Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor

Essential finds Malcolm Turnbull increasing his lead as preferred Liberal leader, Anthony Albanese drawing level with Bill Shorten for Labor, and little change in voting intention.

The latest fortnightly result from Essential Research has Labor maintaining its 51-49 lead, with the Coalition up one on the primary vote to 41%, Labor steady on 36%, the Greens steady on 10% and One Nation steady on 6%. Also featured are questions on best Liberal and Labor leader: the former finds Malcolm Turnbull on 28%, up four since April, with Julie Bishop down one to 16% and Tony Abbott down one to 10%; the latter has Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese tied on 19%, which is one point down since August 2017 in Shorten’s case and six points up in Albanese’s, while Tanya Plibersek is down one to 12%.

The poll also has Essential’s occasional question on attributes of the main parties, which are chiefly interesting in having the Liberals up eight points since November 2017 for having “a good team of leaders”, to 45%, and down eight on the obverse question of being “divided”, to 56%. The biggest movements for Labor are a seven point decrease for being “extreme”, to 34%; a five point decrease for being too close to corporate interests, to 37%; and a five point increase for being divided, to 56%.

The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1022; full results can be found here.

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.

2,484 comments on “Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor”

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  1. That Perth’s Sunday Times has been part of the Seven-West media group for some time now, has not added one jot to the quality of it or the West. These two, with lots of competition from elsewhere in the country, must still rate as the poorest quality metro papers in Oz – Northern Territory and all…………Through the relation between these papers, Sandgropers can now get a shot of Bolt to add to the already, heavily weighted pro-LNP editorial/opinion pieces from the likes of the local Paul Murray.

  2. The reason Trump likes Michael Jordan is because the superstar basketballer refused to stand up for a political cause. He famously said Republicans buy his brand of shoes too, and that’s all that matters to Jordan. He subsequently purchased an NBA team.

  3. On the topic of Journalism and not adding anything:

    Citizen Emerson
    ‏Verified account @scottemerson
    Aug 4

    This month 30 yrs ago I started as a cadet journo at @ABC Toowong studios. It remains an iconic & important institution for Australia but I’m concerned it’s become the Sydney Broadcasting Corporation with fewer regional voices & views on air and commentary masquerading as news

  4. To be fair to Jordon, he has given a statement to NBC News that he supports LeBron James saying “He’s doing an amazing job for his community,” in Ohio.

  5. Labor’s going to secure a solid enough majority to risk losing Lindsay

    It would be foolish to base an election campaign on that assumption. Every marginal seat matters a great deal.

    What is the principle that the ALP would be defending if it pre-selected Husar this time? The principle that some workplace bullying, harassment, and dysfunctional management is okay, as long as one of the allegations (the Basic Instinct thing) wasn’t substantiated? It is a dumb to die in a ditch over that principle.

  6. Nicholas @ #2255 Sunday, August 5th, 2018 – 1:28 pm

    Labor’s going to secure a solid enough majority to risk losing Lindsay

    It would be foolish to base an election campaign on that assumption. Every marginal seat matters a great deal.

    What is the principle that the ALP would be defending if it pre-selected Husar this time? The principle that some workplace bullying, harassment, and dysfunctional management is okay, as long as one of the allegations (the Basic Instinct thing) wasn’t substantiated? It is a dumb to die in a ditch over that principle.

    I find it very amusing that a Green is giving electoral advice to the ALP!

    How about concentrating on getting your own members elected first?

  7. Ides@12:05pm
    The East Hills MP Glen Brooks won the seat under some very dodgy circumstances. He smeared the ALP candidate, Human Rights lawyer, with some very horrible things like “pedophile lover”. There was supposed to be an investigation on that. Could he be resigning because of the findings from that investigation.
    C@tmomma can you throw some light on it?

  8. After the problems caused by continuing to back Craig Thomson I would expect that NSW ALP would now see Emma Husar as politically brown bread

  9. It was some weeks ago, I think, that a bludger remarked – Look out for dirt to be thrown from now until the election. Long way to go yet, chaps.

  10. Ven @ #2257 Sunday, August 5th, 2018 – 1:36 pm

    Ides@12:05pm
    The East Hills MP Glen Brooks won the seat under some very dodgy circumstances. He smeared the ALP candidate, Human Rights lawyer, with some very horrible things like “pedophile lover”. There was supposed to be an investigation on that. Could he be resigning because of the findings from that investigation.
    C@tmomma can you throw some light on it?

    Glen Brooks is a Liberal, so can’t shed light on their investigation. However, I do know that Labor had an outstanding candidate, Cameron Murphy, son of Lionel Murphy, and a Human Rights lawyer, who was likely to win the seat until an anonymous (and, aren’t they all?), shit sheet was letterboxed around the electorate which claimed that he was a paedophile, or covered up for paedophilia, I can’t remember which exactly. From that point on his support evaporated in double quick time, even though nothing was proved. It was said that the Liberal Party were behind it but there wasn’t any conclusive proof found at the time.

