Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor

Essential Research yet again records a solid lead for Labor on two-party preferred, but finds Malcolm Turnbull moving clear as preferred Liberal leader.

The Guardian, which joins the fun by spruiking the result as the “eightieth straight loss” for the Turnbull government, reports that Labor holds a lead of 53-47 in the latest Essential Research poll, out from 52-48 a fortnight ago. The poll also features Essential’s monthly leadership ratings, which find Malcolm Turnbull’s lead over Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister unchanged at 41-26 (a growing contrast with the narrow results from Newspoll); a 39% approval rating for Turnbull, down two, and a disapproval rating of 42%, down one; and a 35% approval rating for Bill Shorten, down two, and a disapproval rating of 43%, down one.

A question on preferred Liberal leader finds Turnbull moving clear of Julie Bishop since the last such result in December – he’s up three to 24%, with Bishop down two to 17%. Both are well clear of the more conservative alternatives of Tony Abbott, on 11% (up one) and 3% (down one). Scott Morrison scores only 2%, unchanged on last time. When asked who they would prefer in the absence of Turnbull, 26% opted for Bishop and 16% for Abbott, with Dutton and Morrison both on 5%. Also featured is an occasional question on leaders’ attributes, but I would want to see the raw numbers before drawing any conclusions from them. Those should be with us, along with primary votes, when Essential Research publishes its full report later today.

UPDATE: Full report here. The primary votes are Coalition 38%, Labor 37% (up one), Greens 10% (up one), One Nation 7% (down one).

Also today, courtesy of The Australian, are results from the weekend’s Newspoll which find support for a republic at 50%, down one since last August, with opposition up three to 41%. With the qualification of Prince Charles ascending the throne, support rises to 55%, unchanged since August, while opposition is at 35%, up one.

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.

2,361 comments on “Essential Research: 53-47 to Labor”

Comments Page 2 of 48
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  1. I agree with the criticisms of the Sales-Shorten interview last night: it was terrible.

    The constant interruptions get you in a state where you’re not waiting for the answer, but for the interruption. As a result the answers are almost incidental, given the tension as to whether Shorten will get to the end of even one reply.

    Sales concentrated on Adani because she reckons it’s her story, even though it must be (by now) over a month old and gone. It’s like an old married couple having the same argument all over again.

    Shorten, for his part, went out of his way to be polite, but you can’t be polite to Sales. It only encourages her.

    Loathe him as I personally do, ScoMo has the right idea, sort of: just ignore her and keep talking over her. It doesn’t elicit any more information for the viewer, of course, but at least wins the battle of wills and cancels out any barbs contained in the loaded questions themselves.

    Sales’ aim last night was to try to get Shorten to admit that, if Labor was elected,, heould close Adani down no matter what was required to effect this. While it might be alright to say this to Cousens in private, saying it in public would leave Shorten, as a potential PM, open to allegations of breach of natural justice in any future legal processes, and even sovereign risk. It’s not only politically impossible to make this admission, but also professionally irresponsible, possibly a dereliction of duty to the nation.

    It was a private conversation with Cousens, and should have remained private. Cousens ratted on Shorten by revealing it (and probably did the anti-Adani case more harm than good by making trouble about it). Shorten will rightly never trust Cousens again.

    Sabra Lane was whingeing on AM yesterday that Shorten won’t give her an interview. He should extend the ban (if there is one) to the increasingly blousy-looking, petulant Sales, her go-nowhere cross examinations, her rude interruptions that only serve to spread shit in her own nest, and her dwindling audience, drugged on conflict for its own sake. They don’t deserve him. Let them feast off ScoMo’s non-answers if they want an excitement fix.

  2. How is this legal? The family of the Potus asking the president of another country to intervene in a court case using his influence as president to assist the Trump family with a private business deal!

    U.S. President Donald Trump’s company appealed directly to Panama’s president to intervene in its fight over control of a luxury hotel, even invoking a treaty between the two countries, in what ethics experts say was a blatant mingling of Trump’s business and government interests.

    That appeal in a letter last month from lawyers for the Trump Organization to Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela was apparently unsuccessful — an emergency arbitrator days later declined to reinstate the Trump management team to the waterfront hotel in Panama City. But it provides hard proof of exactly the kind of conflict experts feared when Trump refused to divest from a sprawling empire that includes hotels, golf courses, licensing deals and other interests in more than 20 countries.

    “This could be the clearest example we’ve seen of a conflict of interest stemming from the president’s role as head of state in connection with other countries and his business interests,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington ethics and good government organization.

    https://apnews.com/bcba3f280f5f4ce78cc10a865ca617cb

  4. …and, of course, if Cousens is playing games with the truth, Shorten is scarcely going to say so on national television.

