Essential Research: that was the year that was

One last hurrah for 2019 from Essential Research finds an improvement in Anthony Albanese’s ratings, but little change for Scott Morrison.

The fortnightly Essential Research poll is out and, perhaps unsurprisingly for what will surely be its last survey for the year, it does not break its post-election habit of not publishing numbers on voting intention. What it does have is the monthly leadership ratings, which record little change for Scott Morrison (approval steady at 45%, disappoval up two to 43%) and favourable movement for Anthony Albanese (up two on approval to 39%, down six on disapproval to 28%). There is no preferred prime minister rating, but we do get evaluations on how the leaders have performed since the election: 11% say Scott Morrison has exceeded expectations, 41% that he has met them and 47% that he has fallen short of them, with Albanese’s respective ratings being 8%, 48% and 44%.

Also:

• The regular end-of-year question on for whom this has and hasn’t been a good year suggests people leaned positive about their own circumstances, albeit less so than last year; that it was a much better year for the government, which is hard to argue with on a purely political level; that it was a bad yet still much better year for “Australian politics in general”, the improvement presumably relating to the lack of a prime ministerial leadership coup; and that things were unambiguously positive only for large companies and the Australian cricket team.

• After two years of legalised same-sex marriage, 47% say it has had a positive impact, 15% negative and 38% neither.

• There remains negative sentiment towards unions, whom 49% say have too much power compared with 37% who disagreed. Fully 68% thought union officials should be disqualified merely for breaching administrative laws, with only 18% in disagreement, while 51% thought unions should be disqualified for taking unprotected industrial election, with 32% disagreeing. However, 62% agreed the government was “more concerned about the actions of union officials than the CEO’s of banks and other corporations”.

• Thirty-five per cent thought Scott Morrison should have stood Angus Taylor down from cabinet with 17% supporting his position, while 48% conceded they had not been following the issue.

• There was overwhelming support for the establishment of a federal ICAC, at 75% with only 8% opposed.

The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1035 respondents drawn from an online panel.

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.

1,940 comments on “Essential Research: that was the year that was”

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  1. Kate

    To be crystal clear to you. It was the Blairites careerist coterie that undid Labour.

    It looks like exactly the same malaise in Labor.

    I disagree with Albo on coal. However at least he is out there talking to voters. He might just learn how coal = no environmental action.

    An issue weaponised by the LNP to prevent such action.

    This will continue as its acting on climate change and listening to the science the LNP is all about preventing.

    Blame the Greens you miss the point. Just as the careerists missed the point about Brexit being the Trojan horse for nationalism.

  2. Guytaur I did read that article you linked and found it interesting so here’s the link again for those that missed it.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/14/labour-meltdown-decades-govern-votes

    “Corbynism began with promises of democracy, but ended up as bunkerised as all other Labour leaderships. What started as anti-austerity movement is now a melange of ideas, most of which look and sound utterly absurd on a doorstep on a rainy morning.

    In the era of taking back control, Corbyn offered yet more direction from Westminster, with utilities run from the centre and hundreds of billions disbursed from remote state institutions. Many of these ideas are interesting, but few of them were properly worked through and none patiently argued for.”

  3. To be an effective political leader you have to be ruthless. When his parliamentary party launched a leadership spill a little over a year after he won an emphatic victory, Corbyn should have cleaned house. He should have forced mandatory pre-selection contests on all of the MPs who defied the will of the membership. This would have aligned the parliamentary party with the members. This in turn would have prevented the anti-semitism smear campaign, it would have defused the constant sniping and undermining by centrists, and it would have permitted a clear and unambiguous pro-Brexit position that respected the wishes of the electorate. Instead Corbyn was gentle with the centrists. He tried to accommodate them. They never extended the same courtesy to him. Politics is a tough business, and Corbyn proved too gentle for the top job.

  5. Kate

    Good.

    The solution for Australian Labor is simple given how it’s organised.

    Give more power to the branches. There was talk from Labor people of having a Primary style process like the US has for choosing candidates.

    I like the US Primaries. You get a chance to do the vetting before the general election.

  6. Nicholas

    You should print this out, hang it one your wall and read it morning and night. Doubling down on the cult would not have won the election.

    Those supporting the RDN party could also do some contemplation.