  11. I find it very amusing that a Green

    I don’t endorse the Greens. On ballot papers I put the Greens above the ALP, and I put the ALP above the LNP, but that is a pragmatic assessment about lesser of three evils.

    Workplace bullying should not be trivialized.

  12. Player One @ #2256 Sunday, August 5th, 2018 – 1:32 pm

    Nicholas @ #2255 Sunday, August 5th, 2018 – 1:28 pm

    Labor’s going to secure a solid enough majority to risk losing Lindsay

    It would be foolish to base an election campaign on that assumption. Every marginal seat matters a great deal.

    What is the principle that the ALP would be defending if it pre-selected Husar this time? The principle that some workplace bullying, harassment, and dysfunctional management is okay, as long as one of the allegations (the Basic Instinct thing) wasn’t substantiated? It is a dumb to die in a ditch over that principle.

    I find it very amusing that a Green is giving electoral advice to the ALP!

    How about concentrating on getting your own members elected first?

    And their own sexual harassment cases resolved.

  13. Can someone point me to one comment by a Bludger or anyone in the media who attempted to trivialise workpace bullying. That would be diabolical.

  14. OC@1:40pm
    If the expenses of Joyce on ex-staffer were OK and above board as per so called investigation, why are they not OK and below board with Husar? Did she sleep with ex-staffer? Did she cause immense pain to her immediate family like Joyce did? Why is it OK for LNP to support Joyce and it is not OK ALP to support Husar(I think you know that Joyce is NP MP) ? Why is it one standard for LNP and another for ALP?

  15. Maybe Mark Arbib could be the Washington Candidate?

    “FEDERAL minister and right-wing Labor powerbroker Mark Arbib has been revealed as a confidential contact of the United States embassy in Canberra, providing inside information and commentary for Washington on the workings of the Australian government and the Labor Party.

    Secret US embassy cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available exclusively to The Age reveal that Senator Arbib, one of the architects of Kevin Rudd’s removal as prime minister, has been in regular contact with US embassy officers.”

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/arbib-revealed-as-secret-us-source-20101208-18prg.html

  16. Power is everything. If Joyce was a unknown backbencher I am sure he would now be lining up at Centrelink

  17. OC

    Mark Arbib famously said he wanted “to be like Richo”, and his career has spookily mirrored his.

    Learning the ropes in Sussex Street, unexplained wealth, getting to Canberra and boning a leader, chasing the lure of the Packer largesse. There is only selling out to the grubby Murdoch shilling which remains.

  18. Oh, whoopee! All Labor Party supporters, let’s indulge a Rudd/Gillard flame war here today instead of talking about, say, Reefgate! Be still my pounding heart! 😉

  19. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.

    Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this?

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

  20. The West Australian’s digital audience has grown to a record high, according to new data released on Saturday morning.

    According to the industry-standard Nielsen DCR ratings, the unique monthly online audience for thewest.com.au and its associated digital platforms reached a record 2.2m Australians.

    This is bigger than the Brisbane Courier Mail, the Adelaide Advertiser and only marginally behind The Australian in terms of total digital audience.

    https://thewest.com.au/business/media/the-west-australians-online-audience-grows-to-a-record-high-ng-b88917868z

    Increased digital audience doesn’t translate to better informed about the issues that actually matter. Case in point: today’s top story at the West online is Ben Cousins being a star attraction at some suburban footy club’s ‘footy show’ panel discussion.

  21. lizzie @ #2275 Sunday, August 5th, 2018 – 2:21 pm

    Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this?

    In hindsight (which is now all we will ever have) I think it could never have been avoided. With luck, we will still be able to limit the fallout to the merely ‘catastrophic’.

    As a species, we are remarkably stupid.

  22. Mark Arbib has done none of the hard yards in Opposition, done none of the menial work pre-election or on election day, like handing out how to votes, or going to train stations on behalf of the candidate, and now, at 5 minutes to midnight, when it smells like Labor might be in with a shot at government again he wants to swan in and reclaim his ‘Rightful’ position in that government, because he’s sick of traipsing around the world on Jamie Packer’s dime and because, he has a lot to give!?!

    OC, tell Mr Arbib to naff off, and when he gets there, to naff off back where he came from. The Labor Party isn’t his personal plaything!

  23. Re the Husar allegations, while I agree that workplace bullying should be met with zero tolerance, for the life of me I can’t fathom how anything that has come to light (and, for the record, it appears to have been all denied) constitutes bullying. From what I’ve seen, it seems that Husar asked a male staffer to do some washing up, and presumably the same staffer to walk a dog, and pick up any droppings while doing it (like any responsible dog walker should do). Then we get the salacious allegations that Husar, going commando, flashed herself at Jason Clare while crossing her legs (also denied, by both parties).

    So can someone explain to me how any of this amounts to bullying? I have to deal with bullying complaints a bit as part of my work, and if someone came to me with this, I’d be telling them that they don’t have any sort of plausible case.

