Essential Research leadership polling

The second set of leadership ratings since the election is featured in the latest release from Essential Research, which may also offer a hint of how it plans to respond to the great pollster failure.

The fortnightly Essential Research release is the second since the election to encompass the monthly leadership ratings. These offer positive signs for Anthony Albanese, who is up four from his debut on approval to 39% and down one on disapproval to 24%, while Scott Morrison is slightly improved in net terms, with approval steady on 48% and disapproval down two to 34%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is effectively unchanged, shifting from 43-25 to 44-26. The poll also features a series of questions on the ban on tourists climbing Uluru, which 44% support and 30% oppose, and 69% professing awareness of the issue.

Of particular interest in this release is the revelation that Essential is inquiring about respondents’ income, which appears to be a new development. The only detail provided in the polling results is that Morrison has 59% approval among higher income earners, but the appendices go to the trouble of telling us that Essential has set three income cohorts for its surveys: low (below $52,000), high (above $104,000) and medium (in between).

I suspect this means Essential’s response to the pollster failure will be to start using income to weight its results. This is a departure from the Australian industry norm of weighting only by geography, gender and age, and would also seem to be a bit unusual internationally. An American pollster noted last year the practice had fallen out of favour there due to the high non-response rate to questions on personal income. The preference is to instead weight to other factors which themselves correlate with income, notably education and, particularly in Britain, social class.

The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1091. In the Guardian report accompanying the poll, the elephant in the room was addressed thus:

There has been controversy post-election about the reliability of opinion polling because none of the major surveys – Newspoll, Ipsos, Galaxy or Essential – correctly predicted a Coalition win on 18 May, projecting Labor in front on a two-party preferred vote of 51-49 and 52-48. The lack of precision in the polling has prompted public reflection at Essential, as has been flagged by its executive director, Peter Lewis. Guardian Australia is not currently publishing measurements of primary votes or a two-party preferred calculation, but is continuing to publish survey results of responses to questions about the leaders and policy issues.

Also in The Guardian today are results from a separate Essential Research poll, this one for Digital Rights Watch concerning recent police raids on journalists. In response to a question noting raids on “the offices and homes of News Corp and ABC journalists who reported on national security issues”, 40% said they were very concerned, 34% slightly concerned and 26% not concerned. Similar results were produced on questions relating to metadata and police powers to break into online communications systems. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1089.

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.

819 comments on “Essential Research leadership polling”

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  1. ‘Sprocket_ says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 1:29 pm

    BW @ 11.09am

    Has the Derrida crew theory been costed?’

    Why are you framing this question within the metaphysics of an anthropogenic, quasi normative, quasi ontological MMT framework?

  2. Back on James Packer and the Triads et al, pretty obvious he knew the shit was going to hit the fan at some point.

    So ‘selling down’ his stake in Crown – he still has 36% and effective control; giving up day to day management – nothing to do with me; and an early go at the mental health defence.

    Cry me a river.

  3. Spr
    Crying a river is, of course, an individual’s choice.
    FWIW, my view is that Packer is highly likely to be mentally ill.
    Where this takes our assessment of his public behaviours is, IMO, interesting.

  4. an early go at the mental health defence.
    _________________________
    I wonder what Kerry would say about it all. Probably give him another slap for not being tough enough.

  5. BW, I was trying to recall a book I read for a course at uni, back in the day.

    I think it was about a MMT devotee living on Newstart –

    Being and Nothingness
    A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology

    J-P Sartre

  6. FWIW, my view is that it was Packer’s timing what was wonky.

    Illegal or grey Chinese capital exports have been/are facilitated by gambling.
    How it works is this.
    You borrow to gamble o/s. Say ten million US dollars.
    You lose, you pay back home with some black ten million US dollars.
    You win, you have legitimate o/s money that can be invested in buy up whole suburbs worth of Sydney real estate.
    Therefore Chinese general corruption was facilitated by cash cleansing by way of gambling.
    Naturally there was corruption in the gambling industry per se as well. This involved rounding up potential participants. It also involved shaking down losers who refused to, or who could not pay. Quite typically these would be locked up in a room somewhere until the dinero arrived. There were varying degrees of encouragement to pay. A failure to resolve the situation was sometimes accompanied by mysterious falls from apartment blocks.
    One aspect of Xi’s corruption crack down was to target in-country gambling touting. (Which is where Packer came unstuck).
    So, what was new was that Xi was cleaning up corruption. He was putting a halt to capital outflows. Packer walked right into it.

