Essential Research: 52-48 to Coalition

The latest weekly Essential Research survey has the Coalition gaining a point on two-party preferred after three weeks at 51-49. This sets a new record for their best ever performance from Essential Research, which began polling in early 2008. The Coalition primary vote is up a point to 46 per cent, with Labor and the Greens both down one to 37 per cent and 10 per cent. I guess we have to wait another weak for questions on Wikileaks: this week’s supplementary questions relate to whether it’s been a good or bad year for various industries, the environment, political parties, politicians and the respondents personally. Respondents were also asked which news sources they use, which more than any such question I’ve ever seen suggests the long hegemony of television news is under serious threat from “internet news sites”. Six per cent said they used blogs to get news on an average weekday, with intriguing party breakdowns: 10 per cent among Greens supporters, 7 per cent among Coalition supporters and 4 per cent among Labor supporters. Public broadcasters maintain solid lead as the news sources considered most trustworthy.

UPDATE: Roy Morgan phone polled another 528 respondents between Friday and Sunday to add to the 550 polled on Wednesday and Thursday for Friday’s 55-45 result. The additions to the sample have only slightly reduced the Coalition two-party lead, to 54.5-45.5. Together with a weekly Essential Research sample that was bad enough for Labor to drag the rolling fortnighly total from 51-49 to 52-48, there is now meaningful evidence to suggest the Coalition two-party vote is at least as high as 53 per cent. Morgan also has state breakdowns of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott’s personal ratings, though it probably wouldn’t do to read too much into them.

UPDATE 2 (14/12): Westpoll has published a survey of 400 respondents showing the federal Coalition with a two-party lead of 54-46 in WA, compared with 56.4-43.6 at the election, from primary votes of 48 per cent Coalition, 33 per cent Labor and 13 per cent Greens. The poll was conducted between Monday and Wednesday last week, and as usual the sample was 400 and the margin of error about 5 per cent. The poll also finds 61 per cent of respondents supporting gay marriage against 33 per cent opposed. Figures published from the survey yesterday had 35 per cent saying they would be less likely to vote for the state Liberals if Troy Buswell was returned to cabinet, against “almost one in six” more likely and 45 per cent no impact.

UPDATE 3 (14/12): Roy Morgan has now published full figures from the phone poll alluded to in the first update, remembering that half of this is the 55-45 result which was published on Friday. Taken together, the poll has Labor on 31 per cent, the Coalition on 46 per cent and the Greens on 13.5 per cent, with the Coalition’s two-party lead at 54.5-45.5. Results are provided for that half of the survey conducted since the results published on Friday, which are only slightly better for Labor than the Friday figures. Rather pointlessly for a national survey with 1078 respondents, they have also provided us with state breakdowns: here are the Labor two-party figures for each state followed by the election results in brackets, then a rough margin-of-error after the comma. The Victorian figure suggests to me that static from the state election might have been a factor there.

New South Wales: 45.5% (48.8%), 5.25%
Victoria: 47.5% (55.3%), 6%
Queensland: 36.5% (44.9%), 6.75%
Western Australia: 50% (43.6%), 9.5%
South Australia: 52% (53.2%), 10.5%

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.

3,482 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Coalition”

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  1. b-g

    fair enough. Bolt deserves more than a few subtle jibes. He is a disgrace. The sentiments expressed in that article I posted by Birmingham sums Bolt up perfectly.

  2. b_g

    Some seasonal cheer for you! Suggests Indonesian relative wages will rise 😉
    [The insouciant approach which President Obama and the U.S. budget negotiators have taken to the federal deficit, adding around $900 billion to deficits over the next two years with no countervailing spending cuts, has been greeted by a sharp rise in Treasury bond yields. This brings into focus a very delicate question: at what point does the U.S. government’s credit cease being the world’s “safe haven” and become merely a much larger and more dangerous version of Greece?…

    In the new world of easier outsourcing and more skilled emerging markets labor, wage differentials will narrow, and it is alas likely that much of that narrowing will come from downward pressure on U.S. wage rates.]
    http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/thebearslairview?art_id=10480

  3. [yet you and othr Pro Wikileakers avoid th REVERSE charge against Wikileaks of both gross iresponsibility & causing almost certain death to innocent hundreds by leaking in a 400,000] etc.

    what a load of baloney:

    1) if the practice concerning informants and their names are kept secret and hidden, how can you attribute blame to anyone for publishing or reading the names? The most you can accuse ANYONE of is ignorance, not irresponsibility.

