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”

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  3. Puffytmd

    Pawns to be sacrificed in the greater game, sadly. Social justice does not have a chance.

    Come on down bloody Henry Kissinger. But Madelaine Albright was no slouch at such shite. All so easy when your arse is sitting in luxury in the imperial capital and the media is so keen to polish such turds.

    “Madeleine Albright says 500,000 dead Iraqi Children was “worth it ”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE

  5. C@T

    Again viewed from afar, is there a more hapless premier than Gladys?

    I get my news from there via Fairfax (yeah I know) but hardly a day seem to go by when even they report on some latest incompetence.

    Roads and rail projects, stadium rebuilds and the plan to move the Powerhouse museum which hardly anybody outside government seems to think is a good idea never mind the billion dollar bill.

  6. poroti
    I know. I marched against War Crim Howard going to war in Iraq as did hundreds of thousands others and he did it anyway, and by then our sanctions were killing kids. All over a bloody great big lie.

    The three of them Bush, Blair and Howard should be in a gaol somewhere for war crimes.

    The ME is just a playground for psychopaths.

  8. I think they should move The Powerhouse Museum to Adelaide. We will take better care of that stuff than the NSW gov’t and it will let them sell the site to their spiv mates or whatever they are else are up to.

  10. rossmcg,
    Gladys has done a very good job of making Labor competitive again in NSW after the Obeid years, on the other hand! 🙂

  11. C@t:

    I’ve not seen a lot of McManus, but the little I have seen of her rubs me the wrong way. I’ll hopefully get to see her interview tomorrow to get a better look at her.

  13. don says:
    Saturday, April 14, 2018 at 8:09 pm

    For my money, the best rock guitarist and rock performer ever.

    Yet our definition of good contemporary music is probably defined by that time between 12 and 25 when music forms a huge part of your life and thought.

    I understand that there are some young people who think that good rock music continued after 1970.

    Agreed.

    Agreed.

    You might – stress “might” – like Gov’t Mule. They say they are heavily influenced by 1970s Brit Rock. They are my current band-of-the-month (and have been for a couple of years). A fair bit of them on YouTube, and nearly all their concerts can be downloaded, for a small consideration ($15 each for a FLAC version).

  16. Puffytmd @ 8:16 pm
    “is there any USA president in recent history who has not authorised a missile strike / bombing on another country”
    Jimmy Carter?

  18. Confessions @ #2311 Saturday, April 14th, 2018 – 8:35 pm

    C@t:

    I’ve not seen a lot of McManus, but the little I have seen of her rubs me the wrong way. I’ll hopefully get to see her interview tomorrow to get a better look at her.

    Yeah, I know what you mean. She doesn’t seem to care about her image, in that it seems obviously austere. Also that she doesn’t seem to care about the impression she gives, such as saying that laws should be broken if necessary. However, her heart is in the right place so I support her 100%.

  19. Matt Brown on the ABC just spoke about a declassified French Intelligence document which identified the use of Chlorine AND Hydrogen Cyanide, not used since WW1!, by Assad in Syria last week.

  23. Oakeshott Country says:
    Saturday, April 14, 2018 at 9:28 pm
    Carter invaded Iran in a failed attempt to free the embassy hostages

    Western policy in the Middle East has been seriously misguided since at least the 19th century.

  24. C@tmomma says:
    Saturday, April 14, 2018 at 9:13 pm

    Matt Brown on the ABC just spoke about a declassified French Intelligence document which identified the use of Chlorine AND Hydrogen Cyanide, not used since WW1!, by Assad in Syria last week.

    The correct interpretation to place on this is that agents of Russia’s protectorate used CW on the civilian population.

  26. Remember that the drops in violence and anti-social behaviour starts about 20 years from the birth the first cohort of babies conceived after the removal of lead from petrol.

    Also it was banned in Australia only in 2002. We are only just having a generation coming of age without exposure to Tetraethyllead.

    NZ banned it in 1996, Sweden 1992, Norway 1988, UK 2000, USA 1996, EU 2000, Australia 2002.

    The USA had a drop in overall violent crime rate that shadowed the banning of lead petrol. This correlation that is repeated world wide, even to the point of drops in youth crime while middle aged people’s violent crime remained steady.

    So beginning in 2030 a less violent cohort of people should be living in the Middle East countries. Also our own lead-brain-damaged leaders may start to be replaced by brighter and more compassionate people.

  28. Gladys and Chainsaw Mike have led a corrupt government.
    The only difference between them and Obeid is that Eddy used government to enrich himself.
    Mike and Gladys are using government to enrich their donor mates.
    Yet again yesterday there were delays on Sydney trains in the evening peak hour due to a signal failure at Central. These failures are a weekly occurrence. Labor were excoriated for even minor delays by the press. Not a word on the news last night.
    By the time Labor get back into power in NSW there will be no source of government revenue.

