Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

The only pollster currently in the game finds Labor retaining its modest post-election, and finds opinion finely balanced on superannuation reform and nominating Kevin Rudd for United Nations Secretary-General.

Essential Research, which is still the only polling series back in the game after the election, records Labor maintaining a 52-48 lead in the latest reading of its fortnightly rolling average, with primary votes also unchanged at Coalition 39%, Labor 37%, Greens 10% and Nick Xenophon Team 4%. Also featured:

• Support for nominating Kevin Rudd for Secretary-General of the United Nations was finely balanced at 36% for and 39% against, which was predictably split along party lines.

• Thirty-seven per cent said Tony Abbott should resign from parliament; 25% that he should be given a ministry; and 21% that he should remain on the back bench. A similar question in March found 47% saying he should quit at the looming election, with 18% saying he should be given a ministry and 15% that he should remain on the back bench.

• Capping after-tax super contributions backdated at $500,000 recorded 29% approval and 34% disapproval.

• A question on groups that would be better and worse off under the re-elected Coalition government returned the usual results, with large companies and the high-income earners expected to do very well indeed, small businesses somewhat less well but still net positive, and various categories of struggler expected to do poorly.

• As it does on a semi-regular basis, the pollster asked questions on trust in various media outlets. However, this asked specifically on reportage of the federal election campaign, dropped separate questions for the news and current affairs as distinction from talkback programming of “ABC radio” and “commercial radio”, and in the case of the newspapers, dropped the normal proviso that respondents be be a readers of the paper in question to qualify for inclusion. This led to much lower levels of trust being recorded for the newspapers across the board, while the radio results split the difference between the higher results that are normally recorded for news and current affairs, and the lower results for talkback. As far as relativities are concerned, the results as before find television the most trusted medium, public broadcasters favoured over commercial ones. However, The Australian did not perform significantly better than News Corporation tabloids, as it has usually done in the past, whereas the Fairfax papers continued to record somewhat higher levels of trust than News Corporation ones.

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.

3,123 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

Comments Page 1 of 63
1 2 … 63

  1. Maybe Bilbo can enlighten us if a newly (re)elected government has ever gone without a poll win.

    Might be a while for this rabble.

  3. That variation on abbott may be due to the fact that the election has been run and won.
    Could also be a mild dose of happy memories of how good things were when Tony was PM.
    But we all know that nostalgia is not what it used to be.

  4. I heard Chris Bowen’s press conference from earlier in the day whilst I was out driving in my new (2nd hand) car and he is not taking his foot off Scott Morrison’s throat.

    He gave him a whack about jawboning the Reserve Bank to drop Interest Rates and has started to ask for his plan to deal with a listless economy beyond the 3 word slogan of ‘Jobs and Growth’ because, as Chris rightly pointed out, with Interest Rates at record lows, a Trade Deficit, anaemic inflation, stagnant to falling wages growth resulting in falling living standards, we really need a plan right now and Scott doesn’t have one.

    Chris kindly offered to work with Scott on one. ; )

  5. My take on whether Turnbull or Rudd is lying plumps for Turnbull.

    Just think about one thing. If Turnbull had really conveyed to Rudd in December last year that he would not take a nomination recommendation to Cabinet, why then was Julie Bishop hung out to dry? She wouldn’t have been bringing a positive DFAT recommendation to Cabinet last week if the PM hadn’t given her the nod.

  6. Egad I,m first (i Hope) so life goes on in WA the Liberals are playing musical chairs about who might (if they can pluck up the courage to challenge) overthrow Barnett.
    Meanwhile in Canberra some mysterious Lib is leaking to the Media with finger being pointing a one JB how many incompetent Govt can we stand WA is a very odd place.
    Meanwhile the Stokes empire is forcing redundancies in that organ of truth know to Perthites as the WORST Australian,official organ of the Liberal party,cause when Stokes gets his hands on the Sundry Slimes he will own or control the 7 network (WAs leading TV station)why I have no idea it’s crap,Radio 6PR owned by Fairfax I assumed by staffed on air by various Worst apparatchiks,so TG for the internet

  7. C@tmomma

    He gave him a whack about jawboning the Reserve Bank to drop Interest Rates and has started to ask for his plan to deal with a listless economy beyond the 3 word slogan of ‘Jobs and Growth’ because, as Chris rightly pointed out, with Interest Rates at record lows, a Trade Deficit, anaemic inflation, stagnant to falling wages growth resulting in falling living standards, we really need a plan right now and Scott doesn’t have one.

    Don’t worry. GG assures me that we can all get rich just by selling real estate to each other.