    2) If an informant is killed, it is the killer that is the cause of deaths, the author of the correspondence is irresonponsible for naming them openly. The institution that failed to secure the information, the individual that breached security, etc. Wikileaks is at the end of this chain and is so far removed from the source of any deaths you assume to happen, they can’t be blamed.

    3) Ron – this is one of the points on which the Wikileaks incidence is marking the beginning of a new era. The sense that “somthings will never be the same again’ Concepts of confidentiality and trust are being seriously challenged by the scope and scale of this leak.

  4. blue_green@3438

    Dave

    I had found an earlier reference to the Indon aid budget being half of all our aid budget. it looks like that is wrong, but it is still the largest though.

    Yeah. It just didn’t sound right to me.

    On GDP size –
    Indon – $1,027.4 B 234 Million people
    Aust – $ 882.3 B say 22 Million people.

    Having an Indon President like SBY is one of the best things going for both of our countries.

    Our aid to schools etc particularly to show the kids in radical religious schools that there are other, much more logical ideas around, by improving education delivery.

    While the indons deserve credit for crackdowns on radicals & terrorists in recent years, our aid via the AFP and modern technology that came with that aid have also been a huge assistance.

    The great irony is that Indonesia is now, arguably more democratic in the true sense of the word than most other asian countries. Our aid has played a significant role in that as well.

    Still a long way to go for the Indons, but I my view our aid to them is in our interests and theirs and is generally well spent.

    Keating used to say that the Indons under Suharto had saved us many billions of dollars in additional defence spending then might have been the case. In saying that I also hasten to add Suharto had many faults as well.

    Bottom line is it is our interest that indonesia and its people prosper, that education & living standards continue to increase and that their democracy is stable.

  5. Using shock jocks callers as a basis of what middle australiens think is MSN shallow std

    boats is symbolic , very visable on TV , appear to be invadin , and they is actualy making an ilegal entry as well , and they is percived to be cheating th aussie motto of fair go by trying to jump th queu

    then they may be carrying diseases or criminals as well

    Abbott’s ‘stop boats’ legit plays into all of above by inneundo , and based on glimmers of legit truth actualy hich why it is effective tho th politcal elites not see that

    At other extreme spectrum is some radical assylum groups plus th foolish Greens polisy (per there own writtn polisty if obne reads all th points together) advocating an in effect open door polisy plus a govt subsidized future living std

    arguing correctly that A-S should detained at CI/east Timor to save drownings , that security & health wise that is also wise , and that health/security/status cheks need to be done there and BEFORE people arrive , but done with earliest speeed , and that in interim A-S be proper feed & properly medicalled , and if all is then ok then A-S should be open harts compassions welcomed as refugees to oz as poeples fleeing for there lives , is lost in this debate

    Lost to anti a-s extremes of a vocel minority , lost by lack of informd info publsehed to most middle oz thru our msn mis reporting of what IS happening , and by th looney radicals open door ideas that not only ar foolish but actualy help th extreme anti a-s vocal minority & derail th issues key points to middl oz as well

    It is why it is a diff issue for a (compassionate & true left) Labor Govt but not a Liberal Govt to handle , and get thru msn filters

  6. Talking of privacy in general. a “tech-head” person said to me about five years ago that within a 10-20 years there will be the capability to have full video streaming from a mobile “bot” about as big as an ant. Who will want to be famous then? Other than the sort of people who went on “Big Brother” that is!