    But maybe I’m missing something.

  24. Hear, hear, C@tmomma,
    It still ticks me off that Arbib organised himself the top spot on the NSW Labor Senate ticket ahead of sound members.

  25. etalbert
    ‏ @etalbert
    8m8 minutes ago

    Seems #Workman knew before she popped up on #insiders

    that she was under massive NEGATIVE scrutiny for her article

    ran endless lines of creative defence and lies

    chickens and roost, come to mind

    set up by cunning as #Lindsay operatives

    #auspol #Nswpol
    0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes

  26. Speaking of freeloaders, Abbott, Andrews and Abetz really do need to retire at the next election. They aren’t going to be ministers again, won’t be frontbenchers when the coalition is in opposition after next election, and certainly none of them will lead the Liberal party again. Yet they are taking up safe seats that could be used for the party to regenerate.

  27. Guardian Australia
    ‏Verified account @GuardianAus
    1h1 hour ago

    “The government has abandoned farmers,” says Maxine Finlay. Read more from cattle farmers, grain growers and others living through Australia’s #drought crisis: https://trib.al/uK8AkVO

  28. “Yet they are taking up safe seats that could be used for the party to regenerate.”

    Keeping out aggressive young IPA hacks who are even further Right than they are. Liberals – leave the old farts in place.

  29. I’m all for drought support for farmers.

    But first every farmer who wants drought support needs to sign a statement which states that they accept the current climate patterns are a direct result of anthropomorphic climate change and that they will never support a political party that is more concerned with backing its coal mining and water stealing big friends and doesn’t give a damn about them.

  30. Steve777 @ #2290 Sunday, August 5th, 2018 – 12:47 pm

    “Yet they are taking up safe seats that could be used for the party to regenerate.”

    Keeping out aggressive young IPA hacks who are even further Right than they are. Liberals – leave the old farts in place.

    I’m not sure I agree with that. All three of them are religious fundamentalists who love shoving their views onto others. Tim Wilson is ex-IPA and he isn’t anything like that.

  31. C@tmomma @ #1457 Sunday, August 5th, 2018 – 10:46 am

    It’s not right, in the main, but how would Alice Workman like it if people leaked details of what it is like to work with her, or what she gets up to in her down time from work, or in her private life and in her relationships? She’d squeal louder than a stuck pig, I reckon.

    Husar is a public servant, Workman isn’t.

  32. OC

    I looked up that Wikipedia entry. The last section caught my eye:

    “In 2006, Anderson was appointed the Director of the Macquarie University Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism. In July 2010, the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption commissioned an independent investigation into a number of complaints by nine of twelve staff alleging bullying, victimisation and inappropriate recruitment practices. The investigation concluded “the practice of relying on direct appointments and short-term appointments and making ad hoc appointments in the absence of any planned approach to staffing has led to justifiable perceptions that the processes of recruitment and selection are corrupt.” The report found evidence of bullying, victimisation and conflicts of interest by Anderson.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]”

  33. Husar is a public servant, Workman isn’t.

    __________________________________

    In other words public servants have no rights.

  34. TPOF
    If you wanted to look into what is wrong with the NSW right, particularly in Western Sydney, Peter Anderson, is a good place to start

  35. The Husar stuff just shows why most people would not want to be a politician, if a single mum of 3 can be smeared without any proper due process or substantiated claims, then what hope is their for anybody else, screw that no thanks.

  36. Kristina Keneally
    ‏Verified account @KKeneally
    5m5 minutes ago

    Kristina Keneally Retweeted The Today Show

    In this clip, @RussellReichelt gets two things wrong:
    1. The govt has not said in Estimates that it considered whether the Dept could carry out the work.
    2. He is wrong about the amount of $ going to the GBR Marine Park Authority here. And he’s the Chair of that. #Reefgate

    Kristina Keneally
    ‏Verified account @KKeneally
    45s45 seconds ago

    Also – @RussellReichelt told #estimates & the inquiry he absented himself from the @GBRFoundation Board meeting in which they discussed the Govt’s offer, so why is he the guy the Foundation is sending out? By his own admission, he had very little to do with it. #Reefgate

    David Marler
    ‏ @Qldaah
    36s36 seconds ago

    #ReefGate 29/04/2018 Julie Bishop was there in Cairns when the funding was announced. However, they didn’t tell us at that point it was going to the little known GBRF. #auspol #qldpol

  37. Bugger
    I was just lining up to listen to the 2GB continuous call on the nursing home wireless and:
    1. They are doing their annual Group 7 match: Kiama Blowholes vs Gerringong Lions and worse
    2. Ray has taken the day off

  38. Tony Burke
    ‏Verified account @Tony_Burke
    41s42 seconds ago

    Hi @ErykBagshaw there’s an article online at @smh where the sub-editors have taken my comment about knowing of turnover “some time ago” & claimed my comment was about the investigation. This is false. I knew about the investigation when it was published as I said, & not before.

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