Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

The latest Essential records no change on voting intention, be it for a federal election or a same-sex marriage survey.

The Guardian reports the latest Essential Research poll has Labor’s lead steady at 53-47, but provides only incomplete detail of the primary vote. The poll also records 59% in favour of same-sex marriage with 31% opposed, compared with 57% and 32% a fortnight ago, with 62% (down one) saying they will definitely “vote” in the survey if it survives the High Court challenge, and another 16% (down two) saying they will probably do so. Again, this skews towards the yes camp, with 74% of supporters rating themselves as definite compared with 58% of opponents.

On power prices, the poll finds 49% holding energy companies principally responsible, compared with 22% for the Turnbull government and 9% for “environmentalists pushing action on climate change”. It also finds 54% opposed to changing the date of Australia, with 26% in support, and 70% believing “believe everyone can celebrate on that day”, versus 18% against. Forty-two per cent disagree with changing inscriptions on public statues. The full report should be with us later today.

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.

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

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  1. TPOF
    Over at the Guardian, Calla Wahlquist is doing a live blog on the High Court surveythingy hearing. She reports the following in setting out the agreed facts:

    “In this case, the determination said, the unforeseen circumstance was the senate refusing to pass the plebiscite bill, which necessitated urgent funding to the ABS to undertake a voluntary postal plebiscite. The amount authorised was $122m.”

    This is an entirely preposterous line of reasoning. There is nothing at all unforeseeable about either the requirement to pass a spending measure through the legislature or the possibility that passage could fail.

    If this is the best the Government have then they should expect summary judgment against them.

    What is unforeseeable is that the Government might try to spend $122 million without legislative authority. That is a contempt of the Parliament and the Constitution.

  2. lanesainty: Here’s the section of M105 submission outlining this argument & arguing why Wilkie has standing: pic.twitter.com/LyIC28XLHA

  3. Jaeger @ #80 Tuesday, September 5th, 2017 – 9:49 am

    Like go lie on your back and stare at the fkn stars, and get a grip.

    “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde (Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere’s Fan.)

    One of my fav Oscar stories is of him dying in a hotel room in Paris, staring at the wallpaper, and musing – ‘one of us has got to go’.

  4. Being a supporter of the ABC’s role in the Land of Oz, I am usually willing to leap to its defence but this morning, I wondered if I heard correctly on one radio news item that, WTTE, the Labor party had refused an ABC ‘demand’ to provide the names of 11, was it?- anyway, named sitting Labor members who, according to the ABC, had questions to answer regarding dual citizenship.
    Two questions arise from this. At what point did the ABC start playing the role of doing the LNP’s work in the public domain, and just where did the speculation about the named 11 come from?
    I am not opposed to the ABC doing its job, but as this outfit is well-known as a leftie/elitist/latte-sipping mob (scratch anyone on the Right for this summation) it is all the more of a puzzle what game they are playing with their ‘demand’.

  5. IaD
    Cox (on a repeat of QI) the other day really blew my mind by stating that the Big Bang did not start at a single point but that it started everywhere.
    I may have misheard him and may be misrepresenting him but the very idea hurts my brain.

  6. [TPOF
    Over at the Guardian, Calla Wahlquist is doing a live blog on the High Court surveythingy hearing. She reports the following in setting out the agreed facts:

    “In this case, the determination said, the unforeseen circumstance was the senate refusing to pass the plebiscite bill, which necessitated urgent funding to the ABS to undertake a voluntary postal plebiscite. The amount authorised was $122m.”]

    This also can be seen as an attack on Senate powers and their ability to hold Governments to account.

    If the Government can circumvent the legislative process they are potentially acting outside the will of the Parliament.

    Very dangerous.

  7. Boerwar @ #107 Tuesday, September 5th, 2017 – 10:30 am

    IaD
    Cox (on a repeat of QI) the other day really blew my mind by stating that the Big Bang did not start at a single point but that it started everywhere.
    I may have misheard him and may be misrepresenting him but the very idea hurts my brain.

    especially when you think about what everywhere means, which you are! The obvious thing with everywhere is that there is no nowhere. And the other brain hurt for me in that time isn’t linear, but everything happened when the everywhere started.

  8. GuardianAus: The court will hear the arguments from the plaintiffs today, while the government will respond tomorrow. More here: trib.al/MdEfQ7X pic.twitter.com/oPk5p0pM1z

  9. Itza – before the big bang there was no space and time. The big bang created it. I still haven’t got my head around that yet!