  7. Grossly irresponsible in the opinion of a prime minister’

    I think the are trying to create one in the US called

    Grossly irresponsible in the opinion of the Secretary of State] retrospectively just in case during their trolling through Assange Manning chit chat their cant find something to twist as inducement.

    And on that score the story from Manning was that he sent one cable to WikiLeaks/Assange as a test, to see if he were speaking with the genuine article. When he was satisfied that it was the genuine group he picked up his dealings with Assange/Wiki.

    Now that surely the sending of a ‘test’ cable indicates that he always had the intention of releasing the whole lot even before contacting WikiLeaks.

    Like I said the US cant find a charge to make against Assange, using the usual application of the law, as the commentators have related numerous times in the USA.

    Now all the effort of the US is going in to trying to find a way to charge Assange with something that doesn’t mean having to sue the NYT which the original method would mean they would have to do. (and again it was pointed out that this method would fail in anycase).

    They are thus trying to find something to call inducement. Which going to be hard as WikiLeaks is a well know site and what it does, and thus if people contact it it will be for the purpose of leaking something. Just as a dental surgery is not inducement to have your tooth pulled. People will contact it and go there because they want it pulled.

    However, a decade of Bush corrupting everything about the US means due process and equitable application of the law don’t mean much any more. Just demonize the guy enough and people will stop asking questions.

  8. [Good to see the diggers now don’t have to buy their beer rations at xmas. ]

    Was the original decision to charge $5 made by the same defense chiefs who travel first class and stay in the very best hotels? What a bunch of tight arses. The soldiers must really respect them.

  9. Dave,

    Thanks again for your considered info. I agree that the aid effort in Indonesia is useful, especially in deradicalising youth.

    It just that I am not sure that the aid is better spent there or elsewhere. It may be a sort of tithing type thing. But I would have thought our relationship would be strong and mature enough not to need that sort of thing.

    Their economy is growing so fast (~6% pa) and our aid is a pittance compared to that. I jut wondered if it wasn’t worth investing elsewhere.

    But again, it is something that I am completely out of my depth on.

  10. & causing almost certain death to innocent hundreds

    Not true, Robert Gates has said these leaks haven’t caused anybody any harm. And we know that it hasn’t.

    Now if it had you would have to have your beef against the MSM for it is they that have reviewed, analysed and redacted cables before publishing them.

  11. victoria – thanks for that link. Just terrific but will it have any effect on him.

    Loved the way JG said clearly at her presser that her initial words on Wikileaks and Assange were not as reported. How quickly the media can trash someone’s image by just twisting or omitting words.

    She read out the her words from the first interview and they were exactly as Dee (I think)has posted here several times. Still some can’t interpret them properly because they don’t want to.

  12. [Loved the way JG said clearly at her presser that her initial words on Wikileaks and Assange were not as reported. ]

    She should have called a press conference the minute the false reporting began and she should have named the journalists and their employers as being the sources of misinformation. It’s more than a bit late to be trying to correct the record a week later.

  13. [3AW693 Coming up shortly: Dr Waleed Alkhazraju, fled by boat, stayed in detention and now works as an anesthetist in Australia. ]

    See those Victorians (except Bolt) are different.

  14. b_g:

    Having been a volunteer in Indonesia relatively recently, I’d say that what international development assistance Australia provides in Indonesia is useful and necessary.

    Data indicating broad economic trends cannot adequately describe the circumstances of everyday life in a country in which a significant (I think approximately 10%) proportion of the population does not have electricity, where no one has potable water coming out of their taps, where open sewers run down the sides of roads, and so on and so on.

    Sure there are other countries where circumstances are worse. We make grants of assistance to many of those countries as well.

    There are countries doing better as well. I’d think it a matter of interest, for example, that the multinational NGO World Vision allocates resources to providing assistance to remote Aboriginal communities in Australia.

    This has less to do with the maturity of relationships, than it does with meeting need. Australia still doesn’t meet it’s stated target in percentage of GDP terms for international development assistance. Before we start talking about which states should receive less in order to give other states more, maybe we should start with increasing the pool to the level we have committed to meeting.

