Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

A better result for the Coalition from Essential Research this week brings the pollster back into line with the 53-47 consensus.

As I should have reported yesterday, this week’s reading of the Essential Research fortnight rolling average has ticked in favour of the Coalition, who gain a point on the primary vote at the expense of Labor to lead 38% to 36%, with Labor’s two-party lead down from 54-46 to 53-47, as the Greens rise a point to 11% and One Nation falls one to 5%. Most of the supplementary questions this week are less clearly framed than they might be, but a question on the Trans-Pacific Partnership suggests respondents are less inclined to think it stacked in favour of big business than they were when the United States was on board. Another question repeats an exercise from October last year in gauging opinion on major policy decisions of recent decades, finding overwhelming support for compulsory superannuation and Medicare, pluralities in favour of the GST, free trade agreements, floating of the dollar and reducing car manufacturing subsidies, and better-than-usual responses to privatisation, breaking in favour of Qantas and against Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank.

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.

884 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

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  1. P1 might get treated a bit more humanely if he/she/it didn’t often engage in personal insult.

    Probably because you don’t understand them

    Or quite often give people guidance as to their own point of view. Or engage in a number of forms intellectual dishonesty, whack-a-mole style.

    My original sin was to point out to P1, months ago, that maybe he/she/it has out of date information. That was the point at which P1 was personally offensive to me the first time. Long before I called he/she/it an idiot (which is a reasonably correct, but terse description of someone who cannot challenge his/her/its assumptions).

  2. Yep, I’ve opted out of it all recently, although that’s mainly by necessity. From what I see, P1’s talking about what to do over the next 0-5 years with the tech that’s proven and available now, while most of the others are arguing about what to do over the next 3-15 years

    No, LU, that’s absolutely not true.

    P1 made it clear early on in the peace that he/she/it was clearly referring to the period of 15 years (in the context of the retirement of coal generators) when claiming that that renewables would not be up to the task over that period.

    At no point has P1 either said that rushing to build new gas fired power applied to a shorter period, nor acknowledged that after a few years, storage will come into its own.

    Many times when pushed, P1 has referred to renewables/storage as being more than 15 years off. I do have a long memory.

  3. libertarian unionist @ #850 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 11:04 pm

    Fess,
    Yep, I’ve opted out of it all recently, although that’s mainly by necessity. From what I see, P1’s talking about what to do over the next 0-5 years with the tech that’s proven and available now, while most of the others are arguing about what to do over the next 3-15 years, based on tech that is in various states of maturity. There’s a remarkable amount of overlap in those plans, and a large amount of uncertainty in any plans for the latter.
    For example, the comment P1 made about being able to swap gas for coal tomorrow, or maybe next week, if the prices were right, is spot on. We have excess gas generation capacity in the NEM, so if it can be dispatched at below the marginal cost of coal, then part of the job of reducing emissions is done. This is something that can be achieved by the stroke of a pen; without going through the appalling process of AEMC rule change proposals; without raising finance; without building one new plant or transmission line.
    She got heckled for it, but I have no idea why. Probably something to do with verisimilitude.

    P1 fudges things quite a bit by conflating taking up unused gas generating capacity to displace coal with investment in new capacity to displace coal.
    As soon as you start talking about new investment, who would opt for gas with a foreseeable limited life against renewables which continue to make rapid strides?
    Furthermore, displacement of coal by renewables yields twice the CO2 reduction as would replacement of coal with gas.
    And yet P1 keeps on with the pretence that only it is interested in CO2 reduction.

  4. And if you want to use renewables instead of gas you evidently don’t care about CO2.
    And other personally insulting misrepresentations that P1 uses. I’ve had that one tossed at me several times and I’ve seen P1 do this to others many times.

  5. cud chewer @ #854 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 11:18 pm

    And if you want to use renewables instead of gas you evidently don’t care about CO2.
    And other personally insulting misrepresentations that P1 uses. I’ve had that one tossed at me several times and I’ve seen P1 do this to others many times.

    Yes, it plumbs depths of dishonesty I have rarely seen on PB.

  6. [Many times when pushed, P1 has referred to renewables/storage as being more than 15 years off. I do have a long memory.]

    Well if that’s the case, I stand corrected.

    If I look into my crystal ball, I think gas turbines may still be considered good investments for critical peaks and ramps at that time, but bulk energy is going to >50% renewable in a remarkably short time.

    FWIW, the studies we’ve just finished show the NEM can handle about 65% non-synchronous renewables with the current state-of-the-art wind farm controllers, assuming they are in frequency responsive mode. This is a service for which they need to be paid – we are looking to Audrey Zibelman for some reform impetus here.

  7. As I understand it solar farms are cheap to build, take less than a year, cheap to operate. The expensive bit is building the substation and connecting them to an existing grid.
    Wind, Gas and nuclear power stations require more engineering and take years to build

  8. billie @ #859 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 11:36 pm

    As I understand it solar farms are cheap to build, take less than a year, cheap to operate. The expensive bit is building the substation and connecting them to an existing grid.
    Wind, Gas and nuclear power stations require more engineering and take years to build

    I thought wind was also pretty quick to build.
    And I would have thought the cost of connecting to an existing grid would vary depending on distance to the grid.

