Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor

A new poll suggests Bill Shorten did a lot better out of the election campaign than Malcolm Turnbull, and finds a mixed response to the new Senate electoral system.

The latest result from the Essential Research fortnightly rolling average finds the Coalition down two points on the primary vote to 39%, but with Labor’s 51-49 lead on two-party preferred unchanged. Labor and the Greens are both unchanged, at 36% and 10% respectively. There are some interesting findings in the supplementary questions:

• Malcolm Turnbull is rated by 30% as best to lead the Liberal Party, down nine since March, with Julie Bishop up four to 16% and Tony Abbott steady on 9%.

• Conversely, Bill Shorten has done very well out of the election campaign, with 27% rating him best to lead Labor, up 12% since March, while Tanya Plibersek is down two to 12%, Anthony Albanese is down three to 11%, and Chris Bowen is down to 3%.

• Thirty-seven per cent say the found Senate voting more difficult under the new system compared with 19% for easier; 20% found the outcome more democratic, 15% less democratic, and 39% that it made no difference.

• The current state of the Australian economy is rated by 30% as good, 26% as poor and 41% as neither; 33% as heading in the right direction and 35% in the wrong direction; 27% as likely to improve over the next 12 months, versus 41% for worse.

• Fifty-five per cent said they would support a national ban on greyhound racing, versus 27% opposed.

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.

2,599 comments on “Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor”

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  2. don Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:07 pm
    We had a young male teacher fresh from the US, very, very bright, with a shock of long, prematurely greying, frizzy hair, sticking out all over his head rather like Einstein’s, and he was a double major in Physics and English.

    **************************************

    Don, I well remember we had a similar new teacher to us louts in the local all boys tech school who introduced himself :
    He said, ” Hi Guys, I’m Randy”
    We all burst out laughing and the class clown said ” Geez mate, don’t tell us your problems, join the friggin queue – maybe we can get some chics from the high school down the road ????”

  3. don @ #2148 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:14 pm

    bemused @ #2137 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 2:59 pm

    daretotread @ #2135 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 2:51 pm

    Firefox
    I will not shift to Chrome because it led to virus issues.

    Chrome will not cause virus issues any more than any other browser.
    Here is a good starting point for you.
    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1102214

    I much prefer Chrome, but there are some sites I use on a semi-regular basis which are unusable on Chrome. For example, I can only access my ISP provider on Firefox.
    When I try to get to Google ads on Firefox, Chrome goes round in ever decreasing concentric circles.
    And Chrome is developed by google, as you know.

    I liked Firefox and probably still would.
    But I switched to Chrome as it was faster and have stuck with it and experience very few problems.

  4. Player One@2.05 pm, citing earlier posts from nicole and lizzie

    That Guardian Article to which lizzie linked was deliberately misleading. It simply isn’t the case that the UN has found the entire Australian offshore detention system to be in breach of international law.

    The case to which the article refers involved six people held in ONSHORE detention from 2009 to 2015, who had been found to have legitimate claims to refugee status, but who ASIO wished to keep separate from the mainstream Australian community because it deemed them to pose a high security risk. One of the key problems identified by the UN Human Right Committee was that the detainees had not been given any reasons for their continued detention, and were not allowed to challenge, or even see the evidence against them . ASIO’s reasons for this was that to do so would breach their own security in terms of providing dangerous people with information that might reveal ASIO’s sources: something that would also put the lives of informants at risk.

    In 2015, ASIO changed their security assessments of these individuals, and allowed them to be released into the community. This rather weakened Australia’s case, and therefore it is no great surprise that the UN committee found against us, and that lawyers and others of the bleeding heart persuasion are now jumping up and down and calling for the release of the dozen or so other people currently in detention for similar reasons and, by implications, every asylum seeker being detained on- or offshore.