  29. And really, removing Trump doesn’t even have ‘greater good’ reasoning behind it. Pence would then be president, and in any real sense I don’t think that would be an improvement (not to sound like DTT, but I agree on that point). Actually removing Trump would be incredibly divisive, and there would be a fair number of potential Democrat voters who would see such an action as just vindicating Trump’s own rhetoric about the swamp, the fake news, how the system is protecting itself against necessary change agents, blah blah blah. And Trump, of course, would love to play the genuine victim in the aftermath – how to be the centre of attention without all that icky presidenty stuff to have to worry about.

    As much as I agree with your analysis as far as it goes, I think there’s more to it.

    Part of me wants to see Trump go down at the hands of the voters so they have to drag him out of the White House kicking and screaming. Part of me wants to see him gone now before he can cause more damage (and yes, I’ve not forgotten that Pence is an evil shit too as well as most Republicans).

    What’s more important to me is seeing the Dems win the House so the Republican agenda can be blocked. The Senate would be a bonus. And while I agree that the symbolic act of impeachment (without the Senate getting to two thirds) would be a great thing, there is also much more going on in the background relating to Trump the ordinary criminal.

    Its quite possible that investigations will expose Trump’s mafia style dealings, his tax evasion, his money laundering and so on. So forgetting about collusion for a moment, there is a good chance that he will be exposed as a criminal and go down for that.

    It would be funny if this happened in a time frame where he could still theoretically pardon himself. That’s be the constitutional crisis to end them all.

    I’m also conflicted in the following way. Part of me wants to see Trump go down for everything. From sexual abuse to bribing foreign officials to money laundering, to breaking building codes. I mean everything. Where the judge says “for these crimes the sentences add up to 22,753 years.

    Part of me just wants to see Trump locked up for something trivial, Al Capone style. Something demeaning perhaps but anything so long as he is behind bars. Why? Because this would be quicker.

  31. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/14/insulting-russia-furious-over-syria-attacks-as-politician-likens-trump-to-hitler

    Russia has characterised the strike against Syria as an attack on Russia.

    Alexander Sherin, the deputy head of the Duma’s defence committee, likened Trump to Hitler and described the strikes as a targeted threat against Russia.

    Syria is a Russian possession in a military sense. For almost no outlay, Russia has acquired a strategic protectorate in the Eastern Mediterranean.

    This is the result of the incredible incompetence and arrogance of successive US policy-makers.

  32. Oakshott Country @ 9:28 pm
    “Carter invaded Iran”
    At least he had a valid reason. May be that is one of the the reasons he didn’t win 2nd term.

  33. Aqua as much as I may agree with much of your post, this bit can’t go without comment.

    Yet again yesterday there were delays on Sydney trains in the evening peak hour due to a signal failure at Central. These failures are a weekly occurrence.

    The Sydney rail network is broken by design. You can blame Bradfield for that. It has a whole bunch of lines that are interconnected into a “network”. Rather than a bunch of independently operated, physically isolated rail lines. As a consequence, one failure in one point cascades into delays almost everywhere. As you put more trains on the network, it becomes more brittle. This isn’t the current government’s fault. Its a consequence of how the network was designed and the fact that many successive governments failed to spend the billions needed to build new rail lines.

    Labor under Carr and his successors didn’t do a very good job at building new rail lines. Worse, the lines that they did build were simply branches (like the SWRL) and loops (like the Epping Chatswood line). Which invites more complex timetabling, more ways for the thing to fail.

    What we’ve needed all along is brand new rail lines, not connected to the existing network, taking load of the current network and also providing the opportunity to simply the current network. That’s something the current government, despite being a bunch of Tory butt suckers, are actually doing.

  35. There’s been a potentially very dangerous Bushfire burning on Sydney’s South Western outskirts since the late afternoon- Holsworthy district:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/NSWRFS/status/985118965343993856

    https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/fire-information/major-fire-updates/mfu?id=1705

    It’s been a hot, dry and very windy day in Sydney and the NW wind is still going strong. There have been no casualties or property losses and hopefully it stays that way.

  36. ‘“Carter invaded Iran”
    At least he had a valid reason. May be that is one of the the reasons he didn’t win 2nd term.’

    No he didn’t, the Iranians were only responding (albeit stupidly) to the vile dictatorship the Americans and British imposed on them.

  37. I fail to see how Carr, Bradfield or Atila the Hun is responsible for failing to maintain or upgrade the signaling system in 2018.
    It appears Gladys micro managed Sydney Trains while transport minister.
    Her replacement the incompetent and talentless party hack from Bega is clueless and actually couldn’t give a stuff. He’s raking it in on a ministerial salary way out of proportion to the ability he brings to the job.
    Check out his resume. Worked for a lobbyist/marketing firm and then PARTY HACK before election to parliament at a young age. And they have the gall to criticise labor members with a union background.
    The previous labor government were implementing a program to untangle the network. Abandoned when the libs got in. It may not have been perfect but it was a start.

  39. Aqua, its not about maintaining the signalling system. Signals are actually well maintained. Signals will fail from time to time and for reasons that no government has control over.

