Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

No change on voting intention in Essential Research’s budget-eve poll, which also records an increasing tendency to perceive the Prime Minister as narrow-minded, erratic and intolerant.

This week’s reading of the Essential Research rolling fortnightly aggregate finds Labor maintaining the 52-48 lead it opened up last week, from primary votes of Coalition 40% (steady), Labor 38% (down one) and Greens 10% (steady). The poll also features its occasional series of questions on the leaders’ attributes, which find Malcolm Turnbull slipping around three points on most measures since March, but suffering particular reversals on “narrow-minded” (up eight to 41%), “erratic” (up seven to 34%) and “intolerant” (up eight to 34%). Bill Shorten has generally improved a couple of points, and particularly well on “a capable leader” (up seven to 41%). However, Turnbull has significantly better results than Shorten across nine out of 15 categories, while Shorten’s only advantages are on “out of touch with ordinary people” and “arrogant”, where Turnbull’s scores are rather high.

Other findings:

• What was described to respondents as Labor’s “policy to tackle climate change which includes a target of reducing Australia’s carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 (compared to the Coalition Government’s target of 26-28%) and introducing an emissions trading scheme” recorded 57% approval and 21% disapproval.

• The decision to award a $50 billion submarines contract “to a French company with most of the construction to be done in South Australia” had 52% approval and 27% disapproval.

• As a general principle, negative gearing had 43% approval and 36% disapproval. Changes to it “so that, for future purchases, investors can only claim tax deductions for
investments in newly built homes” had 36% approval and 38% disapproval. Twenty-four per cent thought such a change would causing housing prices to fall, 31% to rise at a slower rate, and 13% felt it would result in little change.

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.

237 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  1. William
    It is all starting to look good for me posts in the centre of the page rather than veering to the right.
    I would still like the page numbers but other than that no complaints.

  2. Any reason why the time stamp is 14 minutes ago, 15 minutes ago, 8 hours ago
    This time stamp does not aid easy navigation
    Removing comment page numbers does not aid easy navigation

    Generally IT professionals in my day used to aim to improve the usability of their product be it an app, a program or a blog by allowing people multiple ways of using their product, by providing navigation with heaps of prompts for infrequent and beginning users, fast path for intermediate users and shortcuts and 3 keystroke combinations for expert users e.g. copy the user can press ALT and C simultaneously or select FILE then select COPY

    Crikey’s developers have decided to dumb down this site assuming that it is only read on mobile phones and there are less than 15 comments per post

  3. Thanks MTBW – but our earlier problem should re-emerge when we tick over to a second page of comments. I’ve always set this to happen after 50 comments in the past, but for the time being I have it set at 200.
    I should add here that the only specific problem I’m aware of on our end, not counting style-related issues like lack of comments numbering, is that you get sent back to the first page after leaving a comment. When a commenter complain about “too many redirects”, I’m not sure if this is to do with the fact that they’re using CCCP or not.

  4. guytaur

    TheKouk: Looks like the only reason RBA cut rates was inflation: Growth and credit growth still ok.

    The Kouk is talking utter bollocks. From the RBA today …

    The RBA also noted that while the global economy continued to grow, the growth was at a slower pace than expected and forecasts had been revised down further.

  7. darn @ 11 mins ago

    I’m not sure that a boat arriving is necessarily going to favour Labor. I would much prefer that anything to do with AS waited until after July 2.

    Nah. If it is going to go arse up, as it always was eventually, much better it happen on the watch of those primarily responsible for this policy obscenity in the first place, the Abbott-Turnbull era LNP.

    Border control, budget control and the general economy, leadership stability, national security, gravitas,…

    Is there any traditional ‘natural’ advantage that has actually worked out for the LNP this term?

    Then there is health, education, science, industry & IR, social policy, climate change, telecommunications & media, dragging public debate and governance into the partisan sewer,…

    Hit the reset button. Labor are correct to facilitate getting to the polls ASAP.

  10. More on the prospects for growth by the RBA …

    Taking all these considerations into account, the Board judged that prospects for sustainable growth in the economy, with inflation returning to target over time, would be improved by easing monetary policy at this meeting.

    In other words, the prospects for growth were not so good without an interest rate cut.

  11. TheKouk: Hockey “they’re not cutting interest rates because economy is doing well. Interest rates are being cut because the economy is struggling”

  13. Just Me
    #107 1 min ago
    darn @ 11 mins ago

    I’m not sure that a boat arriving is necessarily going to favour Labor. I would much prefer that anything to do with AS waited until after July 2.

    Nah. If it is going to go arse up, as it always was eventually, much better it happen on the watch of those primarily responsible for this policy obscenity in the first place, the Abbott-Turnbull era LNP.

    Two months of maritime AS arrivals broadcast on constant replay on the nation’s screens will certainly foil the LNP just as it did Gillard and Rudd.

  18. lyndalcurtis: Arthur Sinodinos might have to face a privileges committee inquiry for his non-appearance at a Senate Committee last week #senate

  19. William
    [ but our earlier problem should re-emerge when we tick over to a second page of comments. I’ve always set this to happen after 50 comments in the past, but for the time being I have it set at 200.]
    We can surely live with that. You are giving all of us a place to put our opinion and if it takes a while it takes a while.

  21. Wait, he has to attend a committee as punishment for not attending a committee?

    Does this one have any bite to force him to attend?

  22. It just means that Coalition mismanagement of the “camps” has resulted in the boats starting up again

  24. I’d stop short of saying that it’s “good news for Labor”

    I mean, if they were to win government what the hell are they going to do? It’s a wicked problem in the political environment we have descended to

  26. Shiftaling

    Easy option for Labor with off shore destroyed as valid option. On shore detention. This time immigration will have incentive to process faster so detention remains viable option not destroyed by bottlenecks.

    The refugees will released into community and will continue while Labor negotiates a regional solution. Its the only option left.

  28. Shiftaling

    I’d stop short of saying that it’s “good news for Labor”

    I mean, if they were to win government what the hell are they going to do? It’s a wicked problem in the political environment we have descended to

    The difference is that the ALP want to try and find a solution. The LNP don’t.

  32. Player 1, I agree with that completely but still think it’s going to be very tough for them if there’s an incoming Labor government

    Agree totally that they are the only potential party of government that will treat this issue seriously. God only knows what the Coalition will stoop to in trying to turn the tatters of the current policy to their own political ends

  36. WB

    I could get used to newest comments being top of page and page numbers going back to look at older posts.

    Makes sense to me.

  37. Second go after being caught out by new post.

    I’ve sent two emails over the last two days to Crikey. Apologies to fellow Bludgers for the frustration coming though.

    Hi Crikey,

    More problems on Poll Bludger via mobile. Comments now run newest to oldest, there are still no comment or page numbers, refresh takes me to the latest comment, not where I am up to.

    For fucks sake don’t you people test these things before they go up? You are into week 2 of the upgrade debacle. These are not teething issues, they are a debacle for which the fault lies ENTIRELY at the feet of piss poor management.

    I am a paying paying subscriber BTW.

    Kind regards

    Good afternoon Crikey,

    Some requests for Poll Bludger, we need:
    – Comment numbers
    – Page numbers
    – Comments to run in chronological order
    – Definately NO nested comments
    – Graphs back alongside the comments

    I really don’t know how hard the first two could be and I don’t know why it’s not fixed yet. There is user guy on Poll Bludger who has setup CCCP to do the first two above, so it’s really not hard.

    Whatever manager(s) are responsible for the debacle of the Crikey “upgrade” need to be sacked.

    Kind Regards

  39. A week or so ago I noticed that a clever poster managed to achieve an indented piece of text in italics, much the same as what we were able to do under the old system.

    Can anyone please educate me as to how this is done?

  42. The reason that makes sense to me is it means the live conversation is on the opening page and the archives are there to be searched in cases of looking back at conversations.

  43. Agree with grimace … the best nav tools were page numbers and comment numbers … that way, if you had to leave for a while, you could find where you were up to ‘toot sweet’ (so-to-speak!)

  45. Darn

    A week or so ago I noticed that a clever poster managed to achieve an indented piece of text in italics, much the same as what we were able to do under the old system.

    Can anyone please educate me as to how this is done?

    Let’s hope I don’t stuff this up:
    <blockquote><i>text</i></blockquote>

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