  9. There will be worldwide reaction to Trump’s Paris accord declaration.
    US petroleum futures down so far today. https://finviz.com/futures.ashx

    There are quite a few US corporations that support action on emissions. Hopefully the worldwide boycotts that will surely emerge in coming weeks effectively target the recalcitrants.

  10. You are right Billie, but there is an order of magnitude more complexity in running a power grid efficiently, securely and reliably than there is building and running one plant that is connected to a well-run grid.

  11. [And I would have thought the cost of connecting to an existing grid would vary depending on distance to the grid.]
    Of course it does, but transformers and protection equipment are a large discrete cost regardless of your location.

  12. There will be worldwide reaction to Trump’s Paris accord declaration.

    There HAS been worldwide reaction to Trump’s Paris accord declaration.

  13. libertarian unionist @ #863 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 11:45 pm

    {And I would have thought the cost of connecting to an existing grid would vary depending on distance to the grid.}
    Of course it does, but transformers and protection equipment are a large discrete cost regardless of your location.

    Square brackets are unhelpful. They don’t do anything except cause problems for anyone using CCCP.
    I was counting that as part of the windfarm and the cost of connection being the transmission lines and any connecting equipment at the grid end.

  14. FWIW, the studies we’ve just finished show the NEM can handle about 65% non-synchronous renewables with the current state-of-the-art wind farm controllers, assuming they are in frequency responsive mode.

    I’d love to see the rest of that. It raises the question. Does the peak power needed for frequency control depend on the particular event or can you predict how much power is enough?

  15. confessions @ #864 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 11:55 pm

    There will be worldwide reaction to Trump’s Paris accord declaration.

    There HAS been worldwide reaction to Trump’s Paris accord declaration.

    Yes poorly worded by me. I meant not just today’s reactions but the possible boycotts tariffs sanctions and loss of business that will follow.

  16. I’d love to see the rest of that. It raises the question. Does the peak power needed for frequency control depend on the particular event or can you predict how much power is enough?

    We scan operating conditions for critical times or times of system stress, then apply the top few credible contingencies to the system (separately, as in N-1) and look as frequency response and voltage transient effects. We do this for systematically over a range of conditions, i.e. different penetrations of renewables, different controllers on he non-synchronous generators, with/without synchronous condensers and STACOMs… and most importantly, for different dispatch constraints on operating reserves (mimicking FCAS) and synchronous inertia.

    I think the fellow in charge of the stability assessments ran over 2 million transient assessments on a model with >100 generating units!

  17. libertarian unionist @ #867 Saturday, June 3, 2017 at 12:01 am

    Thanks bemused, I’m on a new machine, need to reinstall all the bells and whistles…

    If I want to indent, I painstakingly type out the html.
    If there are any square brackets in text being quoted, quite common in wikipedia articles, something does a dummy spit. Not sure if it is CCCP or Crikey
    Life was much simpler when square brackets would do indents.

  18. CC,

    Right now we are see loadability margins of about 3 GW.

    How this changes in the future depends on how the future turns out… 🙂

  19. For some reason this UK election is starting to remind me of the last QLD one. One dare not hope too much but there has been one hell of a *narrowing*

  20. Ye gads. Downer has just nothing to say that isnt simple fluff and bullshit. Been given her lines and no mental flexibility to even modify them depending on what she’s asked. This is really and IPA fembot drone having to articulate while cut off from the remote control signal is it??

  21. In other news, nothing crazy yet today from Trump as we go past 11am DC time.
    He’s not out of bed yet?

  22. libertarian unionist @ #878 Saturday, June 3, 2017 at 1:06 am

    In other news, nothing crazy yet today from Trump as we go past 11am DC time.
    He’s not out of bed yet?

    Hopefully he is being told a few home truths. Of course being the narcissist that he is, they who tell him will just go into the ‘to be fired’ basket.

  23. player one @ #744 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 5:45 pm

    cud chewer @ #742 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    P1 at least I’m not going to read thr Finkel report and automatically conclude that we must build baseload gas. But I’m certain you will.

    If you had read the report BiGD linked to, you would see they are proposing …. guess what? Using more gas!
    But I’m forgetting … you don’t read reports, do you? So I’m guessing you won’t be reading the Finkel report either?

    I’m following these reports (Finkel etc) and note their history of getting predictions badly wrong.

    P1, you strike me as someone who is not particularly numerate, who has no experience of large scale construction projects and doesn’t have a background dealing in or with engineering or accounting.

    The reason that I and others disagree with you on gas is that it’s going to take 4 – 6 years before any new large-scale gas project generates it’s first kWh. For the sake of discussion, let’s use 5 years as an average.

    In that 5 years, based on historical averages, Australia is going to add about 4.2 GW of small-scale solar (70MW per month of systems 100kW that will be installed in that time.

    Aside from peaking capacity, of which we already have plenty, the business model for new large-scale baseload gas (or coal) will have been smashed before the first new plant comes online.

  24. The gerbils ate part of my comment above.

    I did have that in 2017 alone Australia is going to add 2.2GW of new utility-scale renewable energy. That’s projects with FID, grid connection approval and currently under construction. That doesn’t include grid scale capacity that will be added in the remaining 4 years between 2018 – 2021 before the hypothetical gas plant is built and generates its first kWh. It also doesn’t include embedded generation >100kWh that will be added in that time.

    There will simply be no market for new utility-scale gas/coal baseload.

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