Essential Research: 51-49 to Coalition; Morgan: 52.5-47.5

Morgan finds serious slippage in support for the Coalition for the first time since Malcolm Turnbull became leader, bringing it more closely into line with Essential Research, which continues to find the Coalition with a narrow lead.

It looks like the only two new federal polls this week are the regular Essential Research and Roy Morgan series, and a solid drop for the Coalition from Roy Morgan brings the two much closer together than they have been since Malcolm Turnbull assumed the prime ministership. Essential is its usual stable self, with the Coalition’s modest two-party lead of 51-49 unchanged on last week. The primary votes are 43% for the Coalition (down one), 35% for Labor (steady) and 11% for the Greens (steady). The voting intention results were derived from online polling conducted over the two previous weeks, from an overall sample of about 2000. From this week’s sample of 1000 only, the poll also offers us Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which find Malcolm Turnbull steady on 51% approval and up two on disapproval to 27%, while Bill Shorten is steady on 27% approval and up one on disapproval to 48%. Turnbull’s lead on preferred prime minister has increased from 51-18 to 52-15. Respondents were also asked to register two reasons why the government might wish to reform the tax system, for which the most popular response by some margin was “to address the budget deficit”, which was rated first or second by 58%. Favoured possibilities for revenue raising followed the usual pattern in coming in highest for proposals targeting multinational corporations and high income earners, with a GST increase rating last out of seven listed options. When forced to choose between higher income tax or a higher GST, 37% came down for don’t know.

Morgan’s two-party measures record their first significant movement of the Turnbull era, with the Coalition’s respondent-allocated two-party lead down from 55-45 to 52.5-47.5, and previous election preferences down from 54-46 to 52.5-47.5. Clearly rounding and changed preference flows had a fair bit to do with this, because the primary votes are little changed, with the Coalition steady on 43.5%, Labor up a point to 29%, and the Greens up a point to 16%. The poll was conducted by face-to-face and SMS over the two previous weekends, from a sample of 3072.

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.

786 comments on “Essential Research: 51-49 to Coalition; Morgan: 52.5-47.5”

Comments Page 15 of 16
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  2. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Shortie has looked rather happy over the last few days. I wonder if that’s because the final battle approaches, or he’s been reading good internal polling.

  3. Now if like me you don’t have a lot of faith that a Liberal Party return and a 15% GST with all the money being locked into the wrong causes is a good thing there seems to be a lot of danger.

    Malcolm said things about the GST being on the table if it makes sense and is good policy. Everyone rightly read that as him running from it in terror.

    But if he was reelected he would be entirely right to come out with a package that he says is good and implement it on the basis he has a mandate because he told us he was doing that.

    I’m expecting both sides now to take a pathetic cowardly small target approach ….

  5. bemused @ 688,

    ‘ I seem to have been more aggressive on the revenue side. :D’

    I don’t like making people pay more than they have to, and on the spending side, I guess it shows that I have learnt to live within my means. 🙂

  8. C@tmomma@704

    bemused @ 688,

    ‘ I seem to have been more aggressive on the revenue side. :D’

    I don’t like making people pay more than they have to, and on the spending side, I guess it shows that I have learnt to live within my means.

    The difference in spending was minor.
    I went after those who could afford to pay without mercy and tried to avoid those less able to pay. e.g. no GST increase.

  9. [I understand that in non-property investments, you carry losses forwards to claim against future profits. I have no problem with that. However, you can’t offset losses against unrelated income,]

    So a newsagent shouldn’t be able to offset newsagent profits with a loss making card making business?

  11. [WWP – Labor can’t afford to go small target if they want to win against a first term govt. They’ve got to seize the agenda.]

    They can’t really fund anything else and they haven’t been doing the ground work to get support for anything else, they could spend a full term quite diligently doing NDIS, NBN, health and education, as they’ve previously outlined (but have no way of funding) but that leaves them without a campaign this time.

  13. shea mcduff@682

    Nup.
    Don’t believe you lot.
    Faced with incontrovertible proof that the award is not a hoax I will still simply put my head in the sand and assume that is such.

    I sympathise entirely.

    The concept of Hunt as the recipient of such an award is above laughable. We need a logarithmic scale of ‘this is so ridiculous I don’t know where to start’.

    Maybe we could call it the Hunt Scale? Like the Richter Scale for earthquakes?

  16. well, on that Guardian interactive i got $10.3B in the black by being perfectly reasonable and not even thinking of going near the GST i reckon. Come on ScoMo, its easy!! 🙂

  18. They can’t really fund anything else

    Enough of this nonsense. The federal government can fund anything it wants. Talk real resource constraints if you want to claim the federal government can’t deliver something.

  19. ‘ Photo bombshell in power meeting

    EXCLUSIVE: EMBATTLED Liberal minister Stuart Robert organised a dinner in his Parliament House office with Tony Abbott and a Chinese business mogul at the request of his donor mate, Paul Marks. Mr Robert hosted the dinner — three months out…’

    Joel Fitzgibbon lost his Ministerial job for less than that!

  21. So a newsagent shouldn’t be able to offset newsagent profits with a loss making card making business?

    Those are both examples of business income.

    A person shouldn’t be able to deduct real estate investment losses from their wage income (which is a completely different category of income). Get real.

  23. The Herald Sun has had front page stories all week on the Stuart Robert Saga. As I said today, this reminds me so much of Bronnie reportage

  24. K17 @ 706

    [WWP – Labor can’t afford to go small target if they want to win against a first term govt. They’ve got to seize the agenda.]

    Indeed, Labor’s only path to power is to go large on policy – especially if Turnbull and co go small target. The more they scare the Coalition into running away, the more it looks like Labor is the only party with a coherent vision and plan to get there – provided they can present a coherent vision and plan. Everything points to Labor intending just that.

  25. [Enough of this nonsense. The federal government can fund anything it wants. Talk real resource constraints if you want to claim the federal government can’t deliver something.]

    I think it was West Wing, my friend, where the point was made that a leader with noone following is just a lonely person taking a walk. You aren’t even walking you are just standing in the same spot shouting loudly like a crazy lonely man.

    You may well be right, but dude it doesn’t look like anyone is following you.

    So when I, who have as much economic training as you, when I who reads a lot, reads well and enjoys reading decides the more intelligent thing is to go with established and accepted positions, knowing well that they may be wrong, can you just find in yourself enough perspective and maturity not to call the well established mainstream position with which we know you disagree ‘non-sense’ because it is more likely than not that what you are spewing in non-sense.

    Remember it is another handy rule of life for maturity and humility, and for you it was probably only a few months ago, when you were doing advanced high school calculus (I’m assuming you did advanced high school maths if not … *rolls eyes*) and everyone in the class had one answer and you had another … you were wrong …

  26. don

    [ Maybe we could call it the Hunt Scale? Like the Richter Scale for earthquakes? ]

    The Hunt Scale of Political Ridiculousness. I like it!

    You could then say something like “The minister pulled a 3 Hunt stunt” or “He’s been caught up in a 5 Hunt fiasco” or “that is a 6 Hunt idea”.

    Just to get started, I think you should make Hunt’s award worth “10” on the Hunt scale. Pretty arbitrary, but I reckon that would make Abbott’s onion-eating stunt about a “1”, Hockey’s cigar-smoking stunt about a “2”, and proposing Barnaby as Deputy PM would rate about an “8”.

  28. Nicholas@720

    So a newsagent shouldn’t be able to offset newsagent profits with a loss making card making business?


    Those are both examples of business income.

    A person shouldn’t be able to deduct real estate investment losses from their wage income (which is a completely different category of income). Get real.

    Actually, if the businesses were owned by the same company he would.

  30. “Julia Gillard at least went to a fresh election for legitimacy. Turnbull is trying to be same same but different. It may work at an Asian restaurant catering for tourists but not in politics.”

    TPOF that is the most one eyed Julia Gillard supporter driven rubbish I have ever read. Julia Gillard went to a snap election to cash in on her honeymoon period, and like Campbell Newman, voters were skeptical and she led a Labor with a strong majority to just scraping in on a minority government. The truth is also Gillard’s polling that the challenge to Kevin Rudd was based on (which should never have happened) was always soft, and was exposed in the campaign. The so called ‘legitimacy’, you suggest Gillard was looking for when she decided to call an election was never a reason why she called the election.

    Malcolm Turnbull is being careful not to make the same mistake. But he would be tempted, and there would be Liberal advisers and nervous backbenches urging him to call a snap election while the polling is strong.

  31. Yowza! I have just finished reading the latest Hun piece on Robert (thank you Rossmore & Airlines for the heads up and the link), and I put my Thinking Cap on to try and figure out who it is that is leaking this stuff to them.

    My conclusion is that it is Scott Morrison.