  7. ‘Sprocket_ says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 1:41 pm

    BW, I was trying to recall a book I read for a course at uni, back in the day.

    I think it was about a MMT devotee living on Newstart –

    Being and Nothingness
    A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology

    J-P Sartre’

    The beauty of ideological purity is that it keeps forever without being stained by the sordid real-world behaviours of scurvy humanity.

  8. ‘nath says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 1:39 pm

    an early go at the mental health defence.
    _________________________
    I wonder what Kerry would say about it all. Probably give him another slap for not being tough enough.’

    Spot on.

  9. Boerwar @ #760 Saturday, July 27th, 2019 – 1:54 pm

    ‘Sprocket_ says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 1:41 pm

    BW, I was trying to recall a book I read for a course at uni, back in the day.

    I think it was about a MMT devotee living on Newstart –

    Being and Nothingness
    A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology

    J-P Sartre’

    The beauty of ideological purity is that it keeps forever without being stained by the sordid real-world behaviours of scurvy humanity.

    That J P Satire wrote a lot of interesting stuff.

  10. Nicholas says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 12:56 pm

    The fact that federal deposit insurance is limited to $250,000 per person per institution is unnecessary, regrettable, and stupid.
    ——————————
    The policy was designed to protect low to middle income earners, and retirees by ensuring that they could access their wages, pensions and savings.

  11. I watched the Great Hack on Netflix last night.
    For those who have followed this from the get go, there was nothing new, but for others it is a great explainer of why we find ourselves in the current political state globally.

  12. These are the builders forcing the new legislation.

    Ewin Hannan @EwinHannan
    Perth builder Gerry Hanssen and his company have been penalised more than $62,000 after court finds his “blind hatred” of the CFMEU resulted in union officials being unlawfully blocked from entering a building site weeks after a worker fatality
    @australian

    @sallymcmanus
    Jul 26
    Hanssen is a Liberal Party donor. He gets a full time police force alongside extraordinarily oppressive laws resulting in the CFMEU being continually in court for doing their job. He will be able to get the CFMEU deregistered if the Gment gets the Ensuring Integrity laws

  13. Can someone explain the selections for the Australian ashes cricket team?

    I asked one of the chooks and she gave me a stare of incredulity. Clearly she was trying to say “WTF?”

    Carey doesnt get selected. Instead we get Labuschagne. Again. Failed last time but this time has form in English second division county cricket. These are the counties that arent good enough to be in the top 8 first division comp. Then we get Mitch Marsh. Again. And in an immediate recognition of stupidity of this the selectors choose a second allrounder in the squad.

    Oh my happy aunt.

  14. Barney in Makassar says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 10:50 am
    Briefly,

    Climate is tool to analyse the weather we experience.

    The ‘weather’ is also a tool we use to describe what we experience.

    From the analysis we can find patterns that can help in the understanding of weather, the most obvious one is the annual cycle.

    Climate is about a lot more than the weather. For example climatic processes also affect the conditions and behaviour of the oceans and the converse is also true. The oceans also affect the climate. They also drive the weather.

    The warming of the oceans, the changes in their oxygen content and pH and the dynamics of thermal expansion/contraction cannot be explained by ‘weather’. But these things can be explained by climate. Climatic processes are linked to oceanography along with other processes. We have to take oceanographic, terrestrial, chemical, physical, botanical and other life-processes as well as atmospheric processes and systems into account as well as planetary cycles if we wish to analyse, understand and predict the climate generally and then climatic subsets, such as the weather in any given locality. The climate is obviously dynamic and mutable. It certainly exists as a set of processes and conditions independently of any specific weather event, or of the weather in any particular place at any particular time.

    Saying that climate does not exist other than as an analytical tool is similar to saying that gravity does not exist other than as an analytical tool.

  15. Sprocket_
    says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 1:44 pm
    nath leaps to the defence of a billionaire who has ruined countless lives through gambling and worse
    As you were
    _________________
    Quite an imagination to read what I said as leaping to the defence of J.Packer. But then again you were the deluded fool mocking Morrison for his bus tour of Qld every day. Worked out well for Morrison I reckon.