  5. In regards Climare Change and Rudd a backbench MP from that time defended to me that legislation had passed the Lower House on 3 occasions

    The Minchin forces rolling the unpopular Turnbull concluded negotiations led by Wong and MacFarlane to pass the legislation thru the Senate where the Greens opposed

    The Minchin forces installed Abbott with his “Climate change is crap” line bought by the majority of Australians

    Given the press Abbott receives now it is interesting to recall events

    “No new tax” became the cry Abbott’s success in bringing down a prime minister then a government flourished on

    And look at where Australia’s dysfunctional energy policy has led us to since then

    Including gas where the collapse of the AUD from parity to the USD and the Export Contracts being denominated in USD’s sees Australian consumers slugged on price to retain the viability of the industry – hence those Export Market consumers paying far less than what Australian consumers pay

    And this government, with self regulation being the most effective form of regulation, talks exclusively about supply not price when the issue is price not supply

    Just another symptom of a dysfunctional government q

  6. So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man and it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch-hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. We’ve given I believe over a million pages worth of documents to the special counsel. They continue to just go forward and here we are talking about Syria, we’re talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force ever and I have this witch-hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now and actually much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination it started. And it’s a disgrace, it’s a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for so when I saw this and when I heard it, I heard it like you did, I said that is really now in a whole new level of unfairness. So this has been going on, I saw one of the reporters who is not necessarily a fan of mine, not necessarily very good to me, he said in effect that this is ridiculous, this is now getting ridiculous. They found no collusion whatsoever with Russia, the reason they found it is there was no collusion at all. No collusion. This is the most biased group of people, these people have the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen. Democrats all — or just about all, either Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for president Obama. They’re not looking at the other side. They’re not looking at the Hillary Clinton horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that were committed. They’re not looking at all of the things that happened that everybody is very angry about, I can tell you, from the Republican side and I think even the independent side. They only keep looking at us so they find no collusion and then they go from there and they say well, let’s keep going and they raid an office of a personal attorney early in the morning and I think it’s a disgrace. So we’ll talk about it more but this is the most conflicted group of people I’ve ever seen.

    Obstruction. Of. Justice.

  7. Victoria says: Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 8:42 am

    Trump is not a happy camper. His Lawyer being raided, just may tip him over the edge. Fun times

    **************************************************

    Wonder if Cohen’s loyalty extends to taking a bullet for Trump ????? ……. as todays raids appears to be linked to State financial matters that would fall under RICO laws – and as such no pardons from Trump !

  9. Robert Mueller was head of FBI for 10 years which is the limit of tenure these days. It was to stop a Edgar G Hoover scenario occurring again, where he had control of the organisation for decades.
    Anyhoo, Obama wanted Mueller to extend his stay and had to get approval of the congress etc to allow it. Remember, Mueller is a Republican. Approval was unanimously granted, as Mueller is held in high regard.

    Mueller was instrumental in getting the FBI to be the most technologically savvy organisation etc.

    My point being is that Trump can attempt to sack Rosenstein and Mueller, but it will be to no avail.

  12. Sales’ aim last night was to try to get Shorten to admit that, if Labor was elected,, he would close Adani down no matter what was required to effect this. While it might be alright to say this to Cousins in private, saying it in public would leave Shorten, as a potential PM, open to allegations of breach of natural justice in any future legal processes, and even sovereign risk. It’s not only politically impossible to make this admission, but also professionally irresponsible, possibly a dereliction of duty to the nation.

    This is the nub of it. So, Shorten playing a good-natured dead bat to it totally left Non Lethal Leigh without a leg to stand on and nowhere else to go.

    Job well done, as evidenced by the fact it made not one news story today.

  13. Wonder if Cohen’s loyalty extends to taking a bullet for Trump ????? ……. as todays raids appears to be linked to State financial matters that would fall under RICO laws

    I was thinking the same thing myself!

  14. I’m wondering when the Republicans in Congress will start thinking of themselves, over protecting Trump first and foremost?

  15. Victoria says: Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 8:52 am

    PhoenixRed

    Yep. State crimes and no pardons.

    Cohen is stuffed. May as well sing like a canary. Lol!

    ************************************************

    Well, Trump threw Cohen under a bus earlier this week by denying knowledge of the hush money to Daniels – I bet NY AG Eric Schneiderman is just droolin’ at the chance to tear Cohen apart as a stepping stone to Trump …..

  18. Itza

    Yes – at the leggy adolescent stage. Has a strange obsession with brooms – every time I try and sweep, she grabs the brush, wrestles it away from me, and then carries the broom off in triumph.

  19. Victoria says: Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 8:58 am

    PhoenixRed

    The big question is Trump gonna do a Nixon and fire everyone in sight?

