Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

Bill Shorten’s personal ratings take a hit in Essential’s latest poll, while Galaxy charts One Nation’s ongoing progress in Queensland.

The Essential Research fortnight rolling average moves a point back to the Coalition for the second week in a row, reducing Labor’s lead to 52-48. Labor is down two points on the primary vote to 35%, with the Coalition steady on 36%, One Nation steady on 10% and the Greens up a point to 9%. The monthly leaders ratings find Bill Shorten taking a big hit, down seven points on approval to 30% and up three on disapproval to 47%, and Malcolm Turnbull a smaller one, down three on approval to 34% and up one on disapproval to 49%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister is out from 39-28 last month to 39-25.

The survey also asked respondents if they would be likely to vote for Cory Bernardi’s Conservative Party, to which 14% said yes – which, as is always the case when questions like this are asked, is well above the party’s plausible vote share. Sixty-two per cent say they would be unlikely to, which is on the high side as these things go. The poll also has 17% saying Bernardi’s defection is good for the Liberal Party, 26% bad, 29% neither, and 28% don’t know. As of next week, the Essential Research poll will be published in conjunction with The Guardian.

We’ve also had federal voting intention results from the weekend’s Queensland poll by Galaxy for the Courier-Mail, which has One Nation on 18% (up six since November), the Coalition on 35% (down four), Labor on 29% (down one) and the Greens on 8% (steady), with the Coalition down a point on two-party preferred to lead 51-49. The poll was conducted last Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 867.

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.

1,956 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  2. Since when did PollBludger become a simulacrum of June Dally Watkins School of Etiquette and Manners for Proper Young Ladies!?!

    How old are you lot!?! Some of you sound like you are 150!

    Pamela Anderson is fair game. Just like any public figure. They put themselves out there in some very colourful ways to get noticed and whole magazine empires have been built around them and people like them. In fact, it has been said by the experts that speech, which is unique to human beings, came into being so we could gossip to one another.

    So you can count me out as far as observing an edict promulgated by someone bearing a close resemblance to Miss Prissy that I should tone down my comments about how public figures look. That’s what they are there for. They know it and they also know that there is only one thing worse than people talking about you. People not talking about you.

    Get a real life people. This is the 21st century. Not the 18th. This is virtually the most self-absorbed and narcissistic time in history. Tut-tutting about it won’t change a damn thing.

    Not that I said anything that wasn’t obvious to anyone with eyes to see. And not that I said anything that was any more than mildly disparaging.

  3. CTar1

    JWH flushed them.

    Thanks for the info. Another reason why, in my opinion, JWH is one of the biggest misfortunes to ever strike Australia.

  4. Zoomster

    Thanks for your advice. I know it was genuinely given, and is a consistent view of yours.

    However just for today I was in a mood not to be called a snark, a stalker, and self righteous, hence the generalisation, inappropriate as it may be.

    And here’s more. Given the fervour and frequency of the misogynist complaints here in the past against a particular few posters, it is at least interesting that since the first criticism of PA occurred yesterday, an atmosphere of acceptance of such criticism has apparently settled on PB.

    Perhaps Ctar1’s inference that it is OK because PA is evidently a past Playmate is the essence of the new rule.

  5. P1,
    If you can’t see the “action proposed” in my post, you’ve got shit for brains.

    What I proposed is a very large scaling up of new generation capacity in both wind and solar and more spending on geothermal and storage. And a set of market rules that encourages things like large scale thermal storage. You didn’t read that? No of course not, you’re a mindless troll.

    I also asked you to put up or shut up. What’s your actionable plan? What’s your timeline? What’s your end game. We all want to know this because your “alt left” jibes just make you look like a right wing fkcwit.

  9. Someone here earlier this evening condemned Nick Xenophon as a Liberal. But that’s what he is. He’s an old fashioned Liberal c.1980 who has been left behind as the “Liberal” party drifted then charged into hard right ideology and now heading for far right nutbaggery. Yes, he’s a populist, a centrist populist. Populism comes in all flavours. Labor could do with a few populists to popularise its world view. Shorten is good, he’s effective, he’s cutting through. He needs an attack dog.

    As for Xenophon, he is what he is. I respect him. I would prefer he supported Labor more but he makes up his own mind. I’ll take him any day over a “Liberal”.

  10. At this point, as you are talking about the Liberals and their pre-selection follies, and also as Paul Keating on the Liberals was quoted earlier today, I thought I’d add this lesser known quote of his about them:

    If one travels around the rest of the world- does the rounds of Wall Street, the City of London, and Frankfurt, to see what they think of honourable members opposite- one finds that they think honourable members opposite are a joke and that they have no economic respectability left. They are regarded as a party of fools, which is what they are.

    …Take no notice of the Liberals on tax. They are rip-off merchants.

    Thoughts to keep in mind as we move forward towards another Liberal Party Treasurer’s Budget. 🙂

  13. Psyclaw,
    Just read the posts that have gone up while I was writing to you.

    I rest my case.

    I now add “Miss Prissy” to the list.

    Like. I. Care. My behaviour and what I write is no business of yours. You can take your air of superiority and sanctimonious pronouncements, sit on them and like I care what you do next with them.