  16. Every time I see Boerwar dismiss MMT I laugh and remember that he is entitled to his delusions about how the monetary system works. He isn’t harming anyone with his errors.

  17. ‘Nicholas says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 3:38 pm

    Every time I see Boerwar dismiss MMT I laugh and remember that he is entitled to his delusions about how the monetary system works. He isn’t harming anyone with his errors.’

    Meh. Yet another banal ad hominem attack from the master of MMT logorrhea.

  18. Forget the Packers, mere bullies in the scheme of things.

    Murdoch is the antichrist. With Boris and Morrison installed, his work here is all but done.

  19. Plaudits must go to Ms Payne who has done the right thing holding the Chinese Government accountable for its support of those pro Chinese people in Australia who physically assaulted protestors going about their lawful right to protest.
    That Mr Morrison was at her right hand for Ms Payne’s sally is to his credit.
    This comes at a time when the Chinese have tizzied themselves into a sick nationalist uproar about their cheating swim champion, at a time when the Chinese are making rude sounds about our alliance with the US, and at a time when the Chinese Government is punishing us by way of quasi official delays of imports of Australian coal. It also comes at a time when China has virtually succeeded in turning Cambodia into a vassal state, has gone a considerable way to turning Myanmmar, ditto; and at a time when China is making hurculeanean efforts to kickstart massive iron ore imports from Brazil.
    Gutting Rio and BHP AND Australian iron ore prices is the obvious end game.

    It does not help that China was able to buy Darwin Port, and came within a skerrick of secretly buying key airport facilities with the help of Virgin Airlines. China is still smarting over our Huawei decision.
    Both major Australian parties have for some time pretended that we can have our military alliance with the US and eat our China trade as well. It is looking increasingly likely that we will be forced to make a difficult choice in the national interest.
    But what is the national interest?

    Unfortunately Australia’s minor parties have not helped. Hanson’s frank racism and xenophobia, the UAP’s deliberate campaign of stoking Sinophobia, and the Green’s unilateral disarmament all form chinks in a united national front that is going to be vital over the next few decades. The lotus eating days when our national dialogue on defence was a lotus eaters paradise are over.

  20. Boerwar

    Both major Australian parties have for some time pretended that we can have our military alliance with the US and eat our China trade as well. It is looking increasingly likely that we will be forced to make a difficult choice in the national interest.

    I have no confidence in our ability to make the right choice, and have no idea about the right way to proceed. Lucky I have no say in the matter, isn’t it.

  21. SK
    Carey doesn’t have that stench of obnoxious, fragile, choking mediocrity that the Aussie selectors find irresistible.

  22. All things being equal, I should be home on familiar ground tomorrow. I’ve enjoyed my time in Qld, although was somewhat alarmed to see a number of people wearing Hillsong tees. Is this a new thing since the election, a peculiarly Qld thing, or perhaps a piss-taking meme trying to take hold but failing for obvious reasons?

    Qld: I’ve always said it’s like stepping into another country.

  23. briefly @ #769 Saturday, July 27th, 2019 – 3:20 pm

    Barney in Makassar says:
    Saturday, July 27, 2019 at 10:50 am
    Briefly,

    Climate is tool to analyse the weather we experience.

    Oh, FFS. Climate is not a ‘tool’. It is a real, physical and measurable phenomenon. In fact, ‘climate’ is exactly as real as ‘weather’, just measured over a longer time period.

    Do you believe in ‘weather’?

  24. The benefits of stacking the Supreme Court.

    A split Supreme Court said Friday night that the Trump administration could proceed with its plan to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds to build part of the president’s wall project along the southern border.

    The court’s conservatives set aside a lower-court ruling for the Sierra Club and a coalition of border communities that said reallocating Defense Department money would violate federal law.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-trump-can-proceed-with-plan-to-spend-military-funds-for-border-wall-construction/2019/07/26/f2a63d48-aa55-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html?utm_term=.108ad48353f6

  25. The only poll that I will ever believe again is the one that happens on election day.

    If the Coalition can keep the reality of the polls under their hats for the duration of an election campaign and it isn’t picked up by any of the public polling companies, then I’m not going to take any notice of any of them, ever again.