    * He is not ‘an Abbott Backer’
    * He knew about the party and was probably forwarded a photo because he was there
    * However he was not there for long, or so the story pointedly lets us know 😉
    * therefore he can escape being caught in the dragnet

    Also I am therefore to presume that this is the Turnbull forces, aka Praetorian Guards Bishop,J & Morrison,S, attempting a knockout blow of Abbott & MacFarlane before Turnbull does his Reshuffle and heads towards the election.

    I know Stuart Robert backed Turnbull but it seems that he is a loose cannon best thrown overboard at the same time.

  32. David@729

    “Julia Gillard at least went to a fresh election for legitimacy. Turnbull is trying to be same same but different. It may work at an Asian restaurant catering for tourists but not in politics.”

    TPOF that is the most one eyed Julia Gillard supporter driven rubbish I have ever read. Julia Gillard went to a snap election to cash in on her honeymoon period, and like Campbell Newman, voters were skeptical and she led a Labor with a strong majority to just scraping in on a minority government. The truth is also Gillard’s polling that the challenge to Kevin Rudd was based on (which should never have happened) was always soft, and was exposed in the campaign. The so called ‘legitimacy’, you suggest Gillard was looking for when she decided to call an election was never a reason why she called the election.

    —

    HERESY!!!

  34. [don
    The Hunt Scale of Political Ridiculousness. I like it!]

    Yep.
    Stand by to see it used in the future when appropriate.

    Shouldn’t take too long with this mob.

  36. C@tmomma 730
    Wasnt it Morrison whosaid the Robert story was a ‘beat up’ when it surfaced earlier this week…. Which if ur hunch is true makes it all the more Machiavellian. I’ll reserve judgement …. But methinks this story may deliver more surprises….

  38. David @ 729

    [TPOF that is the most one eyed Julia Gillard supporter driven rubbish I have ever read]

    Wow. The anti-Gillard thought police are out in force. Apparently, now it is not enough that we avoid dissing Rudd. We actually have to not say anything about Julia Gillard lest some hysteric throws a hissy fit.

    Well, my point about Turncoat, which was clearly lost once your anaphylactic reaction to the mention of Julia Gillard’s name took hold, still stands. He has no policies of his own. He only has the discredited policies of the Abbott Liberals to defend at the next election and, so far, he is running away from anything dangerous so hard that he is likely to trip over in the panic.

  39. victoria,
    Something Mark Kenny said in his piece to camera accompanying his latest article made me think it is a rather brutal form of clearing the decks for the election.

    The Coalition may yet implode as well tho. 😀

  40. My hunch on the Hun photo leaker is a Lib staffer of a junior frontbencher who has a particular interest in Robert being dumped, so his/her boss gets a promotion in the reshuffle. When a party starts imploding like this, it’s survival of the fittest….

  41. Rossmore @ 735,

    ‘ Wasnt it Morrison whosaid the Robert story was a ‘beat up’ when it surfaced earlier this week…. ‘

    Classic diversionary tactic. He didn’t say it wasn’t true, however. 🙂

  42. TPOF@737

    David @ 729

    TPOF that is the most one eyed Julia Gillard supporter driven rubbish I have ever read


    Wow. The anti-Gillard thought police are out in force. Apparently, now it is not enough that we avoid dissing Rudd. We actually have to not say anything about Julia Gillard lest some hysteric throws a hissy fit.

    Well, my point about Turncoat, which was clearly lost once your anaphylactic reaction to the mention of Julia Gillard’s name took hold, still stands. He has no policies of his own. He only has the discredited policies of the Abbott Liberals to defend at the next election and, so far, he is running away from anything dangerous so hard that he is likely to trip over in the panic.

    It’s alright, I put him straight at my 731.

    Ideological purity must be preserved! 😐

  43. C@tmomma

    How can this be clearing the decks? Gillard had to contend with The Thomson saga which damaged the govt. What is happening in the current govt is sagas on steriods.

  46. C@tmomma 743 good point. Every guy in that photo will know who took the photo….but why would Peta leak a photo that paints Abbott in a bad light?

  48. Science- Going into a dark room searching for a black cat.
    Religion- Going into a dark room searching for a black cat that doesn’t exist.
    Politics- Going into a dark room searching for a black cat that doesn’t exist and declaring “I see it”.

  50. We Want Paul

    It’s telling that your only recourse when confronted with the silliness of your claims is that mainstream misinformation is on your side. You can’t discuss the substance because you don’t understand it. Mainstream opinions have often been discredited as completely wrong. That’s always been a part of historical change. You lack critical thinking skills – that comes across loud and clear.

    Leadership involves standing up for truth even when it isn’t mainstream to do so.

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