  9. Anyone who denigrates my calling out by making out I am a gang member and Bemused is my leader or call me a Ruddster or groupie in other words, shame on the lot of you. Do you think I am not capable of voicing my own opinions? Anyone siding with marksjs’s comment is jumping on a bandwagon full of nonsense. Some of you just can’t handle the truth. This one’s for you.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFE6qQ3ySXE

  10. Whatever views people have of Rudd, one thing is clear – he has been treated in an appalling manner by this PM. If MT had told KR on day 1, you not suitable for the job and I would not be supporting you, I think that the matter would have rested there. This PM has no capacity to make a clear cut decision. Besides don’t underestimate him – he is mean and vindictive.

  11. C@t

    My question would be this: Why tell him it’s a cabinet decision, and then make a captain’s call?

    Doesn’t make sense.

    Then again, nothing to do with Kevin Rudd makes much sense.

    Who can’t recall his indecent collaboration with Julie Bishop in the most disgusting put-down of an Aus PM, than this:

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/the-boganvillea-is-flowering-and-the-hats-are-on-the-kat-20110622-1gfcr.html

    Beggared belief.

    But Nicole, so feverishly tying herself to the Ruddista Cult, will probably explain this away as ‘hurt feelings,’ or bemused’s ‘obviously ill,’ crap.

    A full twelve-month after he’d been desposed.

    How long does a bloke have to suffer before he exacts revenge, even including the other side?

    Rudd knew what he was doing to Labor.

  14. greensborough growler @ #8 Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 5:32 pm

    P1,
    Did I really say that. Or are you just lying again?

    I was just drawing the logical conclusion from your belief that house prices are on a never-ending upward spiral. Surely all we all have to do now that mortgage rates are at record lows is leverage ourselves to the hilt and we will all end up rich.

  16. Dear Kezza

    I do not (actually maybe I do) start another flame war, but let us be cruelly honest.

    Julia Gillard was a bogun. Now many in the ALP think that is a good thing, “one of us” but for many others she was bogun pure and simple. Stop being so sensitive. I am sure that there are even friends of Turnbull that call him “mansions.”

    The fact that Rudd and Bishop had a giggle about it is typical workplace banter. It was probably NOT good that Bishop used it in parliament but funny anyway. It would not have influenced a single vote or perception. The fact that Gillard was from bogan central casting was obvious from her accent and choice of partner.

    So be a proud bogun. Be true to yourself, just as if you are a latte sipping hippie from Fitzroy or a basket weaver from Balmain. You can be a toffee nose from a private school or a mummy’s boy or daddy’s girl. You can be Jai’me or a red neck. If that is who you are then be proud of it.

    Gillard was a bogan in her essence. She did not indulge in the fine arts, or read great literature. I do not think she ate only lentil burgers and soy lattes. Her hobbies were footy and knitting, about as bogan as it goes. Tim I suspect was even more bogan.

    So hey she is a bogan, looked and spoke bogan and at first (not in 2013) dressed bogan.

    So what is the big deal. She was well educated and could have chosen to be middle class and join the latte set. She did not. Bogan by choice and proud of it.

    What is the big deal.

  19. kezza2 @ #11 Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 5:34 pm

    But Nicole, so feverishly tying herself to the Ruddista Cult

    Enough! My criticisms have been universal and applicable to anyone. Stop projecting your own biases onto me. I would be saying the exact same were it Julia Gillard seeking endorsement, an ex-Lib, anyone. Enough with your misrepresentation of me.

  22. TPOF (previous thread)

    greensborough growler @ #3270 Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 3:25 pm

    CBA have passed on 0.13% of the 0.25% bp drop in interest rates.
    This partial pass through was expected by analysts.

    A couple of questions:
    1. Is the failure to pass on the full cut justified by the cost of money to the banks or is it a desire to bolster profit margins?
    2. Are all the major banks expected to follow the CBA lead?

    In fact loans create deposits and so the idea that action on the reserves side can be “transmitted to” lending is contrary to the actually observed causal relationships.

    http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/03/bank-of-england-loans-create-deposits/

  23. Why are so many of you so angry all the time?
    Are we really getting to the stage that we cannot have a reasonable opinion without being trashed?

  24. DTT

    As usual, you miss the point.

    Oh, chuckle, oh what a laugh, what fun,

    To Denigrate the PM of Australia.

    You’re probably still laughing in your jocks about it. Especially since it came from your hero, Rudd.

    Well, okay, get off on it as is your wont, but instil other Labor leader’s names in there, and I bet you wouldn’t be laughing your tits off.

    Let’s imagine your suit against the biggest bogan of all, Bob Hawke.

    Didn’t he take the punters for a ride.