    Well, guess what. Labour’s “radical” manifesto of 2019 achieved precisely nothing. Not one proposal in it will be implemented, not one pound in it will be spent. It is worthless. And if judged not by the academic standard of “expanding the discourse”, but by the hard, practical measure of improving actual people’s actual lives, those hate figures of Corbynism – Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – achieved more in four hours than Corbyn achieved in four years. Why? Because they did what it took to win power.

  7. Nicholas @ #1853 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 8:18 pm

    To be an effective political leader you have to be ruthless. When his parliamentary party launched a leadership spill a little over a year after he won an emphatic victory, Corbyn should have cleaned house. He should have forced mandatory pre-selection contests on all of the MPs who defied the will of the membership. This would have aligned the parliamentary party with the members. This in turn would have prevented the anti-semitism smear campaign, it would have defused the constant sniping and undermining by centrists, and it would have permitted a clear and unambiguous pro-Brexit position that respected the wishes of the electorate. Instead Corbyn was gentle with the centrists. He tried to accommodate them. They never extended the same courtesy to him. Politics is a tough business, and Corbyn proved too gentle for the top job.

    How’s Sanders travelling?

  8. GG

    He is gaining at Bidens expense in South Carolina according to latest poll.

    Just like Hillary Clinton and her “Blue Wall” and Labour and their “Red Wall” the whole take voters for granted thing doesn’t seem to be working.

    Only one outlier poll but it’s a crack.

  9. Nicholassays:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 8:18 pm

    “To be an effective political leader you have to be ruthless……..Corbyn should have cleaned house. He should have forced mandatory pre-selection contests on all of the MPs who defied the will of the membership. This in turn would have prevented the anti-semitism smear campaign”(what by expelling the Jews?) “it would have permitted a clear and unambiguous pro-Brexit position that respected the wishes of” (barely half) “the electorate. Politics is a tough business, and Corbyn proved too gentle”

    Nicholas loves the smell of a good purge in the morning…….

  11. Nicholas @ #1853 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 7:18 pm

    To be an effective political leader you have to be ruthless. When his parliamentary party launched a leadership spill a little over a year after he won an emphatic victory, Corbyn should have cleaned house. He should have forced mandatory pre-selection contests on all of the MPs who defied the will of the membership. This would have aligned the parliamentary party with the members. This in turn would have prevented the anti-semitism smear campaign, it would have defused the constant sniping and undermining by centrists, and it would have permitted a clear and unambiguous pro-Brexit position that respected the wishes of the electorate. Instead Corbyn was gentle with the centrists. He tried to accommodate them. They never extended the same courtesy to him. Politics is a tough business, and Corbyn proved too gentle for the top job.

    Leaders rarely have that much arbitrary power in practice, even if it might look like it form the formal power arrangements. I suspect he wanted to but couldn’t.

  12. Bernie Sanders is showing signs of being too gentle. He is playing softball with Elizabeth Warren instead of lacerating her for duplicity on Medicare For All, for her refusal to support universal programs (she prefers to means-test the hell out of programs, which undermines public support because the people who miss out end up resenting the beneficiaries), for her lack of authenticity on the native American tribe issue (for years she claimed Cherokee tribe membership even though this is determined by the tribe’s procedures, not by ancestry or family lore), for her decades as a corporate lawyer who aided firms to evade liability for defective products and fraudulent behaviour – to name just a few of the reasons that she is completely unfit to be nominated. Warren is being portrayed as a progressive when she is in fact a centre-right neoliberal who advocated financial deregulation well into the 1990s.

  13. nath says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 7:02 pm

    …”Melbourne will be the biggest city in Australia in a few years and we’ve got culture coming out of our backsides”…

    Bingo night at the Frankston bowls club is the closest you ever get to culture.

  14. Real leadership is welding together the disparate skills and ambitions of your members into an effective organisation – not bludgeoning lots of them out of it.

    I don’t really know a lot about British Labour but I suspect it contains a wide range of views and attitudes, the vast majority of which could be harnessed together by a leader who was truly effective and the few that aren’t would probably then see the writing on the wall and leave.

    Obsessing over false binaries is of no use in a practical sense.

  15. Stuff the cricket – who is hanging out for the Rugby 9’s?

    I reckon this will look tops with Flabby Man boobs.

    How good is this Jersey?

  16. Nicholas:

    [‘Instead Corbyn was gentle with the centrists. He tried to accommodate them.’]

    Please stop it. Corbyn lost because he’s Corbyn, a clone of that other loser, now Baron Kinnock.

