Essential Research: 53-47 to Coalition

The first polling conducted since the Prime Minister’s polarising parliamentary speech on sexism and misogyny finds both leaders with their highest “strongly approve” ratings in well over a year. On voting intention however, the Coalition maintains its solid lead.

This week’s Essential Research survey has Labor down a point on the primary vote to 36%, but is otherwise unchanged on last week: the Coalition on 47%, the Greens on 9% and the Coalition leading 53-47 on two-party preferred. With very good timing, it also offers us Essential’s monthly personal ratings, which unlike the voting intention figures are derived entirely from the most recent period of surveying from Wednesday to Sunday. These figures are also of particular interest in the current environment in that they involve a four (strong approval, approval, disapproval, strong disapproval) rather than two point scale. This finds Julia Gillard gaining two points on strong approval since last month to 9%, her best result since February 2011, while also gaining four points on the milder approval measure to 32%. Her combined approval rating of 41% is her highest since May 2011. Her combined disapproval rating is down three points to 51%, also her best since last May, with strong disapproval steady at 27% and the milder disapproval rating down three to 24%. Opinion of Tony Abbott would appear to have polarised even further: he is up three on strong approval to 9% – his best result since December 2010 – but also up two on strong disapproval to a new high of 31%. His overall approval is up five to 37%, and disapproval down one to 54%. Gillard has opened up a seven-point lead as preferred prime minister of 43-36, its highest since February.

The survey also gauges attitudes to the presidential election, finding Barack Obama favoured by 63% to just 9% for Mitt Romney, with Obama leading 53-18 even among Coalition voters. Respondents were found to have an overwhelmingly more favourable view of their own country than the United States with respect to access to health care and jobs, standard of living for ordinary people, and other such. The US obviously rated higher on “international influence”, but even here 17% felt able to conclude Australia’s was “better”. Respondents were also asked about climate change, with much the same result as when the question was last asked a year ago: 48% believe climate change is occurring as a result of human activity, with 39% plumping for “we are witnessing a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate”.

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.

4,610 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Coalition”

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  1. scorpio

    [Dog willing, it will end up as nothing more than a bad dream!]

    I really hope so! You’d have thought they would have realised how ineffectual he was as mayor but perhaps a lot of my compatriots further north (and even south – I have several friends who have lived in Qld all their lives and never been to Brisbane – and they live in and around Palm Beach/Tugun!) just had no idea.

  3. rummel,

    [ You know as well as Bemused that i like a good dig at Labor, however i am going to lay off it until the next election as things are being coming way to serious and touchy. ]

    Have your little bit of fun but just be aware that it can sometimes be taken the wrong way. Emoticans can be useful at times too.

    It just hurt me to see someone with a good store of goodwill blowing it trying to be a smart arse and failing badly.

    leave that sort of stuff to GP and his mob. In the end, even his own mob will end up taking the mickey out of them.

    We have seen it already. (Media Watch)

  5. [I am sitting here waiting patiently for the e-v page to be updated (due any minute). ]

    Same here! I am refreshing the page every few minutes!

    Sigh… this is not what normal people do on Friday evenings!

  8. GG & Dave:

    Its not contradictory in truth.

    538: does an analysis of approvals, economic growth, jobs numbers and local state polling, adjusts for usual bounces after conventions/debates etc and then tries to predict based on past results.

    Has been pretty good in the past.

    electoral-vote: takes the most recent polls only and so gives a snapshot of current intentions and gives the state to one side unless the average is exactly tied

    RCP: takes the states which have a clear lean to one side or the other and calls everything else ‘toss up’. E.g., Michigan, Penn and Wisconsin are given as toss-ups, whereas they have all gone to Dems in the last 5 elections and to Obama by double digits in 2008. These states are NOT going Republican in 2012, and if they do Romney is going to win in an absolute landslide!!!

    The other page not mentioned yet is election-projection. This has it as 281 ECV for Obama right now as well.

    So every site has it as an Obama win BEFORE any benefit from his 2nd debate win.

  9. fess

    It’s definitely only a developed world problem but such is our sickness that we often see obesity referred to as the worlds greatest health problem.

    Personally, I think obesity as a health problem is overrated. Cancer and mental illness are way ahead.

  11. Mod Lib,

    Sounds like the answer is a pineapple.

    Result will probably be decided by how many actaully vote.

    Blizzards in Wiconsin, a bus breakdown in Baltimore or bad day for a few might decide the outcome.

  12. Fiona @ 4447

    You are describing my situation to a tee. I wish with all my soul that I had never left Canberra. I find this part of the world difficult to make friends unless you belong to a sport, church, social etc group and I am a bit of an introvert in this regard.

    I’m not saying it’s impossible and I’ve met many lovely people here (although never seemed to end up as friends) but I should have heeded the adage that it is not a good idea to up sticks when one is older and has roots elsewhere.

    I feel so much out of place here but, the housing situation being what it is, I can no longer afford to move back to Canberra. However, I have made my bed so I get along as best as I can and concentrate on the advantages the area has to offer. My dream is to return south though.

  13. Did anyone hear the Mesma interview where she was asked what the priority areas for the UN would be.

    her answer…………SILENCE

    then she was asked about Hockey’s stop the boats. she sounded like she was saying it was good through gritted teeth

  14. Carey Moore@4455


    I am sitting here waiting patiently for the e-v page to be updated (due any minute).