    He he he he he

  26. Kezza2,
    My question would be this: Why tell him it’s a cabinet decision, and then make a captain’s call?

    Doesn’t make sense.
    This is what Paul Bongiorno, whose opinion I respect, had to say:

    Let us assume that despite his earlier assurances of support for Kevin Rudd’s nomination to be the next United Nations General Secretary, he had genuinely changed his mind. Why then would you leave your closest ally and Deputy Leader, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, high and dry?

    Ms Bishop brought to cabinet, as she had been asked to, a recommendation fully backed by her new department head for Mr Rudd to be given the nod. A view supported by our ambassadors to London and Washington, and former senior Liberal politicians Alexander Downer and Joe Hockey.

    Mr Downer is no foreign relations neophyte. He was our longest-serving foreign minister. Like the present minister, he is aware of Kevin Rudd’s impressive high-level international contacts.

    Ms Bishop and the majority of cabinet who supported her are perplexed. Cabinet sources say at the end of the heated and passionate attacks on Mr Rudd’s character from the right’s hardliners like Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, they failed to convince most of their colleagues.

    http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2016/08/01/turnbull-blunders-rudd-nt/?utm_source=Responsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160802_TND

    I read this after I expressed my own hunch.

  28. Who freaking cares if Julia was a Bogan or not!?! It was never and should never be a criterion to disqualify an Australian from the highest office in the land!

  29. Nicole
    [My criticisms have been universal and applicable to anyone.]

    No, they haven’t, actually. Go back and read your own posts.

    [Stop projecting your own biases onto me.]

    I’m not. As soon as you realised you weren’t getting anywhere, you make up a story about Gillard reneging on the CPRS. It took Zoomster numerous posts to get you to understand that Gillard did not repeal the CPRS, but she DID modify it.

    [ I would be saying the exact same were it Julia Gillard seeking endorsement, an ex-Lib, anyone.]

    Nothing you’ve said to date would verify that statement.

    [ Enough with your misrepresentation of me.]

    You haven’t been misrepresented. You’ve painted your own picture. And you’ve aligned yourself with the Ruddistas. So be it.

  30. I stand with Marksjs

    Actually, I have no idea what he said or what the issue is. All I know is he is a True Believer who bleeds the progressive cause. EOM.

    Also, I suspect we are all feeling post-election blues.mthe Tories have won – just. But they get to sit on the Treasury Benches and gloat, as do nothing and plot and scheme against each other, but can, as Christopher Pyne put it, boast that they “are an election winning machine”.

  31. momma,

    I don’t think JG would have been a very good Australian Test Team captain. That is, after all, the highest office in this country.

  33. sprocket_ @ #30 Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 6:09 pm

    I stand with Marksjs
    Actually, I have no idea what he said or what the issue is. All I know is he is a True Believer who bleeds the progressive cause. EOM.
    Also, I suspect we are all feeling post-election blues.mthe Tories have won – just. But they get to sit on the Treasury Benches and gloat, as do nothing and plot and scheme against each other, but can, as Christopher Pyne put it, boast that they “are an election winning machine”.

    He made a vicious and unprovoked attack on some posters here, in particular, me.

    A fairly unpleasant person in my experience.

  34. Rudd and Gillard are part of Australian history. Meanwhile, the barbarians are on the Treasury Benches and someone who’ll hopefully be PM in 34 months’ time (if not sooner) is Leader of the Opposition.

  36. A question on groups that would be better and worse off under the re-elected Coalition government returned the usual results, with large companies and the high-income earners expected to do very well indeed, small businesses somewhat less well but still net positive, and various categories of struggler expected to do poorly

    So where were they on 2 July?
    When will the punter’s stop voting against their own best interests.

  37. Meanwhile, the iconic Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation has been sold to the Singapore government.

    “Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation has more than 5400 employees, most of whom are employed in a broad spread of offices around the world. The company has expanded from its beginnings building the Snowy Mountains Scheme to develop into a globally recognised consultancy which specialises in infrastructure projects.

    It has been acquired by Surbana Jurong, which is owned by an arm of the Singapore government, Temasek. Surbana Jurong is a consultancy which specialises in urban projects and last year decided to focus on trebling annual revenues to $S1.5 billion ($A1.5 billion) by the end of 2016.”

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/singapore-snaps-up-iconic-snowy-hydro-developer-20160731-gqhv14

  39. Bernard Keane ‏@BernardKeane · 24m24 minutes ago

    No AFP action on the Mediscare texts despite Brandis saying they were a “prima facie breach of the law”. Another demonstration of his genius

  40. C@t
    [I read this after I expressed my own lunch.]

    Bongo’s okay, but it still doesn’t make sense. Colourful stuff and all.

    For Kev to claim that Turnbull had said it was AOK, and then it was a cabinet decision, and then, behold, it was a captain’s call, and then the release of all the so-called communications, just speaks to Rudd’s verified, vindictive scatter-gun approach.