  10. Boerwar @ #107 Tuesday, September 5th, 2017 – 10:30 am

    IaD
    Cox (on a repeat of QI) the other day really blew my mind by stating that the Big Bang did not start at a single point but that it started everywhere.
    I may have misheard him and may be misrepresenting him but the very idea hurts my brain.

    btw Bw, did you indirectly put me onto Christopher Bellew’s blog? It’s very amusing. Maybe when we were talking about the statue of Victoria outside the QVB?

  11. All this talk about how the universe started reminded me that I once went to a fancy dress party dressed as a chicken.
    Met a girl dressed as an egg.
    A question as old as time was answered.

    The chicken.

  12. j

    I know about the elastic that holds my chuds up, but the idea of space/time being elastic just does not work for my rather inelastic and linear brain.

    I can sort of get it that there must be something in it but am appalled that it might be true.

  13. hughriminton: BREAKING: Twiggy Forrest announces new breakaway rugby union competition for “the Indo-Pacific.” pic.twitter.com/3qTFPcZqYJ

  14. The 53-47 result is pretty much set in stone at the moment.I think people have already made their mind up even though the election is still a while away.

  15. briefly @ #103 Tuesday, September 5th, 2017 – 10:25 am

    TPOF
    Over at the Guardian, Calla Wahlquist is doing a live blog on the High Court surveythingy hearing. She reports the following in setting out the agreed facts:

    “In this case, the determination said, the unforeseen circumstance was the senate refusing to pass the plebiscite bill, which necessitated urgent funding to the ABS to undertake a voluntary postal plebiscite. The amount authorised was $122m.”

    This is an entirely preposterous line of reasoning. There is nothing at all unforeseeable about either the requirement to pass a spending measure through the legislature or the possibility that passage could fail.

    If this is the best the Government have then they should expect summary judgment against them.

    What is unforeseeable is that the Government might try to spend $122 million without legislative authority. That is a contempt of the Parliament and the Constitution.

    You are right that in itself it is preposterous reasoning. But that does not necessarily make it wrong.

    The argument the other way will be that it is Parliament, not the HC, that has the Constitutional duty to determine Appropriations. Parliament HAS authorised an appropriation for “unforeseen circumstances”.

    Whatever the qualifiers are that are put upon the Appropriation, it is a function of Executive Government, NOT the HC, to determine whether the conditions of the qualifier are met. Such determinations have POLITICAL consequences, not CONSTITUTIONAL consequences.

    Obviously there are limits to this line of reasoning. An appropriation for a railway presumably could not be spent on a completely unrelated road for which there was no parliamentary appropriation. But “unforeseen circumstances” and the necessity to provide “urgent funding” are matters that in the first place are essentially determinations (good or bad) of the Executive arm of ‘Government.

    Had Parliament wanted to constrain the Executive arm of Government it was open to it to specify the subject matter of the appropriation by say defining “unforeseen circumstance” or “urgent funding”. Undefined these vague terms are a matter for the Executive arm of Government and NOT for the HC to redraft sloppy appropriations.

    What the HC will determine I don’t know. But, if the HC were to determine the case i favour of the Government it would NOT be condoning a contempt of Parliament, still less the Constitution.

  16. cupidstunt
    The 53-47 result is pretty much set in stone at the moment.

    Couldn’t agree more. Have been saying this since the beginning of this year. Unless some unforeseen game changer occurs expect to see the 2PP bobble around this mark.

  17. lanesainty: Merkel: the practical effect of Section 10 is delegating power to the finance minister to cause an appropriation. Is that constitutional?

  18. Boerwar
    Cox (on a repeat of QI) the other day really blew my mind by stating that the Big Bang did not start at a single point but that it started everywhere.
    I may have misheard him and may be misrepresenting him but the very idea hurts my brain.

    Well…prior to the big bang there could have been neither time nor space. Or, if they did exist their character would have been the opposite of our experience of them. They would have expressed infinite density or compression or intensity, where we experience a path to infinite decompression and dilution. At the end of decompression, time and space will also lose their meaning. There will be no sense in which any point in the cosmos is observable by any other point. The cosmos is oscillating between time and no time.

    I think Cox was saying the big bang could not have been a “moment” nor could it have occurred at any singular “place” since neither of these two measures could have existed. Conversely, when they came into existence, they must have done so everywhere and this would necessarily have been “simultaneous”, “the same at all points”. Were it not the case that decompression occurred “everywhere”, then there would have been domains where time would not have formed either. That would mean we would have a cosmos with more than one constant….and it would not render the cosmos we can observe.

    On the other hand….maybe there are domains in the cosmos where time and space are differently “formed”, in which case Cox’s remark may be mistaken.

  19. FalconWA
    I just cant see how anything that Turnbull is trying to do is going to change anyones mind.It would have to be exceptionally popular to turn those polls around.Roll on February then he will up to 30 and Abbott will make his move hopefully.

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