countries all in the Asia-Pacific region in 2020 led by Singapore on 34% (up 1% point on 2019), South Korea on 29% (up 1% point), Malaysia on 17% (up 2% points) and India on 17% (up 1% point). Overall, of twenty-one countries Australians were asked this question about, preference for goods rose for ten countries, fell for another ten countries, and was unchanged for only one country – Spain.

  25. guytaur says:
    Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 1:53 pm
    N

    So you assert.

    The facts from data we have say you are lying.

    The facts are there for all to see. The Greens utterly despise Labor. You need to separate your own views from those of the Greens. You have a very strong sense of attachment to the Greens. However, you are a supporter. You are not a Green practitioner.

    Consider the Labor-phobic diatribes posted here by card-carrying Greens. They detest Labor. They hope for Labor’s defeat. They despise social democracy in general and exhibit nothing but contempt for those who affiliate with and lead social democracy. Consider the spite they reserve for Biden, for example. Consider the loathing they have for the centre voices in UK Labour. Consider the malice they save for Labor in office in WA, Victoria and QLD. They are anti-Labor, no matter the preferences of their own supporters.

  26. Antony Green posted a tweet indicating the Tas libs may pick up 4 seats in Braddon based on the current preference flows.
    Just to be psephological for a moment.

  27. N

    You can keep on trying to lie to yourself. The facts tell a different story.

    Labor cannot take voters for granted. Voters like me vote Green because Labor has moved away from us.
    It’s why Labor can win so much in Western Australia and lose in Clark in Tasmania.

    As I said the other day. Be more PM Jacinda Ardern. Don’t be Sir Keir Starmer.

  28. The real question with regards the Greens is, what exactly do they have to offer. They have shown again and again they will put protects ahead of good policy. Thanks to the Greens we have had a decade of climate wars with nothing to show for it.

    All they offer at the moment is shit canning the leader off the opposition.

  29. FredNK

    Another lie. The Gillard government was a reality.
    Just face it. Labor is to blame for losing the election.
    If Labor had won the election we would still have a carbon price.

    You know. Good policy.

  30. Mrs & Mr Slurrie
    @WilmaSlurrie
    ·
    58m
    In Parliament, Morrison’s front bench has Keith Pitt, Christian Porter and Stuart Robert sitting together. And later, a budget aimed at wooing women …

  31. Question for the engineering types on here.
    I have just received a flyer about a battery to add on to our solar panels.
    From memory we have a 5kw invertor and panels to match.

    Should I chuck it in the rubbish or might it be worth following up.
    There are only 2 in the household but home much of the time.

  32. ar

    Until some Labor people stop blaming the Greens for Labor losing the election Labor won’t learn from their mistakes.

  33. @AdamBandt tweets

    In the middle of a climate crisis, the Budget looks set to give public money to new coal and gas.

    This Budget will make the climate and environment crisis worse.

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