    Same here! I am refreshing the page every few minutes!

    Sigh… this is not what normal people do on Friday evenings!

    When Carlos Castaneda wrote A Separate Reality he had PB in mind.

  15. Diogenes,

    I don’t follow the data here at all, but I would have thought that malaria would have been way up there. Happy to be corrected.

  17. [Greensborough Growler
    Posted Friday, October 19, 2012 at 10:24 pm | PERMALINK
    Mod Lib,

    Sounds like the answer is a pineapple.

    Result will probably be decided by how many actaully vote.

    Blizzards in Wiconsin, a bus breakdown in Baltimore or bad day for a few might decide the outcome.]

    Absolutely agree, and the good news is that polling of early voting is heavily skewed in favour of Obama- from memory about 3 to 1.

    i suspect the surge in Romney’s polling was actually good for the Dems as it has frightened the BJs out of complacent Democrats who thought Obama was cruising to victory.

  20. [Personally, I think obesity as a health problem is overrated. Cancer and mental illness are way ahead.]

    In my view a generation of obesity is likely to incur serious health consequences in the future. Cancer and mental illness among them, along with the all the problems which come from premature ageing.

    At the moment obesity isn’t incurring a significant burden compared with other disorders, but in a generation or two the signs are that it will be a different story.

  21. Dave

    [Not long now —> 8 November 2012

    Return of Rebus

    Standing in Another Mans Grave]

    Thanks for that – it’s now in my diary!

  23. Fiona

    [Is this Speed Dating Fryday?

    Where’s ShowsOn?

    Mr Bowe, I’m about to have you up on a charge of false pretences.]

    ShowsOn’s computer at the nursing home was confiscated due to repeated breaches of their guidelines for appropriate Internet usage. 🙁

  27. Fiona

    Thank you – I’m afraid I’m needing a few of them at the moment for various reasons – but I didn’t come on here to bare my soul. I’m sure the sun will be shining tomorrow! LOL.

  31. [For instance, through Wednesday in Cuyahoga County, the largest county in the state and home to Democrat-heavy Cleveland, nearly a quarter million absentee ballots have been requested and some 80,000 have been returned. Those numbers strongly favor Democrats: 47,538 to 16,720 for Republicans. About 15,000 listed no party affiliation.]

    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/18/republicans-point-to-early-vote-gains-in-ohio/

    ….where I saw the heavy favouring of Dems in early voting. However, other recent polling, including Iowa as per electoral-vote which has just refreshed, shows a much narrower Dem lead.

  36. One of the reasons early voting will favour Obama is there are many Democratic voters who may not have time to take off on election day to vote because of work commitments. Also, some also do not trust polling booth workers not to send them away.

  37. Allan Moyes,

    That’s okay – you need them, they’re yours.

    We all, I think, inadvertently (or maybe not so much) bare our souls here from time to time, and I for one am delighted to receive the solace that is offered. It’s one of the many pleasant aspects of the PB community.

    Take care 🙂

  40. Rummel,

    [ If you wish to lunch me for quotes of Labor Members then go ahead. ]

    The percentage of Union Members that are Members of the AlP is far lower than the average of the general population.

    The Union I worked for last, had at least 80% Coalition voters as Members. And they were strong unionists too.

    Far less than half of all Unions are even Members of the ACTU let alone affiliated with the ALP.

    This is where the Liberal Party have got it so wrong for so long.

    By attacking the Union Movement so viciously, they are in fact attacking their own supporters more than Labor ones.

    Please don’t mention this to anyone in the Liberal Party hierarchy as I want them to keep demonising their own support base on an ongoing basis.

    I sometimes piss myself laughing at their stupidity. Malcolm
    Fraser was more than awake up to it and made sure that the Union Movement was kept inside the tent.

    Howard & his fan club were and are, too blinded by a more than a century’s desire to decapitate and destroy the Union Movement.

    Ain’t gunna happen. You can’t beat abject stupidity for a reason to persist with something that will keep blowing back in your face.

    The seeds for Workchoices were sown in the 1890’s. It’s taken a long time to make no progress whatsoever except to galvanise the worker movement every so often to remind it that the Conservatives are its main enemy and to stay strong.

  43. One man I met when I was on council moved here with his wife on their retirement.

    Within weeks of their arrival, she was diagnosed with cancer and died about a year later.

    He was left alone, with his family hours away, having made no local connections whatsoever.

    Being a tourist destination, and thus a retirement magnet, it’s a common problem locally.

    Similarly, because housing is cheap, we have a lot of public tenants, as well as people who simply move here because it’s affordable.

    One woman rang up last election campaign to discuss an issue with me. At the end of our conversation, she said, “One other thing…how do you make friends?”

    She was a disabled pensioner who had been moved up here into public housing.

    I got her in contact with her local ALP branch!

  45. [bemused
    Posted Friday, October 19, 2012 at 10:39 pm | PERMALINK
    Thanks Mod]

    If you want to suffer the torture of my nightly sequence of website checks to follow the trend in the US elections, here it is:

    http://www.electoral-vote.com
    http://www.electionprojection.com/index.php
    http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/?state=noad

    but I am not strange, because I only check this one ever few days:

    http://www.politico.com/2012-election/swing-state

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