Essential Research: 55-45 to Labor

Essential defies the weekend narrative by recording a move to Labor, and finds Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop in a statistical dead heat for preferred Liberal leader.

After a weekend of relatively good electoral and polling news for the government, Essential Research records Labor’s two-party lead out from 54-46 to 55-45. A preferred Liberal leader question has Malcolm Turnbull down four since July to 21%, Julie Bishop down one to 19% and Tony Abbott unchanged on 10%. More detail on both of these will be available when Essential Research publishes its full results later today. On the question of a potential leadership change, 18% said it would make them more likely to vote Coalition, compared with 13% for less likely and 54% for no difference.

The poll also found 38% wanted the Liberals and Nationals to continue working together, compared with 34% who thought they should be independent – with the former option heavily favoured by Coalition voters. Fifty-four per cent said they favoured majority government, with 25% preferring minor parties holding the balance of power. Fifty-one per cent felt politicians should be forced to resign from parliament if they resigned from their party, with only 24% holding the opposite view.

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.

2,205 comments on “Essential Research: 55-45 to Labor”

Comments Page 36 of 45
1 35 36 37 45
  1. JimmyD,
    JimmyD says:
    Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 4:17 pm
    C@T – I hope his daughter gives him a good whack when he gets home. I think it’s safe to say that his was one analogy that utterly failed to convince.

    What I thought was weird was that Andrew Broad was willing to send his 8 year old daughter to anyone’s house to play her electric guitar for them!

  2. @bemused

    I was curious about your earlier comment about a PM who permitted dual citizenship so I looked it up to see who it was. This is from Wikipedia, admittedly, but it looks as though dual citizenships where the other was automatically granted at birth were never prevented, so most of the cases considered in parliament would still be problematic, as they were British or Commonwealth citizenships conferred due to ancestry.

    Link is here, if you’re interested:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_nationality_law#Dual_citizenship

  3. I think it’s better that the RWNJ’s all get a turn to show off their nuttery for the whole nation to see. So may attack ads for the ALP in this lot.

  4. Jackol @ 4.11pm

    It’s an interesting empirical question. An issue with MMP in Australia is that, absent a constitutional amendment, the number of members in each State is fixed, so MMP can only be run on a State by State basis, and at that point the balance between constituency and list seats becomes significant, especially in the smaller States.

    A bigger problem is that if there are separate ballot papers for the constituency and list members, MMP can be strategically manipulated by two parties in an alliance, essentially by telling supporters (eg through how to vote cards) to vote for the candidate of one of the parties in the constituency seat, but to vote for the other party for the list seats. This happened in Lesotho when they brought in MMP, and caused great bitterness.

  5. Marty @ #1755 Thursday, December 7th, 2017 – 4:23 pm

    @bemused

    I was curious about your earlier comment about a PM who permitted dual citizenship so I looked it up to see who it was. This is from Wikipedia, admittedly, but it looks as though dual citizenships where the other was automatically granted at birth were never prevented, so most of the cases considered in parliament would still be problematic, as they were British or Commonwealth citizenships conferred due to ancestry.

    Link is here, if you’re interested:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_nationality_law#Dual_citizenship

    It was mentioned here in recent days and Hawke got the credit for it.
    Looking at your link, that may be wrong as it was only from 2002.

  6. All this MMP vs STV is rubbish. What we need is an auction.

    Each vote gets you 1 Democracy Dollar ™.

    Each round of the auction proceeds as follows:

    Number each participants’ Democracy Dollars, then draw a number from a big hat. The owner of that Democracy Dollar can put an item up for auction, such as any of the 150 HoR electorates, a senate seat (respecting limits by state), or a Ministerial posting.

    Then, all parties may bid on that item, whichever party bids the most, loses that many Democracy Dollars and gains that item.

    Representatives of individual electorates? check
    Proportional? Bigger check than any other system. A party with 51% of the vote doesn’t get 100% of the power.
    All votes matter equally? Check
    Completely flawless in every way with no way to game the system? Sure!!

  7. joshgnosis: Bill Shorten went up into the public gallery to say hello to Christine Forster, Ian Thorpe, Magda Szubanski and others watching the last bit of the debate

  8. lizzie @ #1702 Thursday, December 7th, 2017 – 3:57 pm

    guytaur

    With this rush to ‘comedy’, is ABC going down the path to ‘bread and circuses’? Hoping to distract us from the real disasters all around.

    Also, gives them the chance to replay already endlessly repeated shows like 15 year old episodes of Spicks and Specks in prime time.

    What is the point of the ABC?

  9. From Hannan of The Australian

    ‘…
    Employers have declared the nation’s apprenticeship system is in “crisis” after apprentice numbers fell by 13,000 in 12 months, and 35 per cent under the Abbott and Turnbull governments.