    **************************************************

    He may well attempt that Victoria – but I think his hands are tied with respect to State laws – and I bet Cohen has enough ‘dirt’ ( saved as a self protection against Trump ) on Trump to sing like a canary as you say to save some of his sorry arse with …..

    Ale‏ @aliasvaughn · 25m25 minutes ago

    THIS is why Trump is melting down in front of cameras. He KNOWS this is his end, bc ALL his dirty deals were handled by Cohen.

  20. Rudd’s ‘intervention’ this morning just proves his inability to let go.

    He’s become a sad, pathetic individual.

    While Bemuused will probably have apoplexy at my saying this but Rudd should take a leaf out of Gillard’s book and promote what he is doing now in the service of others instead of these attempts at self-serving.

  22. We turned off Q&A immediately Tunge started

    We have a 31 year old son who is a fully qualified and committed A Grade Commercial electrician

    For Commercial project work he is on short term Contracts (albeit up to 2 years) pending Contract completion then retrenched

    Currently he is employed on a part time and casual basis with a Company supplying electronic systems overseas – and they have just won a 5 year Contract extending the life of the business so he is receiving 50 hours a week and we’ll remunerated as a part time casual employee – but no Annual Leave and no Sick Leave provisions

    No work, no pay

    Another of our sons works in an industry, 5 days a week. But Public Holidays result in him foregoing his usual Thursday off – so for the recent Monday Public Holiday he had to work on his following Thursday off and that is the practice So he forgoes Public Holidays

    The other son works for a Public Company who reduce his support staff on a regular basis increasing his work load and working hours

    Then NAB have started retrenching the 6,000 they are going to retrench

    I turned Tunge off in disgust

    These people do not live in the real world

  24. The fact that Leigh Sales has been promoted way beyond her level of competence (seems that gushingly sycophantic celebrity interviews are just about her level) says everything you need to know about the modern ABC.

  26. John ZieglerVerified account@Zigmanfreud
    10m10 minutes ago
    So we now know that Trump is for sure guilty of something serious. An American president (even Trump) would never go so low as to call an FBI raid related to himself an “attack on our country” unless he feared he was in big trouble. #LastBastionOfScoundrels

  27. @zoomster…”…and how do I load a photo of the puppy to this site?”………

    There are are cloud hosting free image sites like imgur .com. Save the pic, upload to imgur, copy code of image and paste into forum as such……..

    [img][/img]

  28. Tom NicholsVerified account@RadioFreeTom
    22m22 minutes ago

    I know what people thought of @dick_nixon, but you never saw him melt down in public the way Trump just did.

  30. jen,

    Yep, that’s the key thing that stands out for me.

    Rudd spends too much time dwelling on the past, instead of now and the future.

    His inability to let go and move on probably explains much about past events and it’s hard to see it changing in the future.

    It’s sad because he can be interesting when talking about non-Kevin issues.

    I suspect we will just have to put up with it!

    What was that?

    Nothing, just Kevin again!!! 🙂

  31. Thanks for the reports on what our now crapulous ABC calls “News and Current Affairs”. Simply confirms my resolution to get my news and commentary from alternative media. There needs to be a broom put through the joint, top to bottom. And a change to its funding so it is permanently at arms’ length from whoever is in government. Its current state is thanks to Paul Keating, that great neo-liberal hero.

  35. Eric Garland‏Verified account @ericgarland

    REMINDER on just how connected and screwed they are:

    Michael Cohen’s firm Squire Patton Boggs…is Cambridge Analytica’s law firm.

    After FBI Raid, Squire Says It Severed Ties to Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen

    Squire Patton Boggs said Monday that it no longer had a strategic alliance with embattled Michael Cohen, who had been working out of the firm’s offices in New York.

    https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2018/04/09/after-fbi-raid-squire-says-it-severed-ties-to-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen/?cmp=share_twitter&slreturn=20180309195626

  37. Barney in Go Dau @ #80 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 9:23 am

    jen,

    Yep, that’s the key thing that stands out for me.

    Rudd spends too much time dwelling on the past, instead of now and the future.

    His inability to let go and move on probably explains much about past events and it’s hard to see it changing in the future.

    It’s sad because he can be interesting when talking about non-Kevin issues.

    I suspect we will just have to put up with it!

    What was that?

    Nothing, just Kevin again!!! 🙂

    Give us a break! Rudd makes an occasional tweet that causes conniptions among some.
    He also occasionally authors an opinion piece which is generally well regarded.
    Now he has written a letter. Shock, horror.

    Should he curl up and die?

    I would be equally relaxed if Gillard did any of these things, as she is perfectly entitled to do. Opinions of former leaders are always interesting, agree or disagree.