    I mean, what exactly are you trying to prove here!?! Your behaviour on this blog is of a higher standard than mine!?! I’m just a little guttersnipe from a lower social class than you!?!

    So?

    You have proved what and to whom? All I can see is someone searching through my posts for opportunities to take another side swipe at me. How pathetic.

  15. psyclaw

    ‘And I should add that FPJG was a public figure if that is the criterion.’

    Not sure why this is addressed to me; as I said earlier, it would help if you vented your spleen at the people who are the transgressors.

    Anyhoo, just to justify your ire, I can’t see why someone who made a living undermining feminist objectives by turning themselves into an object for male fantasies, and thus reinforcing the idea that women should be evaluated on the basis of their appearance, should be defended by feministas.

    If you make your living by selling your body, even if it’s at second hand, then surely there is no hypocrisy when others comment on the current state of your wares.

  17. Pamela Anderson is a beautiful woman, endowed in ways that this fat old white guy particularly appreciates. I can vaguely recall Baywatch, can admit to having watched it occasionally. No one watch that show (or most of what was / is on TV) to improve their intellects. It was what it was.

    Pamela turns 50 this year. I don’t follow celebrities so I don’t know what she’s been up to. Recent pictures seem to show her trying to maintain a blonde bombshell image. Maybe she should learn to be a beautiful older woman (think Michelle Obama (a few years older than her) or maybe Susan Sarandon (about my age). But that’s her call of course. To each their own.

  18. Does anyone actually know if P1 actually has an idea of what he actually wants? Genuine question because I’m not always reading this and maybe I’ve missed the post where he spells out what generation capacity he’d actually like to see built and when.

  19. Pamela Anderson is a beautiful woman, endowed in ways that this fat old white guy particularly appreciates.

    Steve – You might be ‘disappointing’ then.

    Don’t want to ‘burst your bubble’ – but I have seen reports in the media of breast reduction surgery ?

  20. Absolutely love this demolition of Breitbart editor Milo Yiannolopoulos by Bill Maher.
    https://www.facebook.com/Maher/videos/10154453269277297/

    And Maher’s advice to liberals in the US is just as relevant to progressives in Oz: we all get distracted by the clown rogering the donkey over there, meanwhile the reactionaries in govt using that distraction to do serious unconstitutional, anti democratic shit over here.

  21. If I’d known that joking with Victoria about Pamela Anderson supposedly having an affair with St Julian Assange was going to unleash middle aged male avowals of lust and whatever else towards her, I’d have kept mum on the subject.

  26. Steve777:

    I was deliberately going soft. 😀

    Should have realised you were involved, fess!

    ???

    You don’t understand men, do you?

    Never have, and expect I never will.

  27. “Does anyone actually know if P1 actually has an idea of what he actually wants”

    nuclear power plants up and running in Australia in the next few years with and not costing much?

  31. Confessions @ Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 7:04 pm
    The Andrews Govt is not that great, in fact it is a pretty ordinary once you see through all the spin. Issues i have with this govt.
    Port privatisation and asset sales, Transurban citylink toll extension, firefighters dispute, juvenile crime, heavy reliance on pokie revenue, poor state of regional road network, election rorting cover up, desalination plant, poor regional train network, very secretive on use of taxpayers funds – especially public sector pay increases.

  32. confessions @ #1820 Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 8:49 pm

    If I’d known that joking with Victoria about Pamela Anderson supposedly having an affair with St Julian Assange was going to unleash middle aged male avowals of lust and whatever else towards her, I’d have kept mum on the subject.

    …………………………………………………..

    Thats the thing Fess – I don’t think you did any more than that.

    The ‘Ball” was kicked further into play by others…..

    Wouldn’t worry about it at all.

  33. Stop the presses! For the benefit of a balanced and informed perspective on Pamela Anderson (I don’t believe I just wrote that!), I have just gone and looked at the most recent interview with her that I could find and she actually doesn’t look too bad for a woman in her 50th year:

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/2851402/pamela-anderson-make-under-sons-married-julian-assange/

    She’s still more than a little misguided in her thinking that Julian Assange is a figure of historical importance! However, I bow to her for creating the antidote terminology to ‘Fake News’. She called it ‘True News’. I’m going to file that one away for future reference. 🙂 But not that it always applies to the stuff Assange retails.

  37. I must have missed P1 when he was seriously arguing for nuclear. Its hard to fathom that he would given he makes such an issue out of getting it done next week.

  38. C@

    She’s still more than a little misguided in her thinking that Julian Assange is a figure of historical importance!

    You are missing the point.

    Who cares what Pamela Anderson thinks.

  39. Zoom:

    Oh. Yeesh, with our govt failing on every conceivable measure a govt should be working on, you’d think these people would have more substantive issues to occupy their attentions.

    How amusement that some moron chooses to get outraged about comments made about some D-list celebrity, comments I myself even said were published in a trashy women’s mag and were therefore of questionable validity, instead of the very real shit going down in this country. And then there’s the very, very real scandal playing out in the US! But someone said something mean about Pamela Anderson, hold the freakin’ presses!!! Jesus.