    Seven months after the government announced a $1.5 billion skills funds in the federal Budget, employers said the Coalition had yet to sign “even one” agreement with the states and territories to commence projects needed to increase apprentice numbers.

    Figures released today by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research show the number of apprentices at June 30 this year was 282,000, a 4.7 per cent decline in 12 months.

    When Tony Abbott was elected in September 2013, the number of apprentices was 413,145.
    …’

  10. Hopefully now that obnoxious Matt Canavan will finally shut up about how Palaszczuk will be a hypocrite and do deals to form govt.

  11. ‘C@tmomma says:
    Thursday, December 7, 2017 at 4:22 pm

    Great. Now Andrew Broad is talking about a woman being stoned to death for adultery! In the 21st century!’

    Do not allow your neighbour to throw a leg over in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. It can still get you stoned to death.

  12. Voice Endeavour @ #1762 Thursday, December 7th, 2017 – 3:31 pm

    Completely flawless in every way with no way to game the system? Sure!!

    If all parties cooperate, they can game the system.

    You need to complete ‘226 + M’ auctions, where M is the number of ministries available. However ‘n’ cooperating participants can exhaust the entire supply of Democracy Dollars™ after only ‘n’ rounds of bidding, and it’s almost certain that ‘n’ is much less than ‘226 + M’ (unless you abolish parties, and hand the Democracy Dollars™ to individual candidates to dispose of individually).

    What happens when there are still things to auction, and nothing left to bid with?

  13. Dan, at least she didn’t blame Shorten for her NBN woes.

    However, it is only day 11, which gives her plenty of time to weave Shorten into the story.

  14. bemused @ #1733 Thursday, December 7th, 2017 – 4:12 pm

    a r @ #1716 Thursday, December 7th, 2017 – 4:04 pm

    bemused @ #1523 Thursday, December 7th, 2017 – 2:24 pm

    Boerwar @ #1657 Thursday, December 7th, 2017 – 3:21 pm

    Final outcome in Queensland.

    Labor 48.

    The rest?

    Winners are grinners and losers can suit themselves.

    Does that mean no Green?

    48 Labor, 1 Green. Maybe the Green can be speaker?

    Knowing Greens, I doubt they would accept. It would inhibit their ability to spread their BS.

    It would also mean assuming responsibility for their actions which no Greens supporter has ever wanted.

  15. markdreyfusQCMP: .@Turnbullmalcolm has finally entered chamber and is voting for a major change to the #marriageequality bill, which if successful would betray cross-party consensus position and send bill back to the Senate, causing delay. All to appease right faction in his own party.

  16. JulieMcCrossin: Waiting with my wife Melissa for the Marriage Equality vote to give legal recognition to our 2014 New York Marriage. The MPs arguing for discriminatory amendments should gracefully bow out. The future is nigh! ️‍ @AMEquality @sydneymardigras

  17. @ a r – I would assume that participants would eventually betray one another, and that cooperation of all participants is unlikely.

    In your situation, why would the nth participant bet all of their DD on the item? Literally everyone else is broke. They would bet a single DD to win each item remaining.

    However, the n-1 th participant will not bid their whole amount, knowing that if they do, then the nth participant gets the rest.

  18. VE – that sounds a lot like the DKP system for divvying up loot in online RPGs, and I have thought it had a lot of merit applied to divvying up the ‘spoils’ of politics.

    I think it certainly deserves more thought and simulation to work out how it could be made to work.

  19. Another sighting of the Lesser Spotted Jellyback
    .
    “Malcolm Turnbull arrived to vote for that second part of the Andrew Broad amendment.”

  20. JB_AU: Today marks the true end of @TonyAbbottMHR’s destructive era. He has lost. Not just on marriage but his horrific, regressive and nasty vision for Australia #auspol #MarriageEquality

  21. If we can get enough people in the Gallery of Parliament we are well on our way to our own version of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Better than the ABC for entertainment.

  22. lukehopewell: Tony Abbott is trying to tell the public gallery to have a few beers on the House while the Marriage Bill goes back to the Senate. God.

  23. srpeatling: A note on procedure, peeps. When you hear the words “I move the bill be read a third time”, that’s the absolute, final, one that counts vote. It’s a good half an hour or so away. smh.com.au/federal-politi… via @smh

  24. PeeBee

    [Dan, at least she didn’t blame Shorten for her NBN woes.]

    She’ll blame Turnbull before she gets around to Shorten.

    (It’s fun watching the rabid Coalition supporters at the moment. The RW conservative nutters -v- wishy washy rest is clearly more important to them than the Labor Party.)

Comments Page 36 of 45
1 35 36 37 45

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *