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”

Comments Page 15 of 18
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  1. P1

    Of course. Just not for a while yet. 

    Therein lies the problem. You have no idea of the facts of the technology itself or how fast renewables plus storage will become the only viable option.

    I can forgive you for not being up to date. But what annoys people is your unwillingness to question your assumptions. You’re wedded to the idea that affordable storage is a long time off. It just isn’t.

  2. Jenauthor

    I saw the segment too.
    The shoes continue to drop.
    Meanwhile I hope Rachel Maddow gets well soon

  3. VE
    I don’t do far left alternative history.
    Youse Couldabeens keep trying to retrofit history to your dreams.
    Long after Sanders had lost all hope of beating Clinton in the primaries he kept sucking oxygen out of her fight with Trump… and Trump was the direct beneficiary of this.
    Do stop trying to justify the unjustifiable!

  4. Boerwar @ #704 Friday, June 2nd, 2017 – 3:36 pm

    VE
    I don’t do far left alternative history.
    Youse Couldabeens keep trying to retrofit history to your dreams.
    Long after Sanders had lost all hope of beating Clinton in the primaries he kept sucking oxygen out of her fight with Trump… and Trump was the direct beneficiary of this.
    Do stop trying to justify the unjustifiable!

    They wanted to do their lap of dishonour!

  5. I put climate change deniers like Bree in the same category as creationists and flat-earthers: not worth the effort. It’s like arguing with a door knob (though at least a door knob is useful).

  6. If anyone feels too happy and convinced that we are well served by our media.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-02/bill-shorten-navigating-internal-party-politics/8584186

    It turns out Labor has different factions, and Shorten has to negotiate with them. And he’s clearly struggling because there was that one time that a member of the Labor party had a disagreement about political tactics.

    Whereas the Liberal party have backbenchers announcing policy in the media, but that’s fine because it’s a broad church instead of factions.

    Plus, Labor can’t win an election because their primary vote is 36%, and you need 38% or 40% primary in order to win. They weren’t really clear on why, nor did they particularly recognise that minor parties are on the rise, and naturally, that means the majors will get less, but ultimately one of them still forms government. Almost as if the primary vote doesn’t matter and it’s the 2PP that actually matters.

  7. cud chewer @ #702 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 3:33 pm

    Therein lies the problem. You have no idea of the facts of the technology itself or how fast renewables plus storage will become the only viable option.

    Yup. Me and Alan Finkel and Danny Price have no idea … but you do. Right.

    I can forgive you for not being up to date. But what annoys people is your unwillingness to question your assumptions. You’re wedded to the idea that affordable storage is a long time off. It just isn’t.

    And I can forgive you for being a pretentious twit. But what annoys people is that you keep arguing when there is no need. We are agreed on the need for an EIS. Apart from that, your arguments are nonsensical, your misrepresentations are diabolical, and your intentions are clearly inimical.

  8. Voice Endeavour
    #707 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 3:45 pm

    At the end of the day you only need enough primary votes to make the last 2.

    After that it all comes down to preferences.

    Of course the primary vote is important to the Party as it determines how much money they get from the Electoral Commission,

  9. Actually whenever anyone says anything to Labor spokespeople about factionalism they should respond “well Labor is a broad church etc”. It would drive the Libs crazy haha

  10. ratsak @ #496 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 10:43 am

    Are they trying to initiate a fucking depression?

    Probably.

    The rich not only don’t mind a recession every so often, they welcome them. It is the basis of a lot of their wealth.

    They get to snap up a bunch of businesses and properties at fire sale prices, which they can either asset strip, or sit on until the economy turns for the better and they can start reaping the enhanced profits from their much fatter portfolio.

    Plus presenting them with yet another opportunity to further drive down wages and conditions, beat organised labour around the head and wallet, and generally weaken the social contract.

    All of which helps concentrate the wealth into fewer hands, ratchet style.

    Which they don’t mind at all.

  11. At the end of the day you only need enough primary votes to make the last 2.

    After that it all comes down to preferences.

    Of course the primary vote is important to the Party as it determines how much money they get from the Electoral Commission,

    Even more fundamentally it comes down to seats. If you only ran in say 80 seats and won about 78 of them on prefs you have a primary somewhere under 25%

    and a working majority on the floor of the Reps.

  12. Just Me,

    all true, but the rich generally prefer it to happen on Labor’s watch.

    If it was to happen on Trumble’s watch they wouldn’t get their hands on the levers for a very long time.

  13. Bree,
    Trump is listening to the real majority by getting out of the job-destroying Paris Agreement, Turnbull must be crying, his beloved Paris Agreement is basically dead.

    FACT not Fake Views:
    Coal Mining Jobs in the USA ~50,000
    Renewable Energy Industry Jobs in the USA ~350,000

    I think you better get your head out of the Brie, Bree. You can’t tell shit from shinola.

  14. Bree

    Your comparison between Isis and climate change shows that you don’t have a clue about global warming and its effects. End of.

  15. Repost

    Jeremy Bernard Corbyn ‘What Was Done’
    Bloody brilliant
    Thanks to the poster, (who I can’t remember) back on last page.

