Essential Research: 52-48 to Coalition

This week’s Essential Research survey finds Labor copping a forceful backlash from the carbon tax, with the two-party vote flipping from 51-49 in favour of Labor to 52-48 in favour of the Coalition – a very sharp turnaround given that a) Essential is a two week rolling average, so half the sample is that which contributed to Labor’s strong result last time, and b) even a part of the more recent week’s sample was surveyed before the tax was announced. The major parties have swapped two points on the primary vote, with Labor down to 37 per cent and the Coalition up to 45 per cent, while the Greens are down a point to 10 per cent. Respondents to this week’s segment of the survey were also asked to nominate their preferred Liberal leader, and contrary to the recent Morgan poll it had Tony Abbott in front with 24 per cent against 18 per cent for Malcolm Turnbull and 16 per cent for Joe Hockey.

The remainder of the survey was dominated by a complex exercise to gauge attitudes to religion and multiculturalism. Fifty-seven per cent of respondents initially professed themselves “concerned” about the number of Muslims in Australia, while only 38 per cent were not concerned. They were then asked to estimate the number of Muslims in Australia (perhaps a problematic exercise in a poll conduct online, where participants have Google close at hand). Logically enough, concern was found to be associated with the size of the estimate. Sixty-five percentage had the number too high (it’s 1.7 per cent). When the real figure was pointed out to them, the number of concerned moderated to 50 per cent, and the not concerned rose to 45 per cent.

In other questions, 57 per cent rated the contribution of multiculturalism to Australian society as positive against 29 per cent negative; 65 per cent opposed rejecting prospective immigrants on the basis of religion, while 19 per cent were supportive; and 61 per cent agreed that “some politicians raise issues of race and religion for political purposes just to generate votes”, with only 27 per cent believing “these politicians” (who ever could they mean?) were “genuinely concerned about Australia’s future”.

UPDATE: Essential has issued an explanatory statement regarding the questions on Muslim immigrants, evidently anticipating criticism that its approach amounts to a political statement. Results from a further question on Muslim immigrants will be unveiled on Channel Ten this evening.

This week we take the unusual step of providing a justification for the questions we have asked in the Essential Report.

Two things that drive our research and communications practice are – really understanding how people feel and finding communications solutions to problems.

This week we have asked a series of questions about Australia’s attitude to multiculturalism and Muslims in particular. We debated whether it was worth giving voice to some of the attitudes we might find. But we also wanted to show how research can find different responses on a range of issues, and how politicians make choices about the attitudes they wish to promote, provoke, perpetuate or even prevent.

We also wanted to show how simple bits of information can change people’s attitudes and responses. For too long some conservative politicians have been running agendas that purport to directly reference the community’s fear or anxiety, but because the polling has remained hidden in a desk drawer they have been able to claim they are merely debating an issue.

This small poll shows the choices politicians can make in discussion and leading an issue.

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.

6,132 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Coalition”

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  1. [Sadly my last cat, Timmy The Wondercat, died last year.]

    My first ever Border Collie was called Timmy. Died from a tick bite on Christmas Day when I was 7. I was heartbroken. My first real animal friend (though preceded by a couple of mice, tortoises and guinea pigs).

    Meg, the Border Collie before our current Lucy, was more or less a stray , too. She had belonged to a young man doing it tough on the streets who left her at Collingwood Children’s Farm in 1990 because he couldn’t afford to feed her. She had real hard street pads. Lived to the ripe old age of 19. Don’t tell Lucy (her successor – who I love dearly, too) but she was the best of the best. Still get a bit misty when I stop near her grave , at the spot next to an apple tree where she used to always drop the ball for me to throw.

  2. And the likable, intelligent Dreyfus is out muscled by the rodent like Brandis, who of course had the last word.
    FFS man up labor!

  3. SK
    I understand. You could end up with Law and Order Syndrome, still picking your kids up from school when they are 17.

  5. [Henry

    Posted Friday, March 4, 2011 at 10:52 pm | Permalink

    And the likable, intelligent Dreyfus is out muscled by the rodent like Brandis, who of course had the last word.
    FFS man up labor!
    ]

    What’s te bet there is a poducer/researcher whose sole job is to watch QT and picking which pollies to match them up with.

  7. Puff,

    I can let them go and encourage them to do so at every opportunity. I just can’t watch that kind of stuff anymore.

  8. [I never knew you could apply. Can you still apply maybe they have them on microfilm somewhere?]

    Sorry I missed this, Joe. Had a long interruption.

    Sadly, no. Except for those early few, they don’t survive in any form. They were such legal dynamite, after the first few were handed over (from memory, legal eagles, uni stirrers & union leaders were tipped off), they were destroyed “frenetically” (a word widely bandied around). We’d know where the spooks were – they were about as subtle as Blitzkrieg – & pose exaggeratedly for photos. Quite a few with whom I was photographed have died & some famous, so I’d really have liked the pics.

