Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor

Leads for Labor and same-sex marriage have both narrowed in this week’s Essential Research poll.

The Guardian reports Essential Research has an unusual two-point movement in favour of the Coalition in its fortnight rolling average, cutting Labor’s lead from 54-46 to 52-48. No word yet on the primary vote. The other big finding from the poll is that support for same-sex marriage was recorded at 55%, down four points on a fortnight ago, with opposition up three to 34%. Once again though, supporters report higher likelihood to vote, with yes leading 59% to 37% among those who said they had voted already. Other questions find belief in climate change caused by human activity up four points since February to 60%, with only 24% favouring the alternative option of “we may just be witnessing a normal fluctuation in the Earth’s climate”, down one. Other questions rate to cost of living concerns (topped by utilities and housing) and wage increase (52% said they had not received one in the past year).

UPDATE: Full results here. On the primary vote, the Coalition is up two to 38%, Labor is down one to 37%, the Greens are steady on 10% and One Nation is down one to 8%.

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.

533 comments on “Essential Research: 52-48 to Labor”

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  1. These two stories next to each other on Reuters a little earlier tonight –

    Senate backs massive increase in military spending

    ———————————————————————-

    Toys ‘R’ Us files for bankruptcy ahead of holiday season

    🙂

  2. My hope is that we get 60-70 percent yes on SSM as all prior polls have indicated, the coalition fails to legislate it and lose a couple of points in the polls for failing to enact the will of the people and these points stay lost until election day when Labor wins 90 seats or so and immediately legalises SSM making a big to-do about how they didn’t need to waste 150 million bucks in order to do it.

    Don’t say I’m not an optimist.

  3. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/world/australia/australia-catholic-church-child-abuse.html

    A study that examines child sexual abuse worldwide in the Roman Catholic Church has found that the Australian church has done less to safeguard children in its care than its counterparts in similar countries have.

    The report, released on Wednesday by the Center for Global Research at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, also found that the church’s requirement that priests be celibate was a major risk factor for abuse. And it said that the possibility of abuse in Catholic residential institutions, like orphanages, should be getting more attention, especially in developing countries.

    Experts said the report could put pressure on Pope Francis, and particularly the church in Australia, to do more to prevent abuse. The Australian church was rocked in June when Cardinal George Pell, an Australian who is one of the pope’s top advisers, became the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate to be formally charged with sexual offenses.

    Desmond Cahill, the report’s lead author, said its findings pointed to an urgent need to rethink the priesthood in the 21st century. A professor of intercultural studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, he said the church should reconsider the celibacy requirement for priests.

    “The Catholic Church is in a state of crisis, and pressure has to be put on the Holy See to take the necessary steps to change,” Professor Cahill said.

    I love the smell of schadenfreude in the evening.

  4. @Blanket,

    That’s the best case scenario and not implausible.

    I’m hoping one good thing to come out of this farce is that it will encourage thousands of progressive-leaning folks to be more involved with campaigning and politics. Hopefully, there will be no shortage of troops on the ground for future battles.

  5. Blanket Criticism
    My hope is that we get 60-70 percent yes on SSM as all prior polls have indicated, the coalition fails to legislate it,,,

    I just hope it ends soon. The politicisation of the sexuality of the beloved members of my family is profoundly objectionable. I wish it would stop. I wish that the vile haters would find something else to campaign on. They should desist and they should apologise.

  6. So if GG only gives serious answers on 15 March then we can dismiss most of his comments here on ME – including his many responses on why he concentrates so much on an issue he has described as unimportant.

  7. The best argument against SSM is that marriage between a man and a woman is different (read superior) because the couple can have biological children. This needs differentiation from ssm’s because this is a special, essential quality at the heart of marriage (the begetting of a family).

    In which case the No campaigners should have made this point years ago when obviously infertile couples (often elderly) chose to get married. They should have been told their too old to get married and to just live in sin like everyone else.

  8. Windhover

    There’s also the ‘children deserve to know who their biological parents are’ — despite the idea of adoption being around since Roman times…

  9. There is something decidedly totalitarian about the orthodox clapper worldview. The very worst thing about it is that there is a norm or set of norms that have been “given” – that have been ordained – by a deity or by their priests. For no reason whatsoever, we are all expected to comply with these givens. This is inherently repressive. It is a distortion of nature and of our dignity. It is corrupt. It is horror.

  10. Roger Miller
    Religious freedom has to include my freedom from your religion.

    Absolutely. It is the most important religious freedom. It is the precondition for all other religious and/or irreligious expression.

  11. Been way busy all day but when I got up I noticed the Essential polling data on SSM.
    I think BK estimated that Yes would end up being 65% of returned survey forms.

    I figure I’ll have a stab at the maths too.
    First of all, 5% said that they were not enrolled to vote at their current address.
    9% said that they had already voted. I’m surprised its this small a figure but I’ll take it as a given.

    62% said will definitely vote
    12% said will probably vote
    2% said will probably not vote
    3% said will definitely not vote
    8% said not sure

    I need to estimate a final participation rate.
    62% definitely will vote. I assign 100% probability that these will actually vote.. That’s 62%
    12% will probably vote. I assign 66% probability that these will actually vote.. That’s 8%
    2% will probably not vote. I assign 33% probability that these will actually vote. That’s 1%
    3% will not vote. That’s 0%
    8% note sure. I assign 50% probability that these will actually vote. That’s 4%

    From these I add up an overall participation rate of 75%.

    Now, how do we assign groups in the second table to groups in the first table.
    “will definitely vote” is clearly the same group in both tables.
    “will not vote” in the first table appears just an abbreviation of “will definitely not vote” in the second table.
    Now “will probably vote” in the first table may be the sum of “will probably vote” and “will probably not vote” in the second table. But I suspect the “will probably not vote” group just doesn’t get its own column in the first table, just like the “not sure” group.