  16. [This has less to do with the maturity of relationships, than it does with meeting need. Australia still doesn’t meet it’s stated target in percentage of GDP terms for international development assistance. Before we start talking about which states should receive less in order to give other states more, maybe we should start with increasing the pool to the level we have committed to meeting.]

    Fair point. Having said that though, our increased aid to Indonesia has come on the back of a declining effort across the Pacific.

  17. As someone earlier mentioned, Laura Tingle’s article today in the AFR on rent-seeking miners is interesting. More broadly, the state appears to be relatively weak – consider the unedifying spectacle of the state bail-outs of bank shareholders in EU and the US.

  18. [She should have called a press conference the minute the false reporting began and she should have named the journalists and their employers as being the sources of misinformation. It’s more than a bit late to be trying to correct the record a week later.]

    Tom H – I agree with that wholeheartedly. For some reason Labor has not been quick enough to counteract things and it is an awful failing.

    [3AW693 Coming up shortly: Dr Waleed Alkhazraju, fled by boat, stayed in detention and now works as an anesthetist in Australia. ]

    b_g I have been trying to find an article that Poss (I think) did some time ago. It mentioned that many people have views which they hold very weakly or loosely. They could be persuaded the other way so I reckon Labor has to try to persuade some of those people to see the problem differently. The Inverbrackie thing is a good start with getting help from the Churches and goodhearts in the community.

    I still reckon ridiculing a lot of what Abbott and his mob say would help too. Labor needs a bloke who can do that.

  21. Mr Squiggle
    Posted Friday, December 17, 2010 at 3:56 pm | Permalink

    Yet you and othr Pro Wikileakers avoid th REVERSE charge against Wikileaks of both gross iresponsibility & causing almost certain death to innocent hundreds by leaking in a 400,000 doc set th names of allied informers & colaborators in both Iraq and Afganistan that Assange PERSONALLY is responsibel for in not proper pre checking/redacting , per his OWN Wiki Bord Members public statements last week ‘

    “what a load of baloney:
    ..IF the practice concerning informants and their names are kept SECRET and hidden,”

    Can not you read , they is secret & hidden , they were leaked publicly
    An act if done in oz with oz cables that under oz law would be a criminal offence , at best , and in a war cn be a greater offense

    you may be surprised to learn classified names of allied informers & collaborators (who is assistancing allies) , is kept secret to keep them alive

  22. I think my comment earlier about renaming the Queens Birthday holilday to a great national scientist is a worthwhile thing to do. And it is also a worthwhile distraction.

    We could hold a national vote about who to name it after. It would spark massive debate and get us talking about all the great Australians and their endeavours.

  23. dave

    thanks – just read it now; will be interesting to see how it goes. The most telling part of that to me is that the FIRB requirement before was that AXA use NMLA, as it was then, for Asian expansion. What is the public policy that has changed since then to remove that requirement?

  26. Lao – I would knock both back.

    They fail the national interest tests, in my opinion.

    I don’t agree that with Gottliebsen on many things.

    ASX will not proceed in my view, AXA Asia Pacific’s Asian units may though.

  28. Still nothing going Labors way. They’ll be doing well to make it to the next election. and even then it might be in vain, as winning it will be hard.

  30. Ron

    [you may be surprised to learn classified names of allied informers & collaborators (who is assistancing allies) , is kept secret to keep them alive]

    i am not surprised to hear this. However, I am not prepared to limit someone’s freedom of speech by demanding that they have an understanding of something that has been kept secret. What can possibly be the basis for demanding people to understand the impact of what they say, if the mores and impact around the topic of conversation has been kept secret?

  31. [Still nothing going Labors way. They’ll be doing well to make it to the next election. and even then it might be in vain, as winning it will be hard.]
    We’ve had this conversation before. The likelyhood of an early election is slim.

  32. We’ve had this conversation before. The likelyhood of an early election is slim.

    …and just as well for Labor that it is so…or Abboot would have Easter in the Lodge!

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