  18. nath says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 7:18 pm

    …”All this envy of our extensive tram network, our unparalleled architectural heritage, our National Gallery and winter wardrobe options”…

    Your oversupply of gap-toothed, mullet wearing ferrets doing laps around the outer suburbs in a ’94 Holden Commodore.

  19. Nicholas @ #1862 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 7:40 pm

    Bernie Sanders is showing signs of being too gentle. He is playing softball with Elizabeth Warren instead of lacerating her for duplicity on Medicare For All, for her refusal to support universal programs (she prefers to means-test the hell out of programs, which undermines public support because the people who miss out end up resenting the beneficiaries), for her lack of authenticity on the native American tribe issue (for years she claimed Cherokee tribe membership even though this is determined by the tribe’s procedures, not by ancestry or family lore), for her decades as a corporate lawyer who aided firms to evade liability for defective products and fraudulent behaviour – to name just a few of the reasons that she is completely unfit to be nominated. Warren is being portrayed as a progressive when she is in fact a centre-right neoliberal who advocated financial deregulation well into the 1990s.

    Woo-hoo!! Way to totally shatter the unity of the Democratic Party in the lead up to the election. Lots of Trumpist tropes in there Nicholas – sure you’re not one of Donald’s disinformation warriors?

  20. Nicholas

    Bernie Sanders is showing signs of being too gentle.

    That he is being “gentle” continues what he did in the last campaign so as to not be the “same old” ‘negative’ campaign.

  21. Not Sure
    says:
    Your oversupply of gap-toothed, mullet wearing ferrets doing laps around the outer suburbs in a ’94 Holden Commodore.
    ____________________________
    Well that could apply anywhere.

  23. Nicholas

    ‘…for years she claimed Cherokee tribe membership ..’

    No, she didn’t. She claimed to be of Cherokee descent, quite a different matter, and apologised when DNA tests showed she was wrong.

    To me, this was as trivial as the Hillary being named after Hillary beat up. A parent tells you something – you may even have misunderstood what they told you, being a child – and you take it as true. Indeed, you don’t have any way (at the time) of disproving it.

    Up until recently, for example, I was convinced that I had been told by more than one family member that we were descended from Rob Roy Macgregor. Recently, however, I did a bit of basic research and couldn’t find any connection. When I asked my mother, she said that she’d never claimed direct descent, but that we were part of the same clan. I’d misunderstood what I’d originally been told, just as I’m sure I’ve misunderstood other things I heard in my preteens.

    Even if you’d got it right, Nicholas, I would have seen this as a pathetic gotcha. As it is, you’ve got it wrong, and that casts in doubt your other statements about Warren.

  25. I was once driving east out of Melbourne on my way to somewhere nice, when the silly sat-nav thingy incorrectly instructed me to exit the freeway.

    I don’t know exactly how to describe the place we ended up, other than to say that it wasn’t really outer-suburbia and it wasn’t the country.
    I guess it was most like what you would expect if you found yourself between hell, and some other place much, much worse than hell.

    Mile after mile of cars up on bricks, closed shop fronts with broken windows, rubbish stewn front yards overgrown and filled with weeds, partially hiding ramshackle and dilapidated houses and a surly, uncouth yoof on every street corner.

    I don’t know the name of this place and I do not want too.
    But every time I hear Nath crapping on about Melbourne and its wonderful culture, I imagine that this is where he probably grew up.

  26. ‘Nicholas @ #1853 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 8:18 pm

    To be an effective political leader you have to be ruthless. When his parliamentary party launched a leadership spill a little over a year after he won an emphatic victory, Corbyn should have cleaned house. He should have forced mandatory pre-selection contests on all of the MPs who defied the will of the membership. This would have aligned the parliamentary party with the members. This in turn would have prevented the anti-semitism smear campaign, it would have defused the constant sniping and undermining by centrists, and it would have permitted a clear and unambiguous pro-Brexit position that respected the wishes of the electorate. Instead Corbyn was gentle with the centrists. He tried to accommodate them. They never extended the same courtesy to him. Politics is a tough business, and Corbyn proved too gentle for the top job.’

    FFS.

    The last time Labour did this badly in an election was in the Great Depression.

    The last time a Labour leader had worst approval figures was never.

    Why?

    Because the Blairites, the Netanyahoos, and the Bastard Centrists took advantage of his gentle nature.

  27. Not Sure @ #1875 Saturday, December 14th, 2019 – 9:13 pm

    I was once driving east out of Melbourne on my way to somewhere nice, when the silly sat-nav thingy incorrectly instructed me to exit the freeway.

    I don’t know exactly how to describe the place we ended up, other than to say that it wasn’t really outer-suburbia and it wasn’t the country.
    I guess it was most like what you would expect if you found yourself between hell, and some other place much, much worse than hell.

    Mile after mile of cars up on bricks, closed shop fronts with broken windows, rubbish stewn front yards overgrown and filled with weeds, partially hiding ramshackle and dilapidated houses and a surly, uncouth yoof on every street corner.

    I don’t know the name of this place and I do not want too.
    But every time I hear Nath crapping on about Melbourne and its wonderful culture, I imagine that this is where he probably grew up.

    You just described the plot of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.

  29. That he is being “gentle” continues what he did in the last campaign so as to not be the “same old” ‘negative’ campaign.

    No, the difference is that when the 2016 campaign began he only had true believers working with him. At that point he was a renegade who wasn’t a national figure. This time his staff comprises a lot of millennial liberals who want careers as political operatives. He is surrounded by those folk, and he is reflecting their sensibilities (which are to go easy on Warren and play nice with the Democratic establishment because they hope to get jobs on the campaign of whoever ends up winning the nomination). I think he should be stronger and make sure his campaign clearly communicates that he is distinct from Warren, that their differences are fundamental and qualitative, not just differences of degree… So far she has framed herself as very similar to Bernie in her politics, which is completely untrue. She is a neoliberal centrist, no better than Clinton or Biden or Buttigieg.

  30. Not Sure

    Mile after mile of cars up on bricks, closed shop fronts with broken windows, rubbish stewn front yards overgrown and filled with weeds, partially hiding ramshackle and dilapidated houses and a surly, uncouth yoof on every street corner.

    Ah, the wilds of Albany Rd in Toorak 🙂 nath territory.

  31. Boerwar says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:17 pm

    …”It sounds like you made it to Adelaide”…

    I think Adelaide is just a bit West of Melbourne.

  32. I hope Sanders goes the full lettuce instead of the limp leaf.

    Because if he doesn’t, he will become yet another gall guy who went the full POLL FAIL instead of selling the most obviously intellectally beautiful doctrinaire manifesto.

  33. Nicholas

    During the last campaign he made it a real point not to criticise his opponents. It was one of the ways he sought to differentiate himself .

  34. ‘Not Sure says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:20 pm

    Boerwar says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:17 pm

    …”It sounds like you made it to Adelaide”…

    I think Adelaide is just a bit West of Melbourne.’

    That would be it then. There is a one question test that will confirm it for you. If it was late afternoon was the sun in your eyes?

  39. Not Sure
    says:
    Mile after mile of cars up on bricks, closed shop fronts with broken windows, rubbish stewn front yards overgrown and filled with weeds, partially hiding ramshackle and dilapidated houses and a surly, uncouth yoof on every street corner.
    I don’t know the name of this place and I do not want too.
    But every time I hear Nath crapping on about Melbourne and its wonderful culture, I imagine that this is where he probably grew up.
    _____________________________
    Darling Gardens. This was my backyard, bitch.

  42. nath says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:26 pm

    …”Darling Gardens. This was my backyard, bitch”…

    Did I hit a bit of a nerve there ferret?

  43. Not Sure
    says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:30 pm
    nath says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:26 pm
    …”Darling Gardens. This was my backyard, bitch”…
    Did I hit a bit of a nerve there ferret?
    ____________________
    No but I let you pretend you did. Just for the lols.

  44. One issue that has not been canvassed extensively in the wash-up was the policy of closing down all public schools in the UK.
    My view is that when the psephologists untangle the cause for Labour’s catastrophe it will be found that the Etonian Old Boys deserted Labour en masse.

  47. nath says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:31 pm

    …”No but I let you pretend you did. Just for the lols”…

    Thanks.
    I’m sorry you had to grow up living in a park.

  50. Not Sure
    says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:39 pm
    nath says:
    Saturday, December 14, 2019 at 9:31 pm
    …”No but I let you pretend you did. Just for the lols”…
    Thanks.
    I’m sorry you had to grow up living in a park.
    ________________________
    That’s ok. Your mum kept me warm.

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