    Call me hopelessly right wing (and I guess I am, at least on the border protection issue), but personally I don’t give a stuff what the UN thinks about this issue: I’m strongly in favour of ASIO doing all that it can do to protect our community from people who pose a security threat. Especially given that the people most likely to be at risk in these situations are other recent resettled refugees from the same part of the world.

  5. Player One

    “He said, ” Hi Guys, I’m Randy”
    We all burst out laughing and the class clown said ” Geez mate, don’t tell us your problems, join the friggin queue – maybe we can get some chics from the high school down the road ????”

    It reminds me of the very good joke on an episode of the Simpsons when Krusty the Clown had written a book and was signing copies at a writers’ conference, and John Updike (voiced by the actual writer, as happens on the Simpsons) comes up to him and asks him to autograph a copy. Krusty says “what’s your name?” “John Updike.” “I asked for your name, not your life story.”

  6. Player One: “That will be Brandis’ scrutineering. Every time he sees a vote with a penis drawn on it, he claims it for the LNP.”

    Applause and laughter.

  7. meher baba Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:27 pm

    Player One: “That will be Brandis’ scrutineering. Every time he sees a vote with a penis drawn on it, he claims it for the LNP.”

    ******************************************************

    He thinks its a self portrait vote ……

  8. Briefly
    Everything is bloody complex.

    We really do not know exactly where Trump is getting his votes because of the Sanders factor.

    So hold your whist awhile.

  11. kakuru @ #2131 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 2:47 pm

    PhoenixRed
    “That’s one reason I dislike moves to change spelling to make it more phonetic.”
    Excellent point. Given that modern English is drawn from a variety of languages, you can usually tell the origin of a word from its spelling. “Phonetic” and “phoenix” are obviously Greek, because they retain ‘ph’ (from Greek letter phi). Latin had ‘f’, so words like ‘firm’ and ‘fabulous’ show their Latin roots. (Sometimes words took detours along the way; ‘fantastic’ originally came from Greek, but was Latinised quite late to replace ‘ph’ with ‘f’ – although both ‘phantastic’ and ‘fantastic’ were in English usage until the 20th century.)
    Then again, I can see the benefits of a phonetic language for non-native speakers. When I was in Turkey, how a word was spelled told me how it should be pronounced. When Kemal Ataturk transliterated Turkish from Arabic to a Western alphabet in 1928, the written Turkish language became phonetic.

    Turkey’s interesting.
    I like the ‘c’ with the ‘5’ hanging off the bottom to represent the /ch/ sound ‘Ç’.

  14. daretotread @ #2159 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:33 pm

    Thanks Bemused
    I now have a speller
    UK only but better than nothing.

    bemused @ #2141 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:05 pm

    ctar1 @ #2139 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:03 pm

    bemused

    What browser do you use?

    Don’t waste your time. I posted explicitly for the poster multiple times on how to turn on spellchecking in Firefox.
    Scroll past the drivel.

    Maybe she will succumb to my great personal charm in the delivery of the message.

    See, told you so. 😉

  16. phoenixred @ #2152 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:20 pm

    don Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:07 pm
    We had a young male teacher fresh from the US, very, very bright, with a shock of long, prematurely greying, frizzy hair, sticking out all over his head rather like Einstein’s, and he was a double major in Physics and English.
    **************************************
    Don, I well remember we had a similar new teacher to us louts in the local all boys tech school who introduced himself :
    He said, ” Hi Guys, I’m Randy”
    We all burst out laughing and the class clown said ” Geez mate, don’t tell us your problems, join the friggin queue – maybe we can get some chics from the high school down the road ????”

    You can have a lot of fun with language.
    I was once working with a group of American academics and scientists when I turned around and asked a group of them;

    ‘Has anyone got a rubber?’

    You could have heard a pin drop!

  17. CTARI

    Bemused gave me useful advice, unlike yours which was of no use. Obviously I have somehow lost an add on that was once there. Now I have one which is great.