  16. https://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2017/06/01/essential-research-53-47-labor-11/comment-page-15/#comment-2591514

    It is slightly more complicated than that. Because we have progressive elimination in Australia (where the lowest polling candidates are eliminated one by one and their preferences distributed between all remaining candidates), rather than bulk elimination (where all but the top two candidates are eliminated and their preferences distributed between the top two candidates), it is sometimes possible for candidates who are third on primary votes to overtake the second on primaries by the three-candidate-preferred count and get into the two-party-preferred count. There has been one MP elected to the Commonwealth Parliament from third on primaries approximately once every decade, for the last few decades (No ALP MP however). There are also cases of parties getting into second place on preferences and staying there.

  17. ratsak @ 716

    True, and if it does happen, I hope it happens on the Tory’s watch. They certainly deserve the reputational damage.

    But the rich will still take full advantage of it whenever they can.

  18. Tom the first and best.

    Andrew Wilkie is the last federal MP to do so I believe, in 2010. Come third on primaries but make last two and go on to win.

  19. booleanbach @ #710 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 3:59 pm

    This article seems to refer to another author who thinks that the voting system that rates best in polls is the best one to use whereas his own (balanced approval system) preference is .
    Nothing of what is mathematically the best and fairest model.
    https://www.opednews.com/articles/Rethinking-Which-Voting-Sy-by-Paul-Cohen-Election_Voting_Voting-Reform_Voting-Systems-170601-259.html

    Is he serious?
    I think this is what they are proposing.

    You cast one vote for who you most approve of and one vote for who you most disapprove of.
    You then take the total disapproval from the total approval to get a nett approval.

    The highest nett approval wins.

    So
    3 candidates, 100 voters
    approval;
    A: 48;
    B: 49;
    C: 3;
    Now if all of A’s voters disapprove of B, and all of B’s voters disapprove of A, and C’s disapproval votes are A: 0, B:3, (C’s votes don’t matter)

    then
    approval; disapproval; nett
    A: 48; 49; -1
    B: 49; 51; -2
    C: 3; 0; 3

    So C would win from A and then B.
    🙂

  20. BiGD –
    I kind of assumed that every candidate got a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ box, so you could do a net sat on every candidate based on every one who bothers to vote.

    However, America is a funny place, and they’re very hung up on this ‘one vote one value’ thing – it’s one of the objections to IRV that people are voting ‘more than once’ – so it may well be that within that context – that people can only vote for one candidate – that yeah they get one ‘plus’ and one ‘minus’, which would be quite weird to anyone who wasn’t American, or seeing things totally from their FPTP perspective.

    Meh. Looking at it from a Westminster system perspective where it’s just the makeup of parliament as a whole that matters I no longer care about the esoterica of electing a single position – MMP all the way and these little details just don’t matter very much.

  21. Cud Chewer

    I wonder if Elon Musk is now regretting being palsy with Trump

    I don’t think it’s done him any harm. He’s out now, having made his position clear.

  22. Jackol:

    Maine recently passed an Alternate Vote proposal by referendum. All state and federal reps + governor will be ranked choice ballots. Obviously does not apply to the presidential vote.

  23. The wonderful Trump now has the United States languishing in the company of Syria and Nicaragua. Making America great again.

  24. jackol @ #730 Friday, June 2, 2017 at 5:02 pm

    BiGD –
    I kind of assumed that every candidate got a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ box, so you could do a net sat on every candidate based on every one who bothers to vote.

    On one of the links they give an example of a voting card and at the top of it they clearly state, “Check off at most one box in each row.”

    https://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Might-be-the-Best-Vot-by-Paul-Cohen-Polarization_Voting-Laws-State_Voting-Reform-140529-132.html&series=326

  25. IoM – yes, you’ve pointed that out before. The link provided above actually references appeals being mounted against the changes based on what superficially to an uninformed outsider seem ludicrous considerations:

    It turns out that in Maine, one of the constitutional challenges to the will of Maine voters to adopt IRV centers on this very issue. Apparently an interpretation of the Maine Constitution is that it specifies that the counting of votes must be distributed.

    Without going and reading the Maine Constitution that seems … hard to credit, but people have strange views about how voting must be conducted to get a “legitimate” outcome.

  26. TT

    My understanding it was only an advisory ruling and that the state constitution could either be amended or a law passed to go plurality most votes wins etc. Republicans control state senate and democrats the house ie no bill going to pass either way.

  27. 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.

  28. Having a few lols reading comments to K Murphy’s article re Truffles and the call for him to “step up for the future”. This was a good one.

    Go Malcolm!
    Go on you good thing!
    This is your chance Malcolm to win back those disenchanted voters!

    Sorry …. got caught up in Murphy’s cheer squad…….

  29. 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?

  30. Poroti,
    I had a comment banned by our Kath at the Grauniad:
    “I wouldn’t bet on Malcolm Turnbull acting for the future, unless it has to do with stashing cash in the Caymans”.
    She must be very sensitive about criticism of her Malcolm, that’s all I can say.

  31. P1 I read experts. I also talk to them over coffee.

    I don’t wilifully misinterpret them.

    That’s your job 🙂

  32. Basic income has been mentioned and argued over on occasion here. From over the road this article looks at what happened in Iran when it introduced one.

    In 2011, in response to heavy cuts to oil and gas subsidies, Iran implemented a program that guaranteed citizens cash payments of 29 percent of the nation’s median income,………Now, six years later, the results of that measure were released in a report by economists Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Mohammad H. Mostafavi-Dehzooeifrom for the Economic Research Forum.

    https://theoutline.com/post/1613/iran-introduces-basic-income

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