    From the above its possible to do the math as a percentage of those who will actually return a vote.

    Will definitely vote represents 62/75 = 82.7% of those participating. From this group
    63% responded yes. That’s 52.1% yes (as a fraction of votes actually returned)
    33% responded no. That’s 27.3% no
    4% responded don’t know. That’s 3.3% don’t know

    Will probably vote contributes 8/75 = 10.7% of those participating. Of this group
    50% responded yes. That’s 5.4% yes (as a fraction of votes actually returned)
    31% responded no. That’s 3.3% no.
    19% responded don’t know. That’s 2.0% don’t know

    Will probably not vote contributes 1/75 = 1.3% of those participating. Of this group its hard to know how they will vote since they don’t get their own table. I’m going to split the difference between the results for “will probably vote” and “will definitely not vote”
    34% estimate yes. That’s 0.4% yes.
    43% estimated no. That’s 0.6% no.
    22% estimated don’t know. That’s 0.3% don’t know.

    Will definitely not vote don’t figure in the results.

    Not sure contributes 4/75 = 5.3% of those participating.
    Now the data doesn’t say how these people will vote. Lets just split it 50/50.
    50% yes contributes 2.6% yes to the final result
    50% no contributes 2.6% no to the final result.

    Now when I add this up I get

    Yes: 60.5%
    No: 33.8%
    Don’t Know: 5.6%

    (plus 0.1% lost in roundings)

    Incidentally the “Will definitely not vote” group (3%) said that they would have voted 18% yes. In other words 0.54% of the population are idiot boycotters. Hi P1.

    The take home figure is that the intersection of definitely will vote and will vote yes amounts to just over half of predicted votes returned. It isn’t that sensitive to variance in the “Will probably vote” turnout rate. Because the “will definitely vote” group is so dominant. The only hope for the no campaign is to take the “will definitely vote” group and causes masses of these people to change their mind. It doesn’t look that way does it. And It’ll be pointless in a few days time.

    Its also good to see that of the small group (3%) who said will definitely not vote, 56% would have voted no. Some justice in that one.

    Even if every “don’t know” becomes a no, that just gets a low 50s yes vote, rather than a high 50s or better.

  12. Its also good to see that of the small group (3%) who said will definitely not vote, 56% would have voted no. Some justice in that one.

    Even if every “don’t know” becomes a no, that just gets a low 50s yes vote, rather than a high 50s or better.

    It’s a Yes or No answer that should not have come to this. Fuck Tony and all who blew him.

  13. cud

    Your maths makes sense to me, however GG has already told us that only 36% will end up voting “Yes”.

    Your calculations were done using the immutable laws of mathematics. GG was “inspired” by his personal sky fairy.

    The Australia we live in now is not governed by logic, facts, maths or science. Thankfully we have such luminaries as Eric Abetz, Tony Abbott and GG himself to correct these ways of thinking and submit to a set of rules drafted by Bronze Age goat herders.

  14. I would count every “don’t know” as a definite ‘No’. I can’t imagine what “don’t know” is, other than code for “I voted ‘No’ but am ashamed to admit it”.

  15. [Roger Miller
    Religious freedom has to include my freedom from your religion.
    ]

    Absolutely!

    The two facets of religion that I detest are;

    Child indoctrination, and

    Missionaries.

  16. Dan.

    When I try to assign the “don’t know” I get roughly

    63.5% yes
    33.5% no

    And GG does us a favour in showing us exactly how Abbott will try to spin this.
    Those figures are (expressed as a percentage of total eligible (not enrolled) population).

    46.7% yes
    25.1% no

    Even spun that way, its not looking good for Abbott.

  17. A R
    There’s a total of 5.6% “dont know” as a percentage of participants.
    Enough to make the difference between high 50s an early 60s yes vote.
    And you’re quite possibly right that a lot of these are too ashamed.

  18. Barney,

    Because my parents came from opposite sides of the fence (Protestant vs Catholic) they decided not to raise their children as religious. To that I’m eternally thankful.

    I had an experience back 3rd class where I was in a classroom during lunch (doing a project) and found myself after the bell sitting on the floor when the “religious instruction” class began. I can’t quite recall what the guy was saying but I immediately felt violated and ran out.

    Indoctrination of children is a process where in another context its called “grooming”. Its evil, but our society is blind to it.

  19. Well this is nice. Its 1:30am. I refresh my browser and now the latest comment is back from 7:09pm
    Gawd the coding on this site is so embarrassingly bad.

  20. Thinking about it, the religious spooks have not merely politicised gay sexuality. They have politicised sexuality in general. They have taken the private and the intimate and converted it into munitions, into ordnance. They are truly sleazy.

  21. The spooks are attempting to use sexual shame for political purposes. There can be few more scurrilous or hypocritical exercises. They are just putrid.

  22. briefly
    Thinking about it, the religious spooks have not merely politicised gay sexuality. They have politicised sexuality in general. They have taken the private and the intimate and converted it into munitions, into ordnance. They are truly sleazy.
    ***************************************
    But that is what they have been doing for at least the past 1200 years…..

  23. Thankfully, I was raised in a secular family. My dad put Christian as our religion on the Census one year, I think 1991, and my sister and I made him liquid paper it out beside our entries. Although I went to a government school, we had ‘RI’ once week in primary school on Thursday mornings (mid-late 1980s). No-one really seemed to pay much attention to it/it was basically treated as a joke.

  24. GG:

    “15th march every year I give serious answers.”

    Is that so you’ve had at least a week to recover from your Mardi Gras after-party shenanigans and you can think ‘straight’ again?

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