    He doesn’t care who he hurts in the process.

    He’s a mongrel.

    How is this behaviour supposed to demonstrate he’s a diplomat. It doesn’t.

  41. It does puzzle me – almost every week you fill out a form somewhere which asks you for your name and address, and I’ve never seen anyone pause before doing so and ask, “What level of encryption do you use on your site?”

    I would hazard that the level of encryption required by the ABS is far greater than, say, the nursery where I order my plants on line, or any one of the numerous sites I entrust not only my name and address but my credit card details to.

  42. lizzie @ #39 Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 6:23 pm

    Bernard Keane ‏@BernardKeane · 24m24 minutes ago
    No AFP action on the Mediscare texts despite Brandis saying they were a “prima facie breach of the law”. Another demonstration of his genius

    Once Soapy said that there was no doubt that there would be no case to answer!

  43. I got my census notification in the mail yesterday, a one page letter with my own code. All other householdes are getting the same, or maybe a form.

    How many people will lose ir forget about their’s?

    As for the privacy argument, they won’t be asking anything about me that the Tax Office, Medicare and Google (and hence any number of advertisers) don’t already know, so I’m not concerned.

  44. You (whom this applies to and I apologise in advance for my generalisation) need to get over you petty biases and your grudges. There are far more important things at play, like defeating our current government and keeping them out by keeping our priorities in order and standing united. I was not party to the events of 2010. I stood as a bystander rejoicing when Labor won government from Howard in 2007. Then I watched Labor self implode and frivol it all away.

    I witnessed all the internal bickering, the pointing of fingers seeking someone to blame, the vitriol, etc. etc. I thought Labor had learned the lessons of the past and moved on. Then I come in here and it’s still going on. If only some of you could be a fly on the wall and see yourselves. Pathetic. Get over it or in opposition is where you will stay or you will get in only to stuff up your chances all over again.

    No wonder people are so over politics. I don’t care who did what and blah blah blah blah. The facts are I DON’T CARE and you know what? Most others don’t care either. It’s old news, but people haven’t forgot the infighting. We can do a lot better than be the lesser of two evils. Let’s put all this pettiness behind us and move along, puh-lease! Let’s be better and make a real difference again.

  46. kezza2 @ #40 Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 6:24 pm

    C@t

    I read this after I expressed my own lunch.

    Bongo’s okay, but it still doesn’t make sense. Colourful stuff and all.
    For Kev to claim that Turnbull had said it was AOK, and then it was a cabinet decision, and then, behold, it was a captain’s call, and then the release of all the so-called communications, just speaks to Rudd’s verified, vindictive scatter-gun approach.
    He doesn’t care who he hurts in the process.
    He’s a mongrel.
    How is this behaviour supposed to demonstrate he’s a diplomat. It doesn’t.

    I am sure everyone got it long ago. You hate Rudd. OK?

  47. [CTar1
    Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 5:52 pm
    ‘Trump warns the election could be rigged’
    http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36950083
    FFS]

    What happens if Trump goes completely bananas before the election? Is there any mechanism for either (a) the GOP to dis-endorse him as their candidate or (b) anything in the US constitution or laws to remove him from the ballot paper?

  49. c@tmomma @ #5 Tuesday, August 2, 2016 at 5:23 pm

    My take on whether Turnbull or Rudd is lying plumps for Turnbull.
    Just think about one thing. If Turnbull had really conveyed to Rudd in December last year that he would not take a nomination recommendation to Cabinet, why then was Julie Bishop hung out to dry? She wouldn’t have been bringing a positive DFAT recommendation to Cabinet last week if the PM hadn’t given her the nod.

    Absolutely correct. Just another piece of circumstantial evidence.

  50. zoomster –

    I would hazard that the level of encryption required by the ABS is far greater than, say, the nursery where I order my plants on line, or any one of the numerous sites I entrust not only my name and address but my credit card details to.

    But you get to choose whether to trust the nursery etc etc. We apparently no longer have any choice wrt the census. Making names compulsory was always going to be a sensitive issue, and making glib false comparisons is not helping.

    The ABS have not built up the trust in the new methods sufficiently (there are genuine concerns about both the encryption standards and the procedures – ABS temporary workers using their own phones in the process of collecting data – without providing particularly good assurances about the uses of the new compulsory data.

    For an organization that depends on keeping the public on-side to get accurate information they’ve done a very poor job at managing the process. Given there was talk of abandoning some census taking as a cost-saving measure I do wonder where the thinking is on this.

    I can’t afford to risk any fines so I’ll be meekly complying, but if my situation were financially more secure I would be strongly thinking about partial or complete disobedience with respect to this census.

Comments Page 1 of 63
1 2 … 63

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *