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. Ven says Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 1:27 pm

    I will tell a story about John F Kennedy, the progressive light who life was cut short dramatically. He joined US Navy in 1930s and went to Europe on duty in late 1930s, by the time Hitler and Mussolini were well established as rulers. He was on record saying that Europe needed fascist governments like in Germany and Italy. Google it or I will try to provide the link in the night.

    Actually, he didn’t join the US Navy until 1940. In the late 1930s he was still in college, although he did spend time in Europe before joining the Navy.

    From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy

    In September 1935, Kennedy made his first trip abroad when he traveled to London with his parents and his sister Kathleen. He intended to study under Harold Laski at the London School of Economics (LSE), as his older brother had done. Ill-health forced his return to the United States in October of that year…

    In September 1936, Kennedy enrolled at Harvard College … He tried out for the football, golf, and swimming teams and earned a spot on the varsity swimming team. Kennedy also sailed in the Star class and won the 1936 Nantucket Sound Star Championship. In July 1937, Kennedy sailed to France—taking his convertible—and spent ten weeks driving through Europe with Billings. In June 1938, Kennedy sailed overseas with his father and older brother to work at the American embassy in London, where his father was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.

    In 1939, Kennedy toured Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East in preparation for his Harvard senior honors thesis. He then went to Czechoslovakia and Germany before returning to London on September 1, 1939, the day that Germany invaded Poland to mark the beginning of World War II. Two days later, the family was in the House of Commons for speeches endorsing the United Kingdom’s declaration of war on Germany. Kennedy was sent as his father’s representative to help with arrangements for American survivors of the SS Athenia before flying back to the U.S. from Foynes, Ireland, to Port Washington, New York, on his first transatlantic flight.

    When Kennedy was an upperclassman at Harvard, he began to take his studies more seriously and developed an interest in political philosophy. He made the Dean’s List in his junior year. In 1940, Kennedy completed his thesis, “Appeasement in Munich”, about British participation in the Munich Agreement. The thesis became a bestseller under the title Why England Slept. In addition to addressing Britain’s failure to strengthen its military in the lead-up to World War II, the book also called for an Anglo-American alliance against the rising totalitarian powers. While Kennedy became increasingly supportive of U.S. intervention in World War II, his father’s isolationist beliefs resulted in the latter’s dismissal as ambassador to the United Kingdom, creating a split between the Kennedy and Roosevelt families.

    In 1940, Kennedy attempted to enter the army’s Officer Candidate School, but he was medically disqualified due to his chronic lower back problems. He exercised for months to straighten his back. On September 24, 1941, with the help of the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)—who was the former naval attaché to Joseph Kennedy—Kennedy joined the United States Naval Reserve. He was commissioned an ensign on October 26, 1941, and joined the staff of the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C.

    Sorry If I’ve pasted too much.

  2. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/peter-dutton-again-forced-by-court-to-transfer-sick-child-from-nauru-to-australia

    The federal court has again forced Peter Dutton to transfer a dangerously sick child from Nauru to Australia for treatment, dismissing arguments from the immigration minister’s representatives that the girl wasn’t seriously ill.
    ::::
    The girl’s case joins more than a dozen attempts by the home affairs department to block the medical transfer of a child, attempts that have failed at or shortly prior to federal court action.

    “Despite their clear duty of care for people in offshore detention, the Australian government continues to fight in the courts to deny children the medical care they so desperately need, even when their lives are at grave and imminent risk,” the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s Natasha Blucher said.

    “They are going to extreme lengths to play politics with childrens’ lives and it needs to end immediately.”

  3. The Great Barrier Reef Foundation is acting by prioritising projects that build the Reef’s resilience to the impacts of a changing climate and participating in constructive dialogue on policy options.

    We accept our broader role in helping our partners and the community understand the impacts of climate change and what they can do to care for our environment.

    They have no intention of advocating any action, based upon the science, to address Global Warming at all. It’s all makework stuff to try and keep the GBR on life support.

    * Seeding coral back onto the GBR.
    * Building some kind of contraption that will cool the water down around the GBR. And I would speculate that the Coalition’s mates in the refrigerant gas industry, used to devastating effect against Labor’s ‘Carbon Tax’ by Tony Abbott, would be in the mix to supply the life support machines that they are going to build to do the ugly job.

    They’ll all make a motza from it. Which they can donate back to the GBR Foundation ‘charity’ for the appropriate tax-minimising deduction.

    It stinks like the rotting dead fish of the bycatch of a Super Trawler.

  4. My take: they want to genetically-engineer heat-resistant super-coral. That way the climate can get as warm as it wants and nobody has to worry about the reef anymore.

    Which means it will no longer be a Natural Wonder of the World. However, the Tourism Industry head who sits on the board of the GBR Foundation won’t care, as long as he can gull the tourists into keeping on coming through the turnstiles.

  6. <blockquote)Interestingly enough had Newspoll applied last election prefs to their last Longman poll (ALP 40%, LNP 36%, PHON 14% and Greens 5%) they would have come up with a headline figure of 53.5/46.5 to the ALP.

    Not sure if I have missed something but haven’t we already decided that using last election prefs would create a distorted picture because the Liberals are now getting a bigger percentage of PHON prefs than was the case in 2016?

  7. (Just redid this the way it was meant to be).

    Interestingly enough had Newspoll applied last election prefs to their last Longman poll (ALP 40%, LNP 36%, PHON 14% and Greens 5%) they would have come up with a headline figure of 53.5/46.5 to the ALP.

    Not sure if I have missed something but haven’t we already decided that using last election prefs would create a distorted picture because the Liberals are now getting a bigger percentage of PHON prefs than was the case in 2016?

  8. The Prime Minister’s ‘private meeting’ with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, when he offered them $444m of public funding, was more private than first thought. It now turns out that there were no public servants present. Just Turnbull, Frydenberg & GBRF Chair Dr John Schubert.”

    So can we call it collusion now?

    That would work on Twitter.

  9. lizzie says:
    Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 4:07 pm
    Don’t like Hewson advising Turnbull/Abbott …

    Abbott would have had plenty to work with. He could have used everything from the Heydon royal commission into trade unions through to Shorten’s record of selling out workers for personal political gain

    I thought Hewson was a little more honest than that. Silly me.

    Me too Lizzie. Very disappointing. I actually went back to check if it really was Hewson saying all that. Unfortunately it was.

  10. Darn the preference distribution will be different in the next election, especially Queensland, the point is that the estimated one in Newspoll isn’t very accurate when compared to Longman.

  11. Senator Murray Watt‏Verified account @MurrayWatt · 7h7 hours ago

    DPP now considering prosecution against Ashby (and others?) over the secret donation of a campaign plane. Between this and the Michaelia Cash investigation, looks like the DPP will be busy…

  12. Alpo@12:12pm
    I read that the 2pp from others and minor parties to ALP this time in Longman is 48% and it was about 61.5% in 2016. So although there is drop in 2pp from others &minor parties ALP 2pp increasd by about 3.7%.

  13. If more voters move from Liberals to PHON than Labor to PHON then more preferences will go back to the Liberals from PHON. Which is why looking at how PHON preferences went last time mightn’t help.

  14. One of the many reasons I never take notice of the personality metrics in polls because it is a false measurement.

    Voters are not mugs and they express themselves in mysterious ways.

    The hype around personal ratings assumes that voters are actually comparing the two leaders e.g. Shorten/Turnbull. It’s quite feasible that voters knowing the LNP are in power are saying Turnbull is the best of the Liberal prospects because they don’t approve of Dutton/Abbott/Morrison or indeed are scared that any of these dudes might assume power.

    Voters might want Turnbull to implement Labor policies. But, while there is no chance of a change to Labor until the next election they will not take any of the scary options on the LNP side.

  15. bc @ #51 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 5:51 pm

    Ven says Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 1:27 pm

    I will tell a story about John F Kennedy, the progressive light who life was cut short dramatically. He joined US Navy in 1930s and went to Europe on duty in late 1930s, by the time Hitler and Mussolini were well established as rulers. He was on record saying that Europe needed fascist governments like in Germany and Italy. Google it or I will try to provide the link in the night.

    Actually, he didn’t join the US Navy until 1940. In the late 1930s he was still in college, although he did spend time in Europe before joining the Navy.

    From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy

    In September 1935, Kennedy made his first trip abroad when he traveled to London with his parents and his sister Kathleen. He intended to study under Harold Laski at the London School of Economics (LSE), as his older brother had done. Ill-health forced his return to the United States in October of that year…

    I

    When Kennedy was an upperclassman at Harvard, he began to take his studies more seriously and developed an interest in political philosophy. He made the Dean’s List in his junior year. In 1940, Kennedy completed his thesis, “Appeasement in Munich”, about British participation in the Munich Agreement. The thesis became a bestseller under the title Why England Slept. In addition to addressing Britain’s failure to strengthen its military in the lead-up to World War II, the book also called for an Anglo-American alliance against the rising totalitarian powers. While Kennedy became increasingly supportive of U.S. intervention in World War II, his father’s isolationist beliefs resulted in the latter’s dismissal as ambassador to the United Kingdom, creating a split between the Kennedy and Roosevelt families.

    Sorry If I’ve pasted too much.

    Excellent post

    I cut out most of it – fro brevity but recommend others scroll down to read in full

    I have actually read that book – very interesting – I have referred to it here but forgot its name.

  16. zoomster @ #63 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 6:18 pm

    If more voters move from Liberals to PHON than Labor to PHON then more preferences will go back to the Liberals from PHON. Which is why looking at how PHON preferences went last time mightn’t help.

    Absolutely.

    You cannot use Longman for any kind of PHON prediction. Pollsters who do should give up the area and go become accountants.

  17. Sohar@1:41pm
    After by-elections it appears Murphyroo has gone tropo because the thing she predicted did not happen and she has been asked about it on “Insiders”

  18. Ven @ #317 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 6:32 pm

    Sohar@1:41pm
    After by-elections it appears Murphyroo has gone tropo because the thing she predicted did not happen and she has been asked about it on “Insiders”

    There’s a reason why Steve Lewis from Essential wrote his piece today. Murphy’s reputation for being a political commentator of substance has been shredded through Barnabygate and her reliance on personality metrics to underpin her political commentary.

  20. Andrew_Earlwood @ #266 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 3:52 pm

    I reckon that a national 2PP of 51.5-48.5 to Labor is where we are at right now. However, the zero to small swings to Government states (NSW, Victoria, SA, Tassie) are not likely to help them very much. Maybe a seat or two will, in exceptional circumstances go their way (ie …Lingari…)

    I will be surprised if they take Lingiari, given that

    a) Labor’s margin increased by 7.5% in 2016,

    b) the incumbent, Warren Snowdon, has held it continuously since 2001,

    c) it has the highest proportion of indigenous voters in any federal electorate (43%), and

    d) Mal & co have openly pissed all over indigenous needs & aspirations.

  21. Apparently Katharine Murphy and Amy Remeikis, and someone called Miles, are doing a podcast on:

    “After the recent by-elections we’ve learnt a lot of details about the election strategies of Labor, One Nation and the Coalition. What can we expect to see as we gear up for an election? Katharine Murphy, Amy Remeikis and Shane Wright from the West Australian remind us that most of the analysis has been of the Queensland results but there are many lessons to learn from the elections in Fremantle and Perth”

    Ho hum. Is anyone brave enough to listen?

  23. JM
    The reason Labor lost the penultimate NT election was that it took the NT Indigenous vote for granted – not something their opponents could have been accused of.
    The Giles Government subsequently became the most chaotic of all Australian governments ever. Bar none.
    Giles, Scullion, Abbott and Turnbull gutted Indigenous funding.
    But there are now numerous Indigenous people who are interested in representing Indigenous people.
    There are no longer any guarantees in NT politics. If there ever were.

  25. As a long term member of Vinnies I have come to know and greatly admire John Falzon, but I wouldn’t say I knew him well. I strongly believe he would be a superb MHR, but I do see hurdles in the way of his preselection. And not just from the Murdoch dirt bags.
    Strong suspicions re his beliefs on Euthanasia, Abortion rights etc may well galvanise the sisterhood to back Ms Payne, also a strong candidate.
    The other candidates are either too young or too useless, they might be better served doing “hard time” in an unwinnable seat nearby to demonstrate their committment like the admirable Aoife Champion- Fashoyin in Hume last election .

  28. mikeh:

    2GB would’ve reported it as a way of undermining Turnbull. If it had been Abbott as PM it would’ve sailed under radar, ‘nothing to see here!’

  29. Utterly pathetic position on plastic bags from Coles.

    Yep I was so disappointed. But if it makes you feel better, Coles has copped an absolute pasting on our local ABC facebook page, which posted the news story.

  31. fess

    Yep I was so disappointed. But if it makes you feel better, Coles has copped an absolute pasting on our local ABC facebook page, which posted the news story.

    Good. Maybe that bloke from War on Waste can give them a visit as well.

  35. mikeh:

    We have a very large environmentally aware contingent to our population, so the plastic bag ban has spawned some community-initiated projects such as ‘boomerang bags’ at various local stores. I’m not surprised people are upset about Coles decision given the community seemed to have accepted the ban and were taking it in stride.

  36. davidwh:

    Thank you. I asked because most of my media attention is taken by what’s happening in the US, hence I don’t really follow local politics other than what is posted here. I do not recall seeing the $500m gift to that foundation before yesterday.

  38. bc@5:51pm
    Here is article which quotes JFK writing on Nazi and Mussolini Italy.. Sorry if I offended you earlier

    https://amp-belfasttelegraph-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/john-f-kennedy-was-a-fan-of-hitler-and-nazi-germany-diaries-reveal-29292362.html?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.belfasttelegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld-news%2Fjohn-f-kennedy-was-a-fan-of-hitler-and-nazi-germany-diaries-reveal-29292362.html

  39. On plastic bags, Coles has folded under an onslaught from Murdoch and the RW shock jocks. The company seems to be rather directionless at present as it is floated away from the Wesfarmers parent.

    They have made some other silly moves, such as virtually accusing any customer who uses self-serve checkouts of defrauding the company by not scanning items properly. On the other hand, our closest Coles has friendly staff who seem to have worked there for a long time.

    Coles must be feeling the pressure from the ruthlessly efficient Aldi.

  40. Leigh Sales manages to conduct an entire interview with the NFF re the drought, without once mentioning climate change.

    Mustn’t piss off Trumble.

  41. a r says:
    Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 5:49 pm
    Bushfire Bill @ #303 Wednesday, August 1st, 2018 – 5:40 pm

    I am trying to square this statement…
    __________
    We believe climate change is the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef.

    We support the Paris Agreement and believe every individual, business and government, both in Australia and internationally, has an important role to play in achieving these targets.

    (snip)
    _____________

    My take: they want to genetically-engineer heat-resistant super-coral. That way the climate can get as warm as it wants and nobody has to worry about the reef anymore.

    ________________
    ________________

    No. Won’t work.

    There are millions of organisms that make up the GBR.

    You are not trying to create one super-duper type of wheat, you are trying to create a highly complex suite of animals and plants.

    You might be able to create one or two heat resistant corals, but it would take time. Time is what we are running out of. And the result would be a monoculture, even if it worked, and the fish and crustaceans and other families would crash in numbers to close to zero.

  42. The government promoted the 500m gift at the time as good news for the reef, which the ABC happily reported.
    But now we have more info on Turnbulls roll in it that looks really bad for him, interestingly I have not seen the ABC report it at all so far.

  43. The Guardian has part two of a story on the ABC under pressure from the government and particularly the Murdoch media. Presenters are said to be terrified of offending the wrong people.

    The ABC in turmoil: ‘Frankly, we are all spooked about everything in here’

    In part two of our series, Amanda Meade asks if the broadcaster is dumbing down just when it should be muscling up

    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/aug/01/the-abc-in-turmoil-frankly-we-are-all-spooked-about-everything-in-here

  44. Thanks for putting #reefgate on twitter, C@tmomma

    Some quite funny ones coming through

    Some suggestions from Twitter @KKeneally for the $444m Great Barrier Reef scandal you are probing: #FundingNemo #ReefRort #TheGreatBarrierReefRort #TwentyThousandLibsUnderTheSea #CoralCapers #Rorca and #YouCanBankontheWhales

    Lead story in “The Guardian” , and OMG it was apparently on Sky”News” !!!!!

  47. In part two of our series, Amanda Meade asks if the broadcaster is dumbing down just when it should be muscling up

    It’s clear to me that the ABC has been dumbing down for years now, it isn’t just a recent thing. What is more recent is that it appears mostly unwilling to criticise the present govt.

  48. I did type Barrier Reef Foundation into Google (news). It brought up articles in the Guardian (of course), but also the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, News.Com.au, 2GB and some niche publications. It’s got some attention, but it’s not being splashed across front pages or dominating the airwaves like some other ‘gates’ have.

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