Essential Research leadership ratings

Scott Morrison records a preferred prime minister lead for the first time this year, although his personal ratings remain in net negative territory.

Essential Research continues to disappoint on the voting intention front, but its latest fortnightly poll does include its monthly leadership ratings, which record a recovery in Scott Morrison’s personal standing after the battering it copped during the bsuhfires. Morrison now leads Anthony Albanese 40-35 as preferred prime minister after being tied 36-36 in the last poll, which his first lead out of the six sets of results published so far this year (three apiece from Essential and Newspoll). His approval rating is up two to 41% and disapproval down three to 49%, while Albanese is respectively steady on 41% and up two to 33%.

As related by The Guardian, the poll also finds 71% want investigations into sports rorts to continue, but I suspect that should actually say 51%, as 43% favoured the alternative option that the resignation of Sports Minister Bridget McKenzie should be the end of the matter. The poll also has the unsurprising finding that concern about coronavirus is growing, although we will have to wait for the publication of the full report later today to see by how much.

Other questions produce familiar findings on energy sources (71% favour further taxpayer research into renewables, compared with 57% for hydrogen, 50% for “clean coal” and 38% for nuclear energy) and economic management (the Coalition was rated better overall, but was also seen to favour big business whereas Labor was better at managing the economy to benefit workers). The poll was conducted from 1096 respondents from an online panel, no doubt from Thursday to Sunday.

UPDATE: Full report here. It turns out the poll doesn’t really find an increase in concern about coronavirus over the past month: there’s a two point increase in “very concerned” to 27%, but a five point drop in “quite concerned” to 36%, a two point rise in “not all that concerned” to 28% and a three point increase in “not at all concerned” to 9%. I’d have been interested to see breakdowns by party support on this – Democrats in the US are far more concerned than Republicans – but no such luck.

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.

3,649 comments on “Essential Research leadership ratings”

Comments Page 69 of 73
1 … 68 69 70 … 73

  1. poroti says: Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 4:39 pm

    phoenixRED

    Re earlier and people wailing about waiting hours to be processed at yankee airports. What is the problem ? What was described sounded pretty SOP for voters in US elections

    ************************************************************************

    I read earlier that some Americans in the UK were paying up to $ 25,000 to get a seat on the airlines back to the US ……. DUH – to stand there in huge queues of 4-5 hours to get their baggage then another 2-4 hours to get clearance – as someone said if you didn’t have corono virus before – you surely will now …..

  3. Just by the by. We were discussing at work what’s going to happen if a driver ends up testing positive.
    Management have made a decision that the only action required is for us bus drivers to wash our hands properly. Having observed the state of the toilets first thing in the morning and the number of staff, including hilariously, from the safety group and the cursory wave of the hands under a tap, I figure it’s only a matter of time before someone calls in with the virus.
    My first trip each day is a school special from Maroubra beach to Cranbrook. My bus is chockas every day.
    Other drivers do uni specials which are also likely to be full of students from all parts of the world. Not to mention crowded peak hour services. I don’t have a lot of confidence that enough is being done. At least train and LR drivers are isolated from passengers.

  4. Boerwar @ #3392 Sunday, March 15th, 2020 – 4:41 pm

    One of the startling facts to come out of Insiders this morning was that the stimulus package was timed to cut in on 1 April.

    Because the Government wants to avoid the approbrium of two negative growth quarters in a row, aka, a technical recession. They are assuming a first quarter recession. They want to save their miserable reputations from having a second quarter recession.

    I think this sounds plausible. Certainly their bushfire response was deliberately designed to protect their much vaunted surplus, at the expense of hundreds of small businesses going under unnecessarily. It would not surprise me to find that their Covid-19 response was deliberately designed to avoid a recession, at the expense of lives 🙁

  5. If this embedded table doesn’t work you may have to go to link to see it. (https://www.covid19data.com.au/ then scroll down to States and Territories.)

    !function(e,i,n,s){var t=”InfogramEmbeds”,d=e.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];if(window[t]&&window[t].initialized)window[t].process&&window[t].process();else if(!e.getElementById(n)){var o=e.createElement(“script”);o.async=1,o.id=n,o.src=”https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js”,d.parentNode.insertBefore(o,d)}}(document,0,”infogram-async”);Transmission in each stateInfogram

    What is interesting is the column “Transmissions in Australia”. 41 for NSW compared with 3 each for Vic and Qld. NSW has 111 confirmed cases, compared with 50 and 46 for Vic and Qld. Why is NSW so different? Has containment failed in NSW? Next step lock down?

  6. It will be interesting to see how much social distancing ( or whatever it is called) is practiced at peak times tomorrow on trains, buses, trams etc and on train platforms.

    It will also be interesting to see if it catches on at food courts in major shopping centres.

    What a crock of shit.

    500+ should mean exactly that irrespective where it is.

  10. Sweet jesus

    Ted Lieu
    @tedlieu
    ·
    5h

    US House candidate, CA-33
    For those on the other side of the aisle, and viewers of
    @seanhannity
    , who think we are overrreacting to the #COVIDー19 pandemic, maybe you will trust Newt Gingrich.

