Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten both lose ground on the question of best person to lead their party, as voting intention remains largely unchanged.

Essential Research records incremental movement away from the Coalition on its fortnightly rolling average, on which the Coalition and Labor are now both on 37% on the primary vote with the former down one on last week, although two-party preferred is unchanged at 53-47. The Greens are up a point to 11%, One Nation is steady at 6% and the Nick Xenophon Team is steady at 3%. Other findings:

• Contra a recent result from Morgan, Malcolm Turnbull retains the narrowest of leads over Julie Bishop as preferred Liberal leader, with Turnbull down nine since immediately after the election to 21%, Bishop up four to 20% and Tony Abbott up two to 11%. The same question for Labor finds Bill Shorten’s election campaign spike disappearing – he’s down ten to 17%, with Tanya Plibersek up two to 14% and Anthony Albanese up one to 12%.

• Forty-four per cent would sooner see the words “humiliate or intimidate” than “offend or insult” in section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, but only 17% think Australia’s racial discrimination laws too strict, against 26% for too weak and 40% for about right.

• There is strong support for a range of campaign finance reforms, including immediate disclosure, $5000 donations caps, and bans on foreign donations and donations by companies and unions. However, most oppose banning donations and having only public funding for party spending.

• Thirty-three per cent said they took more interest in the American election than the Australian, compared with 22% for vice-versa and 38% for the same amount.

• Sixty-three per cent say institutions involved in child sex abuse claims should pay compensation, 14% say the government should do so, and 7% say neither.

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.

1,707 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. We’ve had challenging conditions here today with catastrophic fire conditions and fires burning across the region. We had 41 degrees at lunchtime (unheard of for this way), but thankfully a comfortable 23 now, and rain forecast overnight which will assist with those fires.

  2. ‘Why doesn’t Frydenberg have a quiet word in Baird’s ear and explain that clearing native vegetation is counter-productive in the fight against global warming?’

    Because Frydenburg doesn’t give a stuff about global warming?

  4. Why doesn’t Frydenberg have a quiet word in Baird’s ear and explain that clearing native vegetation is counter-productive in the fight against global warming?’

    Nor Baird probably. Liberals are happy to act on global warming provided it doesn’t cost their backers and bankrollers anything or in any way interfere with them making money. Hence Direct Inaction.

  6. C@t:

    2016 is apparently going to the hottest year on record. It’s getting harder and harder to keep insisting that the earth isn’t warming.

  7. which have been perceived as blatantly racist

    Trump side-effect #67: Racist things aren’t actually racist anymore, they’re just perceived that way. Clearly the observer has perceived wrongly, and the racist statement wasn’t really racist.

  8. Steve Bannon, Trump’s alt right strategist, has a colourful turn of phrase

    “But critics of Mr. Bannon continued to raise questions about his background and his tenure as the chairman of Breitbart News. A 2011 radio interview surfaced in which Mr. Bannon praised Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin by saying they were not “a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England.”

    “That drives the left insane,” he added, “and that’s why they hate these women.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/donald-trump-presidency.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

  9. antonbruckner11 @ #174 Tuesday, November 15, 2016 at 7:18 pm

    Now Baird is dicking around with the ICAC. He really wants to lose the next election. In fact, he seems desperate to lose it.

    I don’t think he cares much. He has done the job he was hired to do – i.e. lining the pockets of his libspiv mates. Now I think he is bored and just wants out.

  10. PO – Probably right. I just remember how people got sucked in by his Bambi bullshit and I keep telling them he was a creep. Too late now.

  11. Malcolm’s faux outrage over Shorten daring to criticise the way 457 visa are being spread about like confetti: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/foreign-workers-row-malcolm-turnbull-hits-out-at-bill-shortens-rank-opportunism-20161115-gspyiw.html

    Probably worried that Shorten’s ‘rank opportunism’ will ‘trump’ his.

    But Labor has never accused 457 visa holders of taking Australian jobs. Rather, some Australian employers want to use them to bypass the Australian labour market and work relations system. Nor has Labor issued any statements accusing 457 visa holders of bludging on the dole, carrying dread diseases or being criminals who need to be kept under police surveillance.

