Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

Little change this week on voting intention this week, but a barrage of negative results for the government on matters related to climate change and renewable energy.

Essential Research, which now comes to us courtesy of The Guardian Australia, records no change this week on two-party preferred, with Labor maintaining a lead of 52-48. On the primary vote, the Coalition is steady on 36%, Labor is down a point to 34%, One Nation is steady on 10%, and the Greens are up a point to 10%.

Also featured this week are a semi-regular question on climate change, which finds 60% saying it is real and attributing it to human activity – up six points since the question was last asked in December, with 25% favouring the normal fluctuation response, down two. A remarkable 65% approve of Labor’s 50% renewable energy target by 2030, with 18% disapproving, and 71% say the federal government is not doing enough to ensure “affordable, reliable and clean energy” (albeit that that’s a few too many positive adjectives for my tastes), with 12% saying it’s doing enough and 3% too much. Only 16% offered that recent blackouts were the result of too much renewable energy, with 45% instead blaming failures of the energy market and 19% opting for privatisation. Nonetheless, a solid 31% offered support for building new coal-fired power stations, with 45% opposed.

Other findings: 29% approve of the Liberal-One Nation preference deal in Western Australia, with 38% disapproving; and 82% support penalty rates, with only 12% 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.

2,397 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  1. BiS

    Maybe you could suggest Tendulkar was over rated.

    I watch Cricket about once a year and even I know Tendulkar was ‘the’ class act.

  2. Reducing penalty rates on Sunday’s could have the unintended consequence on INCREASING unemployment.

    If a person works a few more hours to make up the money they lost because of the reduced penalty rate, they will be taking away the opportunity for another person to be employed!

  3. One thing Abbott said in his spray on Thursday night that I do not think has been commented on
    Wtte
    ‘I think the election is winnable if we have the right policies ‘.
    In a 3year term the next election is over 2 years away.
    Abbott isn’t interested in governing, just campaigning and winning elections.
    His only real policy is to keep the ALP out of government.

  4. Cat

    It makes perfect sense. But then you make so many snide comments in my direction, most of which I ignore at the time, I wouldn’t expect you to remember them nor their context.

  7. “The Speaker of the Victorian Parliament has resigned, acknowledging his “error of judgement” in claiming a second residence allowance while living outside his electorate.”

    Better for this to happen now well before the next state election. Though when it comes to politicians rorting the system with their snouts in the trough, many voters now have a long and unforgiving memory.

  10. Pegasus,
    Like. I. Care. If I want to say something about your cutting and pasting of anything you can dredge up that is Anti Labor in the media, I will. What you think about that is irrelevant and unimportant to me.

    If you continue your own snide commentary about me it only says to me that I must be getting under your skin. 🙂

  11. John Reidy
    Also loss of employment because so many people will end up earning less and so have less of the life blood of small business, discretionary spending,

  14. Cat,

    Couldn’t be bothered going back to retrieve your “Egotistical wanker” comment. You inserted yourself between a playful exchange between P1 and me and being entertained. Unlike you, he responded with a civil touche that was quite clever.

    You do have tickets on yourself if you think “you are getting under my skin”. I don’t think you understand how amusing I find your character analyses of me as your rants say more about you than me.

  16. Bw

    Eels are the perfect evolutionary expression of the space time continuum.

    OK, … but is this connected to our ‘Kate’ saying the number of ‘small businesses’ is increasing?

  17. C@Tmomma
    Saturday, February 25, 2017 at 10:55 am
    …”John Smith,
    Don’t mind Bemused. He is the resident curmudgeon”…

    As Bemused is to curmudgeon’s, you are, to Pauline Hanson.

  21. Boerwar Saturday, February 25, 2017 at 5:21 pm

    So, the Coalition Plan is make more people in precarious employment have to spend even more of their own time Centrelinking?

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

    Three guys were fishing in a lake one day, when an angel appeared in the boat.

    When the three astonished men had settled down enough to speak, the first guy asked the angel humbly, “I’ve suffered from back pain ever since I took shrapnel in the Vietnam War … Could you help me?”

    “Of course,” the angel said, and when he touched the man’s back, the man felt relief for the first time in years.

    The second guy who wore very thick glasses and had a hard time reading and driving. He asked if the angel could do anything about his poor eyesight. The angel smiled, removed the man’s glasses and tossed them into the lake. When they hit the water, the man’s eyes cleared and he could see everything distinctly.

    When the angel turned to the third guy, the guy put his hands out defensively — “Don’t you f**cking touch me!” he cried, “I’m on a Centrelink Disability Pension.”

  22. I must say though, there is one thing I absolutely agree with Tony Abbott about. That is, that the deal cooked up between The Greens and the Liberal Party for the Senate to change it’s voting rules, has only produced a dog’s breakfast that does nothing to fulfill it’s stated function as a House of Review but instead has become the home of special deals with minority players that produce results inimical to the national interest.

  23. This is a really good piece…………..

    As the Trump presidency unravels, unraveling the country along with it, there is no real political antecedent, no lessons from American history on which to draw and provide guidance. We are in entirely uncharted waters.

    But there is an antecedent in our popular culture that provides a prism through which to view the contemporary calamity, especially the alleged collusion between Trump’s henchmen and Russian intelligence to deny Hillary Clinton the presidency. I am not the first observer who has noted the relevance of the movie The Manchurian Candidate. But the relevance is more than skin or celluloid deep. It goes to the very heart of this bizarre and frightening political moment.

  26. PhoenixRED
    Saturday, February 25, 2017 at 5:35 pm

    …”When the angel turned to the third guy, the guy put his hands out defensively — “Don’t you f**cking touch me!” he cried, “I’m on a Centrelink Disability Pension”…
    HOW IS THIS EVEN REMOTELY FUNNY?
    Are you also prejudiced against black people and those with Down’s syndrome?
    Did you think Tony Abbott’s “lifestyle choices” comment had a ring of truth to it?

  27. CTar1

    OK, … but is this connected to our ‘Kate’ saying the number of ‘small businesses’ is increasing?

    Yes, Kate’s numbers are like eels, extremely slippery and hard to grasp.

  29. Poroti

    “Kate’s” numbers are most likely to be based on newly unemployed professionals registering an ABN as ‘consultant’.

    On your and Bw’s avocation of Ells count my vote as out.

  30. John Smith

    Aren’t you the same dude, under another name, who penned a silly post about poking his wife, without her permission, or some such?

    And had most everybody up in arms?

    Yeah? You promised you were seeking help for your alcohol addiction.

    It didn’t work.

  34. Vic:

    GOP congress member Darrell Issa says he will push for a ful and independent investigation into Trump’s Russia links and the hacking. And that that means having Sessions removed from the investigation over conflict of interest concerns. I will believe it when I see it, but in any case, his interview here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D5aDolj0GI

  36. BK:

    As someone who had to learn Shakespeare through high school, and since finishing high school, has drawn on this learning not once ever (except perhaps when watching theatre or movies adapted from Shakespeare’s works), I agree too.

  37. Kezza “2”…
    My wife does whatever she wishes to do.
    She, also earns so much money I can’t even spend it as fast as it comes in.
    She, also permits me to “poke” her whenever I feel the urge.
    WE’RE NOT YOU BANNED FOR BEING A MISANTHROPIC ARSEHOLE?

  38. Dave

    Eels are the perfect evolutionary expression of the space time continuum.

    Brett Kenny.

    Wonderful rugby league player – magic to watch. And knew what he knew and what he didn’t.

  39. confessions
    I found that Shakespeare and poetry turned me right off English. It was a tremendous drain on my otherwise very good high school efforts. It was a real turn off.

  41. In fact, the Senate has become the political equivalent of the ‘Every child deserves a Participation Certificate’, mentality, where, if you are of a mind that is determined to get your particular brand of Crankism respected by the nation, then all you have to do is rustle up the money and the number of like-minded souls sympathetic to your cause that it takes to get you over the ‘Registered Party Status’ line. Then off you go to the Senate to be the latest political Disruptors. Sunrise will pay you to appear weekly on their show for your entertainment value because nothing entertains more than a combination between politics and the seriously deluded and divorced from reality types who make up the habitues and representatives of the Minor Parties on the Cross Bench.

    Never needing to be fully accountable for their positions by having to implement policies in government and wear the blowback, they can comfortably sit on the political sidelines and snipe. Or they can simply make up policies that might be useful in an ideal world, and when a more realistic perspective is offered up by way of criticism of that pie-in-the-sky idealism, then they can go for the twofer and carp about how that more realistic and achievable option simply isn’t addressing the issue properly.

    It’s enough to make any half-way decent government leader want to tear their hair out that they have their agenda hijacked by this sort of manifest political opportunism that has been enabled in the Senate.

    It is no longer about amending legislation so that the State you represent has it’s voice heard, instead it has become the way in which the crackpots have a crack at our democracy. Just 1 or 2 from each State elected is enough to form a blocking bloc and thus is gifted to you the ability to get your non-mainstream ideas validated and implemented if the government is wont to need your votes.

    Similar enfeeblement of Democracy is occurring all over the world, as well as in our own States’ parliaments as the lunatics have discovered the means by which they may effectively take over the asylum.

    I just hope that we, as the Human Race, can deal with this structural defect in Democracy, because I’m getting mighty tired of having to deal with the childish level of debate that ensues and that we have descended to in the name of argument about the issues.

    Yes, we need a variety of views in our democracy, but when it has reached a nadir where a supporter of a Minor Party point of view thinks that debate equates to cutting and pasting Anti Major Party closest to their own views, media articles, and then when that is questioned as a strategy what you get is not a debate around the issue but a condescending snipe, then whither democracy?

    Or, on the other hand, such as with One Nation, you get the deliberate promulgation of falsities, there is no way that our democracy will not suffer.

    Poor fellow, my country, indeed!

    There’s got to be a better way than that! Before governance is truly and permanently infantilised by it all!

  47. ‘Did’ Shakespeare at high school , 2 years as part of English. Thought it was OK. Class took the parts and teacher pointed out all the “naughty bits” the bowdlerised versions left out 🙂 Never needed it since but do appreciate doing it because one thing I did learn was that people from centuries ago are not that different to people today.

  49. Fess

    Some within GOP see the writing on the wall for Trump and his cronies. As Malcolm Nance said in podcast I linked earlier, we are in Benedict Arnold territory

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