    I remember vividly such odd mixtures of hilarity & fear (especially since the LOR & Rona Joiner’s mob were so aggro & threatening) outrage & the fun of taking the whole thing off, comradeship & loneliness, abnormal weekends and mundane weeks – and the weird feeling that this must be an inkling of how the Prague Spring, White Rose and other protesters felt. How could this have been happening in Sunny beach-mad Q in the liberty-loving Wide Brown Land? If we went interstate, or met “mexicans” on home turf, they’d shove “Joh-lover” down our necks and ridicule us. We’d feel we had more in common with those stuck behind the Iron Curtain than other Australians who, quite simply, did not understand. You have to live in a gerrymandered unrepresentative police state in a democratic nation to know how it feels.

    Even now, it still has that surreal “did it all really happen, or am I imagining it” quality.

  9. [6004

    victoria

    Posted Friday, March 4, 2011 at 10:54 pm | Permalink

    bludgers

    you are going to love this flyer from the Coalition re bad Labor govt
    ]

    Small problem – Power Prices under a Liberal Govt in WA are way higher than ANY increase due to a Carbon Tax.

  10. Dio @ 5679

    [Piers Akerman is an old friend of Kinky Friedman so he can’t be all bad, although I am yet to see any evidence that he is anything other than all bad.]

    All bad is an understatement.

    Akerman has not moved forward an inch since he was expelled from Guildford Grammar, a prime example of not 40 years of experience, but one year repeated 40 times – the lowest order of zipper sniffer and grubber through the rubbish bins of the nation.

    His wikipedia entry is hilariously bad, cataloguing as it does every sordid aspect of this man’s progress through the squalid and corrupt world of tabloid sleaze and filth, where the well-credentialed Piers has wallowed therein his entire excuse for a life.

    Paul ‘Tee Hee’ Vautin, the least funny person on Australian TV, summed up old Piers the best when he was questioned by our hero during the Super League period in the 1990’s (Piers being a Murdoch shill, and Fatty Vautin being a staunch ARL apologist) by impugning the motives of the said Mr Akerman with the immortal words “and who are you … you fat heap o’ shit?”

    Poetry, it ain’t, but you gotta love it!

  13. I have four dogs, the oldest is ten. I can’t imagine life without them, except it will be much less of a life.

  14. goshome

    [Not so keen on the sexist, race based stuff, even against nasty bits of work. Do unto others etc]

    Agree. I think there is a message in all this.

  15. Frank Calabrese

    it is obvious what the Libs mantra is going to be for the next little while. The taxes and of course the asylum seeker issue.
    Labor had better get some decent advertising this time around. Whatever they have done over the past few years has been crap. Sorry for the expression!

  16. Agreed Frank, you see this all the time on the ABC and Fox er Sky news.
    The labor rep is always smarter, more measured and more considered in their response whilst the tory twit is a blowhard with no idea. Yet somehow they “win” because they have no shame and will continually interrupt and badger their opponent, whilst the labor rep sits there and cops it. I was virtually shouting at that toad Brandis whilst Dreyfus sat there mute.

  18. [Maybe Mirabella was medusa in a previous life.]

    I know Medusa’s excuse; what’s the puff adders?

    I’m gong to sleep as I type.

    Goodnight all.

  22. BB — you should get an email from me at the group, inviting you to join.

    If you reply to that as instructed, I don’t know whether you need to sign up — but if you do, it is free and quite simple. Once that’s done, the emails will come to you, you don’t have to log on to Yahoo, and you can just reply as usual for emails.

  23. Cue story in The OO about how the NBN will be used to access these evil sites and make mischief, followed by Miranda Devine or Bolt saying that while they themselves don’t for a second think Tony Windsor did it himself, they can understand why others might wonder if he did.

  24. [Best of luck with your new book. I am sure it will be a huge success.]

    ta — hope so but a YA will probably not fly too high (unless it becomes the next happy rotter).

    [ Playing in the U.S. market makes better financial sense.]

    The only financial sense — 10 x the print runs to Aust — it’s why most Aussie authors, even the best known, also teach.

  25. apropos of nothing but the liberal candidate here in my state seat of Drummoyne, NSW; is a dead ringer for Al Bundy of Married with Children fame. John Sidoti is his name.
    Needless to say I have reminded his pamphleteering boosters of this when i encounter them.

  27. The Big Ship

    Have you read any of Kinky Friedman’s novels? He’s a very clever and funny crime writer. Akerman is mentioned in The Prisoner of Vandam Street.

    [One of the interesting things about an illness like malaria, in which you float from altered state to altered state, is that you never know if something that has just happened is really something that has just happened. As the fever overtook me again, I found myself deeply troubled by the practical unlikelihood of Piers’s visit. I wondered if my old friend from down under had actually been in my loft at all. The only witness other than the cat, of course, was McGovern, and he didn’t seem to be revealing too many cards at the moment. I would, apparently, be forced to wait to see if Piers returned, no doubt carrying a large tucker bag and many bottles of grog. Or maybe, even now, he was peacefully sailing on a yacht somewhere off the Great Barrier Reef. Maybe he hadn’t really been in my bedroom at all.]