  42. It seems to me that Pamela has always had a talent for getting attenton. She’s affiliating with controversy now. Gotta hand it to her….she knows to promote herself.

  44. Taylormade:

    I’m not a Victorian so can’t comment with any insight on the issues you raise, except to say that those issues look like day to day issues that would cause grief for any govt of any stripe regardless of its tenure.

  45. Some bludgers say they do not understand men….but if Pamela Anderson is actually attracted to Asange, I gotta admit I do not understand women…

  47. cud chewer @ #1804 Saturday, February 18, 2017 at 8:20 pm

    P1,

    If you can’t see the “action proposed” in my post, you’ve got shit for brains.
    What I proposed is a very large scaling up of new generation capacity in both wind and solar and more spending on geothermal and storage. And a set of market rules that encourages things like large scale thermal storage. You didn’t read that? No of course not, you’re a mindless troll.

    No, I didn’t get that from your post. Because of course nothing of the kind was there. Most of your post simply amounts to the usual “let’s just wait and see” and “technology will inevitably save us” nonsense. We have perhaps 15 years left to keep the C02 levels below 450 PPM, and perhaps 25 years to keep it below 500 PPM. Most climate scientists seem to agree that levels above 500 PPM are catastrophic, and even 450 PPM is now regarded by many as unsafe.

    Energy technologies typically take decades to get from the lab to the trial stage (thermal storage took at least that long) so no technology that is not already at least in commercial trials somewhere in the world is likely to be useful in a 15 year time frame. Even thermal storage is still in its infancy. Pumped hydro is a better option, since the technology is mature – but they are very few places in Australia where it can be deployed at the required scale. Batteries simply cannot be produced at the required scale, even if Elon Musk does manage to triplicate his gigafactory (let’s not forget that even the first is not in full production, and will not be till 2020).

    I also asked you to put up or shut up. What’s your actionable plan? What’s your timeline? What’s your end game. We all want to know this because your “alt left” jibes just make you look like a right wing fkcwit.

    Jeez, you really don’t read my posts, do you? Okay, here is the abbreviated form, because I know your attention span is short …

    First, a carbon price is the only thing that has been actually demonstrated to reduce carbon emissions. Labor demonstrated that, and Labor are still the only party with a practical and achievable plan. Personally, I would like to see a carbon price put on grid electricity of the order of $1 per KWh – not just to include the costs of the environmental damage the grid is doing, but also to change long term behaviour of grid users. Also a similar price increment on petrol. On the order of dollars per litre, with the same reasoning.

    An EIS is an acceptable (but for me, not preferred) way of doing this. Let renewables compete in an open market on energy intensity along with gas and all other sources. Modelling shows that if you do this, gas will replace coal very quickly, and renewables will eventually be able to replace gas once they are competitive. A national gas reservation policy is probably required to bring the domestic gas prices back to reasonable levels first – it is ridiculous that we sell our gas offshore at half the price we sell it domestically. This situation seems designed solely to prop up the domestic coal industry.

    Next, fix the energy market, which is obviously quite broken at the moment. The price you bid should be the price you get paid – no pooling of prices, which just allows inefficient suppliers to ‘game’ the system.

    Australia has missed the boat on nuclear, partly due to idiots in the alt-left like you – but we should be prepared to supply any and all countries who are more sensible than us and who are in a position to use it with as much uranium as they can use. This will allow the rest of the world to rapidly replace coal with nuclear and gas. Renewables will play their part – but it will be a fairly minor part for decades yet.

    So in summary, for Australia: gas to replace coal as soon as possible. This is not a permanent solution, but is the only practical alternative in a 15 year time frame. It will give us time to develop renewables to the point that they become both practical and economic, which may become feasible in a 25 year time frame. For the rest of the world: gas and nuclear and renewables – they are way ahead of us in the renewables area already, but even so it is not going to be enough. All we can do is encourage them to shift away from coal as soon as possible to less damaging alternatives – this will buy ourselves the necessary time … and then we just have to hope.

  48. And then there’s the very, very real scandal playing out in the US! But someone said something mean about Pamela Anderson, hold the freakin’ presses!!!

    There’s actually a very serious point here. As I just heard one of Trump’s media apologists say about his press conference yesterday when trying to put a positive spin on it, ‘He’s turning press conferences into a new Reality TV show called Beat the Press and he’ll keep doing them and speaking directly to the people that support him and it will be the highest rating TV show ever!’

    …Hence why we even take what other TV personalities are saying seriously these days I guess. Life has been turned into one gigantic Reality TV show! And we are all actors in it! Plus arguably the most powerful person in the world is treating his job that way, so it is distorting our reality as well.

  49. “And if anything goes wrong, just blame the ABS!”

    hell no there will be no criticism of that mob or the ABC or Kev that would be just too much!

  50. ‘Fess,
    Dave:

    Thanks, but I’m not worried at all, merely amused.

    I thought you were going to say you were bemused! Then I would have freaked right out! The answer to ‘life, the universe and everything’ would not have been ’42’ but Confessions is bemused. 😀

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