    Or, until such time as they can prove to me, without a shadow of a doubt, that they have been able to gauge the intention of the Low Interest voters.

  26. One does get the feeling that there is a grand.. yes… conspiracy… involving the Trumpists, the UK Conservatives, the Australian Liberals, the Murdochs, Big Tech, the Russians, Assange & Co. and quite few more.

    Destroy faith in democracies and democratic politicians to induce apathy and national ennui (better to stay with The Devil we know, eh?). Hack into Facebook, WhatsApp, Google to mine data. Beguile their management to hand it over (so much easier than stealing it). Harness the power of voter apathy. Make Reality TV – full of heroes and villains – the most popular form of media. Cultivate viewer familiarity with Reality TV’s grammar, syntax and morality. Then use its techniques in the production of news and current affairs. Reality becomes just another show, to be judged by its fake values. Make sure, though, that only real news is seen as “fake”. Hit the disinterested, the bored, the apathetic – your by now shell-shocked audience – with almost anything, however idiotic, that caters to their thirst for scandal and tittilation; and anything at all that caters to their prejudices, born in turn of their impression that the world is a dangerous place, poorly led, serviced and corruptly managed. Bonus points are redeemable if you can convince them you are their “anti-elitist” champion: someone just like them.

    We led the charge in Australia with the Abbott Joke: wholly produced and presented by Murdoch. I think Abbott was just a rehearsal, a prototype. Then came Trump. Now comes Brexit and Boris. In between we’ve witnessed Brazil, Jamaica, The Ukraine and several more. The techniques have been honed well.

    If you want to control a nation’s politics, don’t cuddle up to the poor and the weak. Go for their ruling classes, the rich and the powerful. They’ll always want to be richer and more powerful.

  27. @Bushfire Bill

    I have been arguing for a while, that Australia was a trailblazer in this Trumpian ‘populism’, which was personified by Tony Abbott who was helped by Rupert Murdoch. Given Murdoch’s News Corporation has a bigger influence in the Australian media market, than in either Britain or America, so it is logical Murdoch’s strategies were honed and perfected here.

    If I am right Australia is in a more advanced stage of this Trumpian disease than America and Britain has. Because this sort of politics has become much more normalized in this country. For example; now some in the Labor Party advocating to change the party’s agenda to be ‘Trumpism lite’. This has not occurred in either America or Britain yet.

    Lately I have come to the belief, that Australia is only an economic crisis away from a political revolution. Only something like an economic crisis, followed by a political revolution will be probably the only way to excise this disease from the body politic.

  28. Further to Bushfire’s musing, one of my friends posted on facebook during the week that democracy has ‘obviously failed’, therefore it’s time to try a ‘soft dictatorship’ (her words not mine).

    Why are people so bloody depressed? ScoMo has a razor thin majority, and isn’t a certainty to be returned in 2022. Trump could well be dumped next year, notwithstanding a Democrat meltdown, which isn’t outside the realm of possibility.

  29. @Confessions

    What if an economic crisis happens?

    Because a No Deal Brexit is an example of such an economic crisis happening. In that sort of event leaders such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and especially Scott Morrison will use it as an excuse to ramp up the authoritarianism.

    Scott Morrison has considerably greater control over his government than either Trump or Johnson has. Lately I have come to the conclusion this country is much closer to becoming an authoritarian ‘illiberal democracy’ than a lot of Australians realize. Especially given Morrison is a more way component, pragmatic and shrew political leader than either Trump or Johnson.

    Since the recent federal election, I have one hell of an awakening concerning the state of Australian democracy. As a result the realizations I have had, have literally shaken myself to the core.

  30. Tristo:

    I am not of the opinion that a Morrison government is a sure thing to be re-elected in 3 years. I agree Labor has hamstrung itself with Albo as leader, but it is possible that he can be removed and replaced with someone more electable closer to the election.

  31. Tristo @7:53PM
    “Lately I have come to the belief, that Australia is only an economic crisis away from a political revolution. Only something like an economic crisis, followed by a political revolution will be probably the only way to excise this disease from the body politic.”

    Don’t know about revolution, but I think that we are one economic crisis away from something very bad. Far from excising the disease, I think it will turbocharge it. This is more or less what happened in the 1930s except in the USA.

  32. I was busy with work while Mueller was testifying before Congress, so missed it. But it seems like his appearance said more about the GOP than anything else.

    Robert Mueller has finally testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. We learned nothing new about Mueller’s report, but we learned a lot about the Republican Party — and especially how low elected Republicans are willing to go in order to defend President Donald Trump.

    There were no surprises from the former special counsel, who tried to warn congressional Democrats weeks ago that he would not resolve their paralysis on impeachment. The format of the hearings, with five minutes apportioned out to each of the members, was predictably awful and exhausting. Some of the Democratic members wasted their time trying to coax Mueller into giving them the go-ahead on impeachment; others, however, took a more productive walk with Mueller through the evidence in the report. Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, for example, hammered on Trump’s attempts to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, while Rep. Adam Schiff of California recited the roster of Trump cronies who are now known liars.

    But it was the Republicans who put on a real show — attacking Mueller while rehashing the fever-swamp theories that they know will land them prized moments on Fox News.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/07/25/republicans-attacked-mueller-and-ignored-national-security-column/1818040001/

  33. Steve777:

    The Western world has experienced peace since WW2. I read something recently that argued this was unprecedented in history, and a form of political chaos and dysfunction is the norm, and that perhaps we are now trending back to that.

  34. Because this sort of politics has become completely normalized in this country with some in the Labor Party advocating to reordinate the party’s agenda to be ‘Trumpism lite’.

    I think you have exaggerated things slightly there, Tristo.

  35. @Steve777

    I am not denying an economic crisis will greatly accelerate the development the Trumpian disease which infects in Australian politics. However it will accelerate the which I believe will be the the endgame, namely a second ‘Eureka Rebellion’ sort of situation.

    Anyway I personally believe the May 2019 Federal Elections here in Australia are an foretaste of what could very well happening at the next US Presidential and UK General Elections. Because I am reasonably confident Donald Trump could be re-elected as US President in 2020, along with Boris Johnson and the Conservatives being re-elected at the next UK general election.

  36. Tristo, I agree you’ve been onto this for a while.

    For myself, coming from a television background (albeit a while ago), I recognized the similarity in production techniques and values between News and current affairs and Reality TV. The relationship is symbiotic (if something so malignant can be called “symbiotic”).

    Aussies like to fancy themselves as laconic, knockabout, disrespectful challengers of authority.

    They are anything but.

    From WW1, where our men signed up in considerably disproportionate numbers (compared to other countries) to fight and die by the tens of thousands for England’s Queen, to today where they put up with outrages such as RoboDebt, severe invasions of privacy, unaccountable police and security forces (how on-point was Keating!), patently incompetent and corrupt leadership, and the contention that a few harmless, poverty-stricken people on Manus are the greatest imaginable threat to our national security (and so to be treated as criminals, without mercy), Australians have shown themselves to be more like a herd of sheep than a paddock full of Merinos waiting for slaughter.

    The brilliant Murdoch saw this as early as the 1950s, when he got rid of the last of his truly ethical editors in Rohan Rivett (a man who really had sacrificed nearly all for his country), and by the mid-70s was ready to workshop it here with Whitlam, and then take it to the world.

    First Britain, then America. Is it any coincidence the governments of these countries have been both so aligned to each other, and so rotten?

  37. Confessions @ #793 Saturday, July 27th, 2019 – 8:16 pm

    Tristo:

    I am not of the opinion that a Morrison government is a sure thing to be re-elected in 3 years. I agree Labor has hamstrung itself with Albo as leader, but it is possible that he can be removed and replaced with someone more electable closer to the election.

    I think this opinion about Albanese is way off beam. And I’m not saying this as some sort of blinded by the Light on the Hill, Labor Partisan. Instead I have been trying to keep up with as many of the public media appearances of Albanese that I can, in order to gauge what I believe is his progress in the job of Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party, because I was sceptical, and he seems to be holding his own quite well, especially against Dutton on Channel 9 every week, and in the way he is re-orienting the Labor ship in parliament.

    I wouldn’t be so dismissive. Well, at least, not so soon.

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