  15. People from the left have expressed concern about the VP. He must be bad when even the people at The American Conservative are worried about him. Bring on the second coming nutjobs-R-Us

    Pence is great on domestic issues but not on foreign policy. Although a Catholic, he also is very close to those evangelicals who believe that supporting Israel’s expansion will help to speed up the second coming of Christ and, consequently, Armageddon. One must assume that he, together with the military-industrial complex, is plugging for the neoconservatives again to work their agenda upon America and the world.

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-and-the-neoconservatives/

  16. confessions
    Tuesday, November 15, 2016 at 8:23 pm

    Poroti:

    Yes I saw that earlier today on Facebook but am yet to get the low down on exactly how they were rescued.

    They dug a path for them, the Fremantle dodger was caught also.

  17. For Facebook users out there. Could be interesting.

    Latika M Bourke
    24 mins ·
    Okay Facebookers. Time for another Facebook Live. Join me and Anthony Albanese MP on Wednesday night, 16 November for a fun chat over some “Albo beers”. If you’re in Sydney come on down to the The Henson and join us. If you’re online please join us and throw any questions you have our way either on this post or on the stream on the night. You’ll be able to watch via here, or the Australian Politics – Fairfax, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – theage.com.au Facebook pages. Please share this if you know someone who would be interested in watching this.

  18. the Fremantle dodger was caught also

    Was that the cow in the ocean? If so then I saw that on the news last night.

    It’s definitely been a cow few days. Vera would’ve loved it. 🙁

  24. Shorten going after 457’s should be a real bipartisan vote winner. At least in my age demographic. It’s mostly my conservative leaning acquaintances that I have heard complaining about them.

  27. Blanket Criticism

    It’s mostly my conservative leaning acquaintances that I have heard complaining about them.

    THAT is the golden opportunity for left leaning parties to grasp. When it comes down to it much of the appeal of Sanders and Trump came down to a rejection of the last 30 years of neoliberal economics. Job security down the gurgler and all benefits of the sacrifices the “ordinary workers” have gone to the 0.01% . When it comes down to it a secure home over your head and job security will win every time. Left or right,

  29. It is a comfort to watch Aussie politics, see Turnbull sinking, and know we have compulsoryy voting and the AEC to translate 53/47 into reality. It ttakes my mind off Trump for a bit.

    But then I read this extract fromaa speech onassuming power:
    “The National Government will carry out the great task of reorganizing our national economy with two big Four-Year Plans:
    Saving the [] farmer so that the nation’s food supply and thus the life of the nation shall be secured.
    Saving the [] worker by a massive and comprehensive attack on unemployment.”
    http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/DEST_APPEAL1933_ENG.pdf

    They both promised infrastructure too. Sorry, but glad as I am about Shorten’s effort, I still worry other events make it secondary. We are at the 21st century equivalent of the start of decline of Rome. Somebody just left the gate oopen.

  30. Socrates

    We can only cling to a hope it is the start of the rejection of Reaganomics, Thatcherism and all the economic theory trash they let in.

  32. matt31 @ #122 Tuesday, November 15, 2016 at 5:43 pm

    Everyone is entitled to be dilusional. But nobody should be surprised when dilusion is called out. It is one thing not to like Bill Shorten, or even to suggest ways which he could improve. But any talk of his leadership being under even the slightest question is nothing short of pure fantasy.

    As always, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

  34. I too had wondered about Obama’s very conciliatory tone re Donald Trump

    David Corn
    13h13 hours ago
    David Corn ‏@DavidCornDC
    Obama is too damn gracious. (Or is he just being so gracious in order to play Trump?)

  35. Victoria

    Obama is being so gracious because either or both a) That is the sort of person he is and b) By being gracious it enhances the collective memory of what Obama the president was like.

  36. Donald Trump looked like a bird in a gilded cage today:

    http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/dont-worry-donald-trump-seems-pretty-miserable-about-the-election-result-too/news-story/aa87e3b4a7206bd76f3d6a7705dcb2b1

    Because it wasn’t the one he wanted to go back to. Trump Tower. He’s stuck in the White House for 4 long years where every move he makes and every breath he takes, someone will be watching him. Which is a situation that he will find quite discomfiting I think.

  38. Poroti
    Of course we all want that, but logic tells me a man appointing a Goldman Sachs exec as Treasury Sec will not give it to us. Thanks anyway P. Best wishes all.

  39. C@Tmomma

    To be fair, anybody subjected to such 24/7 scrutiny would be feeling more than a little discomfort. It’s a glittering prize that comes with an enormous price tag.

  41. c@tmomma @ #261 Tuesday, November 15, 2016 at 9:43 pm

    Donald Trump looked like a bird in a gilded cage today:
    http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/dont-worry-donald-trump-seems-pretty-miserable-about-the-election-result-too/news-story/aa87e3b4a7206bd76f3d6a7705dcb2b1
    Because it wasn’t the one he wanted to go back to. Trump Tower. He’s stuck in the White House for 4 long years where every move he makes and every breath he takes, someone will be watching him. Which is a situation that he will find quite discomfiting I think.

    Obama is a real class act, demonstrated yet again in the video at the start of that link. He is far and away the best US president in my lifetime, he redefines what competence as a President is.

    The US is going from the sublime to the ridiculous.

  42. Saw this on a blog in the US:

    “I do take some small, cold, bitter satisfaction in one thing, and that’s the fact that Trump is going to be absolutely f^^king miserable for the next four years.

    He’s an entertainer and an attention whore, not a public servant. He wants to be on TV and in front of crowds, not actually working a difficult, gruelling, stressful job he can’t opt out of. He’s going to have to sit through SO many meetings, be forced to read SO many briefings, get shoehorned into serious business all day every day, without crowds to perform for, and he’s going to hate Every. Single. Minute.

    And then, when he doesn’t deliver on his promises, when he doesn’t build the wall or create jobs or make people rich, when it becomes clear how incompetent and buffoonish he is, the country and all his supporters will turn on him. They’re gonna start blaming him for everything, and those crowds that cheered for him are going to start booing. He’ll be humiliated at every turn, and leave office with the lowest approval rating ever, and he’ll be universally despised.

    Because if he’d lost to Hillary, he would have played the martyr forever, called everything rigged, and had a cushy gig on Fox News complaining every day about how he would have done it better. But now he’s going to have to actually WORK, he’s going to be forced to deal with RESPONSIBILITIES, while surrounded by people who hate him and don’t respect him, people vastly more intelligent and competent than him, and he will be exposed as a loser. And then, we’ll fire him. He’ll go down as the worst president in history. And he’ll have no one to blame but himself.

    I know this isn’t much against the fear of what’s going to happen, but friends, hear me. We are going to make Donald Trump’s life a living nightmare, and I for one take immense pleasure from that.”

  43. The Republican party is not going to turn its back on Reaganomics any time soon. Not only have Republican state governors been busily implementing trickle down policies, to their states’ detriment, but a major platform of Trump’s is tax cuts for the rich. His CoS runs a media ‘outlet’ previously owned and established by a man who described himself as Reagan conservative with libertarian sympathies which obviously collars him as a dunce on the economy.

    Trickle down theory is alive and well in today’s Republican and Oz Liberal parties. It’s a sacred cow that definitely needs slaughtering.

  44. Truffles back in the day.

    Malcolm before politics…. co-chairman of Goldman Sach’s Australian unit from 1997 to 2001.”
    Matt Taibbi famously explained in 2009 his theory on Goldman Sachs: “The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.”

    https://newmatilda.com/2015/09/19/rise-malcolm-turnbull-staggering-wealth-surprising-aggression-substantial-intellect/

  45. Confessions

    JK Galbraith decades ago accurately described the trickle down bullshit.
    ““Trickle-down theory – the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”

  47. Don,
    The US is going from the sublime to the ridiculous.

    What an apt description. I couldn’t have put it better myself!

    To which I might add that President Obama is so good, he made the job of POTUS look easy. Even with a Republican-controlled Congress. He still figured out how to get things done. Now the Barbarians have stormed the White House citadel and they are going to lay waste to all the good things he achieved.

    Pretty much like their Islamic simulacrum, the Islamic State. Who can’t wait to destroy all that is beautiful and the most finely wrought art. No wonder their favourite colour is black. Like their hearts.

    Trump, on the other hand, prefers the gaudiness of gold. Displaying all the delicate sensitivity of a pig in mud. Like the man himself.

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