Essential Research: 51-49 to Coalition

Slight movement to Labor in Essential Research’s first poll for the year, which also finds that Labor and Coalition voters feel almost exactly the same way about the US presidential election.

Essential Research has opened its account for 2016 with a poll that records a one-point shift away from the Coalition off what was already a very low base for them, relative to the other pollsters. Compared with the last poll in mid-December, the Coalition is down a point to 44%, while Labor and the Greens are steady on 35% and 10%. This being the first result of the year, the result encompasses 1011 respondents polled from Friday to Monday, rather than Essential’s usual two-week rolling average. Also featured are the monthly personal ratings for the leaders, which find Malcolm Turnbull down five on approval to 51% and up two on disapproval to 25%, while Bill Shorten is exactly unchanged at 27% and 47% respectively. Turnbull’s lead on preferred prime minister is down from 54-15 to 51-18.

The poll also has a straightforward question on favoured candidate to win the US presidential elections, offering four named options: Hillary Clinton on 40%, Donald Trump on 12%, Bernie Sanders on 6% and Ted Cruz on 2%, leaving 8% for “someone else” and 32% for “don’t know”. Remarkably, breakdowns by party support show statistically identical results for Labor and Coalition supporters (but nearly ten times as much support for Sanders among Greens voters). Further questions find consistent agreement that sexism and discrimination against women exists to at least some extent in workplaces, media, politics, advertising and sport (from 58% to 62% opting for a lot or some), but less so in schools, where 44% opted for a lot or some, and 41% for a little or none.

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.

688 comments on “Essential Research: 51-49 to Coalition”

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  2. [7 News Melbourne
    7 News Melbourne – Verified account ‏@7NewsMelbourne

    Union asks ASIC to investigate whether Clive Palmer’s nickel company broke the law in the lead-up to mass sackings: http://yhoo.it/1Pp0Qg0
    7 News Sydney
    7 News Sydney
    Union asks ASIC to investigate Qld Nickel

    A union says there are questions about decision making at Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel enterprise, and has asked ASIC to investigate.
    View on web
    5:21 PM – 19 Jan 2016
    2 RETWEETS1 LIKE]

  3. Joe O’Brien ‏@joeobrien24 · 2m2 minutes ago
    Oppsn Leader @billshortenmp media conf on @abcnews24 now.. talking bulk billing on pathology and GST.

  5. Who to believe?

    [Monkey Pod Tea Party
    ‏@FlatEarthGang #TURCsecretvolume says unionised milk tanker drivers tipped off Gina Rinehart to buy a motza of dairy farms just prior to #ChFTA. #auspol]

  6. I just hope that Bill Shorten doesn’t hurt himself doing backflips when Tones finally announces that he’s going to stand again. Deep breaths, Bill.

  9. Jamie Briggs and his wife have given an interview to our local rag, The Courier. In it he says that “I think I’ve got to consider some of my behaviours and choices I’ve made, particularly when I’ve been travelling”. ” I’ve found the pace and intensity – not the work but the being away . . I’ve probably too often used alcohol as a way to deal with that so I think in a sense that’s probably part of the reason for the decision”

  12. Any liberal who thought Malcolm was going to push the Libs back to the centre and clean up the party would have to be feeling a bit crook on hearing that he doesn’t want any challenges to incumbents AND Tones is going to lead the internal opposition after the next election. Plus ca change.

  13. This has probably already been linked by someone else, but I have just read it and it is a seriously good article.

    http://insidestory.org.au/postwar-boomer

    Some interesting extracts:
    [But the uneasy peace within the party was also a product of the system of near-autocratic control built into the Liberal Party’s structure. Although the party drew its funding and unpaid campaign labour force from a large group of individual members, the parliamentary leadership was protected from them by a decentralised structure and strictly limited opportunities for members to influence policies. It’s no great exaggeration to say that the party was a support group for a largely autonomous parliamentary leadership, and its leader in particular.]
    So not much has changed there.
    [But the influence of the Keynesian debate extends back further than the wartime Labor government. According to economic historian Selwyn Cornish, it’s possible to date the arrival of the Keynesian revolution to the early months of the second world war, when the United Australia Party–led Coalition was still in power and Menzies was treasurer and prime minister. Menzies’s assistant treasurer was an “early Keynesian,” Percy Spender, who persuaded cabinet that the war economy could be financed without lifting taxes (an unorthodox view at the time) and without any consequent blow to the government’s shaky electoral position.

    This early engagement with Keynes’s ideas makes it less surprising that Menzies, back in government after the war, “was more responsive to his public service advisers than to his anti-socialist constituency,” as Tim Rowse writes in his biography of Coombs. When it came to the crunch, the government’s banking legislation reflected Coombs’s ideas more closely than those of Menzies’s critics in the party. The fact that the advice coming from people like Coombs happened to be more electorally attractive no doubt played a part in Menzies’s thinking.]
    Well, I didn’t know that about Spender.
    [In fact, something else had been going on all along, and it had its roots back in the early 1930s. As the economic historian Ian McLean writes in his recent reappraisal of Australian economic history, Why Australia Prospered, Menzies inherited an economy that had come out of the second world war in much better shape than it had out of the first. Per capita GDP had fallen by 8 per cent in the war years of 1914–19, yet it rose by 17 per cent between 1939 and 1946, when the economy was back on a civilian footing. There was no single reason – rather, the improved position was the cumulative effect of decisions, institutions and events that equipped Australia relatively well to weather the economic vicissitudes of the postwar era.

    To begin with, the economy of the late 1930s was in a healthier condition to respond to the demands of wartime. The first world war had exposed Australia’s vulnerability to any disruption of international trade routes, and so governments were more willing to protect the manufacturers who had emerged since 1921, even if they were less efficient than companies exporting to Australia. Import tariffs began increasing in 1921 and were lifted significantly after the economy ran into troubled waters later in the decade. When hostilities broke out in 1939, Australia had more manufacturers well-positioned to take on war-related work.

    The pattern of manufacturing during the war – its size, composition, location and technical sophistication – created a much stronger basis for industry after 1945, and it grew quickly. “Simply put,” writes McLean, “if any decade in Australian history is to be singled out as one of ‘industrialisation,’ it is the 1940s.” After this “unprecedented spurt,” manufacturing accounted for 26 per cent of the economy.]
    Read that and weep about the state of manufacturing in Australia.

    Much more interesting stuff.

  14. Zoomster re bigpond email …. Ive had the connection to server error message for few days …. Resetting the server connections settings to default did the trick for me…

  16. More preselection stuff.

    [Queensland’s Liberal National Party is refusing to endorse the preselection of Mal Brough to await the outcome of the federal police investigation into his role in the Peter Slipper affair.

    The Queensland MP, who stood aside last month as Special Minister of State, was yesterday unaware his uncontested preselection last year had been put on hold by LNP officials amid the probe.

    His Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher, held by Mr Slipper until he was defeated as an independent by Mr Brough in 2013, is now the only LNP electorate in Queensland yet to endorse a candidate for the federal election this year]

  20. [ “I think the Second-Coming of Christ has more chance of happening than the second-coming of Abbott.” ]

    abbott won’t be staying in the Parliament just to sit on the backbenches and turnbull has already knifed his close long time mate MacFarlane in the name of so called cabinet ‘renewal’ – so no ministerial job in the offing either.

    After abbott made such a song and dance that the tories ‘aren’t like Labor’ in respect to changing sitting PM’s etc – he’ll get that thrown back in his face if/when he tries to get a challenge of turnbull going, even via proxies.

    Also pretty rich of abbott this morning saying “he won’t be bought off like joe hockey” etc – it was abbott who offered to ‘buy’ morrison’s caucus vote in the leadership spill by chucking hockey under a bus so that morrison got the Treasury job.

    About the only thing abbott can do without damaging brand tory even further is to leave the Parliament – but he doesn’t have anywhere to go or the money to keep him in the manner in which he became accustomed as LOTO and then PM.

    What goes around, came around….

  22. It has to be Credlin. Why else would she get a run in that article.

    I read that Sinodinis and Howard had counselled Abbott to stfu about Turnbull. Doesn’t stop his non-Parliamentary supporters exercising their “Abbott comeback” fantasies.

  24. [ but he doesn’t have anywhere to go or the money to keep him in the manner in which he became accustomed as LOTO and then PM.]

    $307k per annum isn’t enough? Life is tough at the top apparently.

  25. [“I think the Second-Coming of Christ has more chance of happening than the second-coming of Abbott.”]

    And there are an incredible number of people who should know better thinking both events are imminent.

  28. Channel 9 morning TV news just stated Abbott would wait until April before making a decision on his future.

    Bit difficult when he has to nominate for preselection by mid February.

  29. davidwh

    Considering how Abbott has always claimed every cent he can wangle for expenses, he must be hopeless at managing money. Evidence: his budgets.

  32. KEVIN-ONE-SEVEN@412

    Any liberal who thought Malcolm was going to push the Libs back to the centre and clean up the party would have to be feeling a bit crook on hearing that he doesn’t want any challenges to incumbents AND Tones is going to lead the internal opposition after the next election. Plus ca change.

    So the tory pre-selection battles brewing are a challenge to turnbull’s ‘authority’ by the NSW moderates who ‘should’ be more aligned with turnbull then the tory RWNJ’s and the like of BBish.

    Turnbull ‘seems’ to be saying BBish should be relected yet again at age 73 after a long Parliamentary career as a incompetent minister, the most biased Speaker in living memory and a serial claimant of Parliamentary expenses which don’t pass the ‘Pub test’?

    Turnbull speaking out of both sides of his mouth at the sametime with all of that ?

    Yeah – self interest – but all over the place.

  33. So, where is Christ coming from this time, already?

    Last time it was spontaneous combustion of the old bun in the oven routine.

    Toilet meet seat.

  40. bemused @ 419,

    ‘ Probably heavily disguised as a bloke named “Peter”. 😉 ‘

    Who people would take more seriously apparently. 🙂

  43. Geert Wilders –

    [ Dutch Politician: Male Refugees Are “Testosterone Bombs,” Must Be Locked Up To Save Women From “Sexual Jihad”

    Wilders’s new video finds the PVV leader calling on European officials to “lock up” male refugees in asylum centers in ordert to save the bloc’s women from “Islamic testosterone bombs.”

    “We have seen what they are capable of,” Wilders continues, “it’s sexual terrorism, a sexual jihad.”

    Fortunately, Wilders has a “solution”: “I propose we lock the male asylum seekers up in the asylum centers.”]

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-19/dutch-politician-male-refugees-are-testosterone-bombs-must-be-locked-save-women-sexu

  44. A legal drinking age of 21 saves a significant number of lives compared with a legal drinking age of 18.

    The reasons for this are:

    Although many teenagers and 20 year-olds would not be deterred from drinking, a significant percentage would be.

    Setting the legal drinking age at 21 breaks up social cohorts, making it harder for young people to find older people who are willing to buy booze for them. A 15 year old has much more access to compliant 18 year-olds than compliant 21 year-olds. This is because an 18 year-old is still in high school or only just graduated high school, whereas a 21 year-old is finishing first university degree or already in the workforce. They are in different stages of life and there is not as much overlap of their social networks. The social distance between 15 and 21 year-olds is significantly larger than the social distance between 15 and 18 year-olds.

    An interesting implication of this is that there is little point in raising the legal drinking age above 21. A 21 year-old moves in much the same social circles as 24 year-olds; therefore raising the drinking age to 24 would not decrease alcohol consumption significantly among people aged 21 to 23. The loss of freedom and the costs of enforcing a drinking age of 24 would be too great compared with the tiny public health gains.

    According to public health literature, a drinking age of 21 is the sweet spot – it maximizes social distance between those who can legally drink and those who can’t, which results in significantly less alcohol consumption that would otherwise occur.

    http://www.vox.com/2016/1/19/10761802/drinking-age

  45. Exactly Nicholas. If you make alcohol illegal under 21, it is literally impossible for 15-16 year olds to drink. Except for the 18% of them who have gotten drunk (not just had a drink) in the last 30 days.

    That is a much better system than setting the minimum dirnking age to 16, where we see that 12% of 15-16 year olds have gotten drunk in the last 30 days, even though it IS LEGAL for 50% of them.

    http://www.camy.org/resources/fact-sheets/prevalence-of-underage-drinking/

  46. [Philip Calder ‏@philipjcalder · 6m6 minutes ago
    Clive Palmer’s Coolum Resort donated >$2.2million to the PUP. 600 jobs were lost there last year. @WINNews_SCoast ]

  47. I should elaborate on my 445 post. I am not neccessarily saying that lowering the drinking age lowers 15-16 year old alcohol consumption.

    I am saying there is no evidence to indicate it increases it.

    Ultimately, the difference comes down to how adults act, which influences the drinking culture of the country (see UK) and that this influences minors much more than whether they can get alcohol easily (drinking age 21), very easily (drinking age 18) or trivially (drinking age <15)

  48. Scott Bales

    I don’t think you read the post or the article.

    I’ll repeat a key sentence.

    Although many teenagers and 20 year-olds are not deterred from drinking when the drinking age is 21, a significant percentage ARE deterred, resulting in significantly less alcohol being consumed by that age group, and significantly fewer deaths. This a concrete finding from America’s public health literature.

  49. I should elaborate on my 445 post. I am not neccessarily saying that lowering the drinking age lowers 15-16 year old alcohol consumption.

    I am saying there is no evidence to indicate it increases it.

    The people who research this for a living say that there IS evidence – strong evidence – that a lower drinking age increases alcohol-related deaths.

  50. On the drinking age:

    “The evidence is overwhelming [that] raising the age reduces consumption,” said Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia professor of health and law. “Even though consumption remains significant among the younger population and increases as people get older, it’s still lower than it would be if you lowered the age to 18.”

    A 2014 review of the research published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs bore this out: Although many young people disobey the drinking age, the evidence shows that it has depressed drinking and saved lives.

    http://www.vox.com/2016/1/19/10761802/drinking-age

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