  38. Richard W. Painter
    ‏

    @RWPUSA
    Follow Follow @RWPUSA
    More
    A warrant for search of a lawyer’s office requires substantial evidence of wrongdoing. And that there is.

    To search Michael Cohen’s home and office, the FBI had to clear a higher-than-normal bar

    3:40 PM – 9 Apr 2

  39. Victoria says: Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 10:03 am

    phoenixRed

    that is why a huge whiteboard would help with this imbroglio. such a tangled web!!

    ************************************************

    The whiteboard would need to be as big as the MCG to cover all the links and rabbit holes that are getting thrown up on a daily basis — even the Washington Post has trouble keeping up

    Here’s what we know so far about Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests – updated March 6

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/trump-russia/?utm_term=.f6325b519897

  40. this gave me a good chuckle……..

    “The President”
    ‏

    @ThePresidentTV
    Follow Follow @ThePresidentTV
    More “The President” Retweeted Adam Parkhomenko
    Tomorrow on “The President”, Donald insists that he’s never met Michael. He was just a junior law clerk at the Trump Organization for a few months. Probably passed by each other in the hallway a couple times, but don’t know him.”The President” added,

    Adam Parkhomenko
    Verified account

    @AdamParkhomenko
    Michael Cohen, National Deputy Finance Chair of the @GOP, has disappeared in the last five minutes from their website.
    5:07 PM – 9 Apr 2018
    52 Retweets 136 Likes Mary Alice BishopCRDMiamiNice57Nidia❄️RESISTEREvgeniaTea PainNatalie ChutkanScott SmithTrump Stain
    7 replies 52 retweets 136 likes
    Reply 7 Retweet 52 Like 136

    SUE GARCIA
    ‏

    @SCOOBYSNAX7707
    1m1 minute ago
    More
    Replying to @ThePresidentTV @MoMoneyMitt

    0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
    Reply Retweet Like 1

    Jackie
    ‏

    @jstewi327
    3s3 seconds ago
    More
    Replying to @ThePresidentTV @TeaPainUSA
    Can’t make this crap up

  41. bemused @ #87 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 7:07 am

    …

    I would be equally relaxed if Gillard did any of these things, as she is perfectly entitled to do. Opinions of former leaders are always interesting, agree or disagree.

    Yes, but those opinions are not normally about themselves, unless they are responding to a direct question! 🙂

  43. phoenixRed

    it is hard to keep track of it all. having said that I get the distinct feeling that someone closely related to the main players is helping law enforcement. not sure if it is on the Trump side or the Putin side. not sure whether it is revenge or altruistic, but someone is guiding this whole imbroglio.

  44. You really don’t get it Bemused.

    Rudd is inward and backward-looking.

    His view is arguably wrong, or at the very least is self-serving.

    He should look forward and concentrate on what benefits both country and himself. But no, he, like you, still argues over the past.

  45. Victoria @ #93 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 7:16 am

    phoenixRed

    it is hard to keep track of it all. having said that I get the distinct feeling that someone closely related to the main players is helping law enforcement. not sure if it is on the Trump side or the Putin side. not sure whether it is revenge or altruistic, but someone is guiding this whole imbroglio.

    No, you guys have convinced me it’s easy to keep up with.

    If there’s a connection with Trump then that means there is a connection with Russia.

    If there’s a connection with Russia then that means there is a connection with Trump.

    All roads lead directly to the promised land and this last tweet/raid/rumour is the crucial piece that brings everything together!

    It all ends tomorrow!!! 🙂

  46. Laurence TribeVerified account@tribelaw
    1h1 hour ago

    The no-knock search warrant that Trump calls part of a “witch hunt” today was sought by a US Atty appointed by Trump and was granted by a Senate-confirmed Art. III Judge under the strictest constitutional standards. Absurd.

  50. jenauthor @ #92 Tuesday, April 10th, 2018 – 10:21 am

    You really don’t get it Bemused.

    Rudd is inward and backward-looking.

    His view is arguably wrong, or at the very least is self-serving.

    He should look forward and concentrate on what benefits both country and himself. But no, he, like you, still argues over the past.

    As of course are you and all the Gillard supporters
    Now I am still a strong Rudd supporter, but probably agree that the letter was unhelpful, although I am not sure what triggered it.

    However if I were accused unfairly of something even 40 years on I would still defend myself. it is normal human nature. The very fact that the Rudd haters have never bothered to apologise or even try to see the world from his perspective would increase his need to defend himself.

    The fact is he was betrayed by his deputy and someone he regarded as his best friend (swan). That is something you do not get over easily. it is I think like a marriage break up. People only really start to heal once they are in a new relationship or job or something.

    Moreover because of hostility here he really cannot get a job in Australia and I imagine trump’s USA or May’s UK would not be happy places for any ALP Labor type.

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