  18. I heard a probably made up story about a bunch of American TV execs watching “Skippy” in the hope of it being sold over there. There’s a scene where they ask a kid with a broken leg how it feels and he replies “It hurts like buggery!”

  19. Barney in Saigon Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:44 pm

    You can have a lot of fun with language.
    I was once working with a group of American academics and scientists when I turned around and asked a group of them;
    ‘Has anyone got a rubber?’
    You could have heard a pin drop!

    *********************************************

    I well remember as a very young starting teacher in my home town I said to my next class that I knew some of the students and their names from their sporting achievements in the local football etc

    A guy said, ” OK , do you know Bill Roots ?” ( a students actual name in that class )

    I stupidly said ” So what, its his business isn’t it ?”

    That got a few laughs but they thought I was cool after that ….. even Bill ….

  20. daretotread @ #2158 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:31 pm

    Briefly
    Everything is bloody complex.
    We really do not know exactly where Trump is getting his votes because of the Sanders factor.
    So hold your whist awhile.

    Well…we do know that those intending to vote Democratic (whether for Clinton or Sanders) have notably lower median incomes than Republican-positive voters, including Trump-o-philes.

    For mine, this season’s election is about America’s demons. It’s about the divides…race, religion, age, income, wealth, education…and therefore it will be about fear-and-hope.

    Americans have invariably voted for hope. But America is not well. Perhaps they will vote from their sense of vulnerability…in which case they will certainly get it wrong.

  21. daretotread @ #2167 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:48 pm

    CTARI
    Bemused gave me useful advice, unlike yours which was of no use. Obviously I have somehow lost an add on that was once there. Now I have one which is great.

    I did a quick google search to come up with that stuff.
    Took all of 5 seconds to locate plus another 10 to check relevance.

  23. Trump isn’t Hitler, but as a worst case could end up a lot closer to modern Central Asia dictators. Here is a sample, but worth reading the whole thing.

    http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/trumpmenbashi/
    Trumpmenbashi
    What Central Asia’s spectacular states can tell us about authoritarianism in America.
    By Sarah Kendzior
    March 22, 2016

    …………………….

    The rise of Donald Trump has spurred a resurgence of the study of comparative dictatorship. Most comparisons emphasize the West’s famed fascists: Adolf Hilter, whose command of the crowd and proposed persecution of ethnic minorities prompt obvious parallels with Trump (with cable news taking on the role of propagandist Leni Riefenstahl); and Benito Mussolini, whom Trump approvingly cited in a retweet of a Gawker-run Mussolini fan account, “IlDuce2016.” Others have noted parallels between Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who similarly capitalized on ethnic tension; Russian leader Vladimir Putin, for whom Trump has expressed admiration, and the authoritarian dictators of the Middle East.

    Left out – as always – have been the dictatorships of former Soviet Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and (to a lesser degree) Kyrgyzstan. Of the five republics, only two have had a change in leadership since the 1990s: Kyrgyzstan, which beginning in 2005 experienced a series of uprisings culminating in the election of Almazbek Atambayev in 2011, and Turkmenistan, whose Soviet-era dictator, Saparmarat Niyazov, died in 2006 and was replaced with his dentist. (Seriously.) The dentist, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, remains in power ten years later. Like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan has been ruled since 1989 by its Soviet-era leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Tajikistan, meanwhile, has been ruled by former communist apparatchik Emomali Rahmon since 1992, when he replaced former First Secretary Rahmon Nabiyev, who resigned when civil war broke out in the country.

    Central Asia’s complex history and international media obscurity often lead to its omission in discussions of authoritarian states. As a region which has so dramatically ditched and switched ideologies and identities, it fits no academic paradigm well. Social scientists trained to categorize the world with Western terminology – liberal, neoliberal, conservative, neoconservative – find these terms have little application in former Soviet Central Asia. A vestige of communist colonialism, Central Asia is not the “other” but the other’s “other.” It is Russia’s orient, an insular region which has spent 20 years blocking its inner machinations from international view while internally promoting perpetual propaganda. The Central Asian states are dictatorships. They are also spectacular.

    And it is by examining this–dictatorship as spectacle–that the parallels to Donald Trump emerge.

  25. Leroy Lynch Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:58 pm
    And it is by examining this–dictatorship as spectacle–that the parallels to Donald Trump emerge.

    ********************************************************

    For Me – The only difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

  26. Well counting is almost finished in Senate and HOR and the jury verdict on the Senate voting change having a big effect on informals can be predicted. Senate informals are up from 3.93% to 4.02% ie up 1.09% and HOR informals are down from 5.91 to 5.04 a drop of 0.94%. And the Senate figures assume that all the rescued votes (those who just voted 1 or voted less than 1 to 6) have been removed from the Senate informals where they were initially placed. So any difficulty extra Senate informals have basically been offset by a lowering of informals in the HOR, including the problem for Qld and NSW of having a different State voting system for lower house. And Senate informals are still well below HOR informals.

  29. PhoenixRED

    For Me – The only difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

    I prefer democracy – at least that way I get to choose who is going to order me around!

  31. Player One Monday, July 25, 2016 at 4:12 pm
    PhoenixRED

    “ For Me – The only difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting. ”

    I prefer democracy – at least that way I get to choose who is going to order me around!

    ******************************************
    You get a CHANCE to say who you want …… but often you have to eat the shit sandwich of who others want ….. personally I am choking on a Mr Harbourside Mansions shit sandwich at the moment, Player One ……. how’s about you ??????

  33. don @ #2142 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 3:07 pm

    barney in saigon @ #2115 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 2:30 pm

    phoenixred @ #2050 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 11:34 am

    Why isn’t phonetic spelled the way it sounds?

    That’s one reason I dislike moves to change spelling to make it more phonetic.
    You lose the etymological information that the spelling contains.

    In any case, whose pronunciation do you use to construct the ‘improved’ spelling?
    Mine or yours? The people from Oxford or those from Ireland? Those from Michigan or those from Alabama? The people from Karachi or those from New Delhi?
    I well remember my first staff meeting at a new school the day before school opened a very long time ago.
    We had a young male teacher fresh from the US, very, very bright, with a shock of long, prematurely greying, frizzy hair, sticking out all over his head rather like Einstein’s, and he was a double major in Physics and English.
    On staff we had an English Head of Department who thought she knew everything.
    The new US teacher said to the headmistress ‘Excuse me ma’am, can you tell me the schedule (he pronounced it ‘skedule’) for opening day?’
    The English HOD interrupted in a condescending way,
    ‘Shedule!’
    To which the physics/english bod said, instantly,
    ‘Oh yeah? Where did you go to shool?’
    Still cracks me up, and it is the sort of retort you usually think of as you leave the room, or in the still watches of the night.

    Hahahaha that is too funny. I say skedule although my Dad says shedule. He also says H with a silent H. I speak more like my Mum.

  34. https://sarahkendzior.com/
    How could the 2016 presidential elections change The United States? Is The United States at a turning political point in 2016? What impact on the US could the 2016 presidential elections have?

    Trump could not have won the nomination if the US were not already a broken country. We have had fifteen years of war and eight years of a decimated economy, decades of partisan gridlock, and constant racial strife. We are a wounded nation. People feel desperate, and that desperation shows in the support for Trump. But while some voters think Trump is the cure, he’s really a symptom of the disease.

  35. Yep. Funny aint it……
    Rhys Muldoon
    2h2 hours ago
    Rhys Muldoon ‏@rhysam
    How is it that revelations about Clinton damage her, yet all revelations about Trump don’t damage him?

  36. They plan to press a button on 1 August to magically give us the results of the Senate. There has in effect been minimal scrutineering. it is virtually impossible to scrutineer the Senate votes now. We are reliant totally on the data entry, judgement and checking skills of 1500 foreign students and assorted other data entry people.

    If I were a candidate and the computer says you get eliminated by less than 0.1% of the votes, then I would be DEMANDING a recount or scrutiny of EVERY ballot.

    There is SO MUCH room for error. The key areas to look at are:
    1. If the ATL vote exhausts before there are 6 votes
    2. or if there are two numbers listed eg two 7s or two 1s
    3. Every time there are two 1s need to be re-examined because what are probably cross outs are treated as 1s

  37. victoria @ #2185 Monday, July 25, 2016 at 4:22 pm

    Yep. Funny aint it……
    Rhys Muldoon
    2h2 hours ago
    Rhys Muldoon ‏@rhysam
    How is it that revelations about Clinton damage her, yet all revelations about Trump don’t damage him?

    Trump is Outrageous. There’s nothing that anyone can say of Trump that would raise a sense of outrage that he has not already done himself. He’s beyond outrage in that sense. Indignation is irrelevant to Trump. He’s been Forgiven his Transgressions.

  38. How is it that revelations about Clinton damage her, yet all revelations about Trump don’t damage him?

    Because Clinton supporters, and potential supporters, are operating off a higher intellectual base. May sound elitist, but it’s true.

  40. Tonights qanda

    Tonight’s Panel
    Craig Laundy – Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science
    Ed Husic – Opposition innovation spokesman
    Gillian Triggs – President, Australian Human Rights Commission
    Peter Kurti – Research Fellow, Centre for Independent Studies
    Shireen Morris – Constitutional reform research fellow, Cape York Institute

  41. Victoria
    The problem for Hillary is that she probably does not want to get support from “insiders” of any kind. She needs TV stars

  42. The numbers of exhausted votes in the Senate will be significant but not alarming. At the moment it looks like about 12% of voters overall will have voted for a minor party that wont be standing at the last count after all eliminations have occurred. Say 50% of these parties votes exhaust – that’s about 6% exhaust. Plus in some cases a major party surplus will be distributed and some will exhaust assuming the exhausted votes for majors aren’t locked up in elected quotas (not sure about this). Its a lesson to voters to keep preferencing beyond the minimum. Or to some minor parties that they should not nominate if they can sensibly combine with another party – for a half Senate election the exhaust rate would have been higher. But also note that some minor party voters will be happy to exhaust – they will think they have done something clever.

  43. Good Afternoon Bludgers!
    Back home after house sitting and retrieving my friend and her family from Sydney International Airport! I don’t know how I survived the trip into the Big Smoke in peak hour morning traffic but I did!

    My goodness Douglas and Milko, Rosebery has certainly changed since the last time I saw it! Massive apartment buildings everywhere where there used to be old terraces!

    So, has the lackadaisical Turnbull Coalition government done anything useful today besides finally releasing Sussan Ley to talk about something, anything other than Health? : )

    No? Thought not.

  45. Sprocket @ 3.37pm,

    Vincent State High School come on down!

    +39 for Labor, O’Toole now 31 ahead

    Townsville suburbanites with Unemployed Youth at home?

  47. ‘Rosebery has certainly changed since the last time I saw it! Massive apartment buildings everywhere where there used to be old terraces!’

    Not just Rosebery, it’s happening just about everywhere in Sydney, but without the thought of the infrastructure to support it.
    And no, WestConnex isn’t the answer, unless the question is, what can we do to increase traffic congestion in Sydney?

  48. PhoenixRED

    You get a CHANCE to say who you want …… but often you have to eat the shit sandwich of who others want ….. personally I am choking on a Mr Harbourside Mansions shit sandwich at the moment, Player One ……. how’s about you ??????

    Yes, sometimes democracy is a bitch. But it is still better than the alternatives.

  49. Adrian,
    Obviously, cramming more people onto Sydney’s groaning road network is not the answer! West Connex just gives them somewhere new to go to with their cars.

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