    The problem is that when something does go wrong (and it will sometimes) the consequences are amplified both by the poor design of the network and the increasing load on the network. No matter how well maintained it will fail from time to time and as you add more load, the failure rate will accelerate and have wider consequences.

    We need more rail lines.

  40. And I’m not making excuses for them. I don’t like them either. But I do actually have some expert knowledge on rail.

  41. “Good response by Australia. Bipartisan support but not military involvement.”

    I agree. We seem to have got it right this time. Appropriate dplomatic support but Australia can surely sit this one out.

  42. Sohar @ 10:37 pm
    May be .
    Yes the CIA replaced the democratically elected socialist government with Shaw, who repressed his own people and sold oil cheaply to them. But the current theocratic regime is no better than Shaw.
    Also, holding embassy staff is not the right thing to do.

  43. Cud Chewer. Weekly failures?
    I’ve been catching trains for a significant proportion of my 60 odd years.
    For the last 10 years from western Sydney.
    The trains were slowed down under labor because of complaints about late running.
    I leave for work about 5am. There used to be trains every 15 minutes until Gladys got her hands on the portfolio. Her new timetable increased the gap to 30 minutes. The train stops at 1 less station and goes slower therefore arriving later than it used to.
    The timetable is bollocks and it’s got nothing to do with the network and everything to do with Gladys getting her mug on the tv nightly to grandstand.
    The NWRL should have been built by Greiner. After all he released all the land in that zone and claimed private enterprise would take care of transport.
    In spite of there being no votes in it for labor, Carr upgraded all the roads out in that area and picked up zero seats for his trouble. I don’t blame labor for not building the NWRL and they were stupid to say they would.
    Well designed metros and light rail systems are a good idea. Frankly this government isn’t going to deliver anything like a well designed metro or light rail system.

  44. Kinda sad that when Australia decides not to get involved in some other countries’ military follies it is regarded as a “good response”

    Pity it wasn’t our response way back when.

  45. cud chewer
    https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-that-still-use-leaded-gasoline.html

    Rank Location
    1 Algeria
    2 Iraq
    3 Yemen
    4 Myanmar
    5 North Korea
    6 Afghanistan

    But another article says that Algeria is the only country not to ban it.
    https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/leaded-petrol-algeria-still-legal-innospec-cheshire-uk-sale-export-tel-tetraethyl-lead-a7907196.html

    This article has a map.
    https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/prediction-terrorism-middle-east-will-decline-half-between-2020-and-2040/

    Maybe it is banned but still used in those countries. Apparently it is made illegally in China. Some countries can’t afford to re-fit their refineries to make unleaded instead of leaded petrol.

    Seeing as how it must have been known (“As mad as a hatter” was based on 19th Century hat-makers who got sick from handling lead hat moulds) it is an outrage that it was ever put in petrol.

  46. The dangers of lead have been known since Roman times, when it was first used for water pipes.

    People continued to use it for over 2000 years because of all of its favourable properties.

    Believe it or not, lead water pipes were still being installed in new buildings in the UK as late as the 1970s.

    (I imagine it wasn’t much different for Australia)

  48. Aqua,

    What you’re saying merely confirms what I have said. The basic problem is a century old design, more people using it. More trains. And with this more congestion, slower timetables and less robustness. The bottom line here is we need more train lines.

    I’m legally blind. I have no choice but to use trains and without giving too much away, I’m not exactly a teenager. I’ve been around since they used to run quaint, non airconditioned diesel trains to Newcastle.

    As far as the timetable goes. Every Sydney train timetable sucks. Why? Because we have all these rail lines where there is a conflict between more frequent services closer to the city and running times for trains that come from further out. And it fails to serve both purposes. We have a badly designed network. We need more rail lines and we need some very much faster rail lines. That costs money.

    The real culprit is the RMS and the “roads solve everything” mentality. Plus the fact that the Federal government which under writes a lot of (major) road spending hasn’t yet figured out that fast trains are money better spent than motorways. But successions of State governments (Labor and Liberal) put in “business cases” for major roads and the Feds go along with the charade.

  49. DB Cooper @ #2346 Saturday, April 14th, 2018 – 8:35 pm

    The dangers of lead have been known since Roman times, when it was first used for water pipes.

    People continued to use it for over 2000 years because of all of its favourable properties.

    Believe it or not, lead water pipes were still being installed in new buildings in the UK as late as the 1970s.

    (I imagine it wasn’t much different for Australia)

    It seems Australia changed over back in the 1930s but contamination can still occur from brass welds and taps which contain lead.

    https://www.waterlogicaustralia.com.au/resources/whats-in-my-tap-water/how-to-remove-lead-from-water/

  50. Barney,

    I thought we would have been ahead of the UK, but I didn’t think it would be as long ago as the 1930s.

    My source states 1976 for the UK. (Don’t have an online link, but this is the book: https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/18152723?selectedversion=NBD4216323 )

    There has been an ongoing drama in WA over lead contamination, presumably from brass welds, in the water pipes in the new childrens’ hospital here. It has sat empty for well over a year while they have tried to fix the problem.

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