  28. ruawake @ 5700

    [Are you suggesting an Act of Parliament can change the Constitution?]

    Not an Act of our Australian Parliament, but an Act of the British Parliament can change our Constitution, as the Constitution establishing our nation in 1901 was, and remains an Act promulgated and passed by the British Parliament in 1900.

    It still remains the case that our Constitution could, theoretically at least, be amended by a new Act of the British Parliament without the need for any referenda here in Australia. This superceding Act would, of course, also have to have the assent of the Monarch, which is near impossible, one would think.

  29. apropos of nothing but the liberal candidate here in my state seat of Drummoyne, NSW; is a dead ringer for Al Bundy of Married with Children fame. John Sidoti is his name.

    John Sidoti (there can be only one) was in my class at St. Pat’s. As was Laurie Ferguson.

    One went the path of true light and the other went to Drummoyne.

  30. [apropos of nothing but the liberal candidate here in my state seat of Drummoyne, NSW; is a dead ringer for Al Bundy of Married with Children fame. John Sidoti is his name.
    Needless to say I have reminded his pamphleteering boosters of this when i encounter them.]

    Henry, Tseriakos (sp?) — the ALP man against him was the mayor when I was in Concord. The only one I’ve ever seen who set up a table and chairs every Saturday in the entrance of Coles and just waited for constituents to come and talk/air their grievances/make suggestions. The most approachable pollie I’ve ever seen.

  33. It still remains the case that our Constitution could, theoretically at least, be amended by a new Act of the British Parliament without the need for any referenda here in Australia. This superceding Act would, of course, also have to have the assent of the Monarch, which is near impossible, one would think.

    This was a standard moot case in Legal Method when I was at university. The answer then was that that the Constitution couldn’t be changed by an Act of the British Parliament due to the conventions pertaining to the Statute Of Westminster. The Australia Act of 1986 confirmed this:

    The power under the Statute of Westminster to request the British Parliament to make laws for Australia was used on several occasions, primarily in order to enable Australia to acquire new territories. But its most significant use was also its last. This was when the procedure was used to pass the Australia Act 1986. The Australia Act effectively terminated the ability of the British Parliament or Government to make laws for Australia or its States, even at their request; and provided that any law which was previously required to be passed by the British Parliament on behalf of Australia could now be passed by Australia and its States by themselves.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_history_of_Australia

  35. SpaceKidette — I forgot to say …. if you want us to be writing erotica aka “PB Does Dallas” methinks I’ll turn you over to a member of my writers group who specialises in the sexy stuff!!!!

    👿

    You don’t want to give the guys any ideas!!! Last night they were talking about blow up dolls. Give them a whiff of more and they’ll be uncontrollable.

  41. jenauthor, Tsirekos is a good bloke and has been a very efficient mayor of Canada Bay.
    He has the thankless task of replacing the useless Angela Damore (Tripodi’s sister in law no less) who has been dis-endorsed after rorting her expenses.
    Angelo is about 2.55 for the win and Al Bundy 1.55 but I might put a lazy lobster on him for the win – he is a good operator and the local wogs like him. Still a very ethnic seat is Drummoyne.

  43. John Sidoti (there can be only one) was in my class at St. Pat’s. As was Laurie Ferguson.

    Before William trounces me, chews me up and spits me out for being a smartarse, I must admit there are, apparently, at least two John Sidotis.

    I was wr… wr… wrong.

  44. Is there some sort of contagion of stupidity loose on PB this evening?

    We feel that you don’t like us anymore, William. That’s all.

  45. [William Bowe

    Posted Friday, March 4, 2011 at 11:38 pm | Permalink

    he is a good operator and the local wogs him

    Is there some sort of contagion of stupidity loose on PB this evening?
    ]

    I’m a Wog and proud of it 🙂

    When Wogs describe themselves as Wogs there is no insult implied.

  47. [Frank Calabrese

    Posted Friday, March 4, 2011 at 11:39 pm | Permalink

    William Bowe

    Posted Friday, March 4, 2011 at 11:38 pm | Permalink

    he is a good operator and the local wogs him

    Is there some sort of contagion of stupidity loose on PB this evening?

    I’m a Wog and proud of it

    When Wogs describe themselves as Wogs there is no insult implied.
    ]

    Indeed there is a Wog Comedy Industry:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syRC-rGG89U

  48. [jenauthor

    try this link]

    NUP — no worries … I’d probably be better off not seeing it. I had my vent this evening, I emailed Morrison and gave him a whack about the ears for being rude, nasty and self-serving.

  50. the local wogs do like him William (why did you drop the word like when quoting) , what is your issue with that?
    Or are you that precious. Do you live in the electorate?

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