    All Americans should engage in social distancing NOW.
    Quote Tweet

    Rachel C. Abrams
    @RachelAbramsNY
    · 6h
    Police cars revolving lightNEWT GINGRICHPolice cars revolving light: I Am in Italy Amid the Coronavirus Crisis. America Must Act Now – “We should be planning for a worst-case pandemic and using the kind of intensity of implementation which served us so well in World War II.” https://newsweek.com/newt-gingrich-i-am-italy-amid-coronavirus-crisis-america-must-act-now-act-big-opinion-1492270

  11. From that interview with the guy in charge of Zoono..

    I said to the bottle manufacturers – because they said to me, “You’re in the queue with everyone else, Paul.” I said, “How do I get to the front of the queue?” I said, “How about if we paid 100 per cent upfront, would that get us to the front of the queue?” And they said, “Congratulations, you’re now at the front of the queue!”

    Makes you wonder about what our government could do to get testing supplies faster..

  15. If you gonna test everyone, would you not have to keep testing people who are negative while the virus remains extant?

  16. ‘shellbell says:
    Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 5:06 pm

    If you gonna test everyone, would you not have to keep testing people who are negative while the virus remains extant?’

    Yep. A major, major issue. You can be tested at six o’clock and be negative, put your finger in your mouth at seven o’clock, and be infected by eight o’clock.

  17. shellbell

    If ya gonna test everyone you need to have enough test kits, trained testers and the ability to process the samples and we ain’t got that. So best we can,currently do , is test the most likely.

  19. shellbell @ #3277 Sunday, March 15th, 2020 – 4:06 pm

    If you gonna test everyone, would you not have to keep testing people who are negative while the virus remains extant?

    That might depend on your goals and what you mean by “test”. From what I read and heard, for example, in the worst affected areas in China everyone was tested by having their temperature taken, everywhere they went, which meant several times a day, each. Depending on the result a progression of ever more expensive and invasive tests resulted, and along the way you and your viral load were contained, away from others.

  20. One consequent of this outbreak is it will be a while before the Liberals can claim to be tough on border protection.

    Boerwar
    Senior public servants often appear with their ministers. I didn’t see anyone objecting to senior emergency personnel appearing with their ministers during the bushfire crisis.

  21. ‘Blobbit says:
    Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 5:11 pm

    Given the distance between Australian capitals – time to shut Sydney?’

    Shut Sinny?

    Never too late, IMO.

  22. ‘Mexicanbeemer says:
    Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 5:18 pm

    One consequent of this outbreak is it will be a while before the Liberals can claim to be tough on border protection.

    Boerwar
    Senior public servants often appear with their ministers. I didn’t see anyone objecting to senior emergency personnel appearing with their ministers during the bushfire crisis.’

    False analogy, IMO.

    The role of the senior emergency personnel was to do an operational job.

    The role of the CMO is to provide independent scientific advice.

  24. Mexicanbeemer

    I think the problem with Hunt/Murphy was that it wasn’t clear who was the expert we should listen to. Usually the minister speaks and the PS nods in support. I’m not sure that Hunt/Murphy were on the same song sheet all the time. They should have worked it out before the interview, IMO.

    Edit: The gov pretends to listen to the experts. Keyword; pretends.

  25. China pioneered the use of CT scans for diagnosis.
    If you anything irregular showed in your lungs, you automatically got a PCR test.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200226151951.htm

    In the current public health emergency, the low sensitivity of RT-PCR implies that a large number of COVID-19 patients won’t be identified quickly and may not receive appropriate treatment. In addition, given the highly contagious nature of the virus, they carry a risk of infecting a larger population.

    “Early diagnosis of COVID-19 is crucial for disease treatment and control. Compared to RT-PCR, chest CT imaging may be a more reliable, practical and rapid method to diagnose and assess COVID-19, especially in the epidemic area,” the authors wrote.

    Chest CT, a routine imaging tool for pneumonia diagnosis, is fast and relatively easy to perform. Recent research found that the sensitivity of CT for COVID-19 infection was 98% compared to RT-PCR sensitivity of 71%.

  26. “Shut Sinny?”

    Given its seems to be the hotspot, can’t see a reason to lock down Albany for example.

    It won’t happen of course. It wouldn’t be fair.

  27. It would be nice to lock down Federal cabinet in order to prevent the spread of bad ideas..

    The Nationals ought to be time-locked.

  28. Lizzie
    The casual way they were just sitting there sums up this government’s approach but ultimately its the government’s job to make decisions and so far this government seems to make the wrong decision on nearly every issue.

  29. Blobbit

    What’s interesting about Sydney is there’s really only four roads out of it and all but one has a bridge crossing.

  30. Garbage in, garbage out.

    @ScottMorrisonMP
    – “So long as Australians keep being Australians we’ll get through this together.” #auspol

    Frankly I’d rather get the virus than have to listen to Morrison or Hunt.

    They are imbeciles.

  31. Singapore tests kids in schools nearly every day any anyone entering a hospital.

    These things are easier in an authoritarian state.

    Imagine showing up at the local outlawed motorcycle club and try to do a bit of testing

  36. Adrian McGregor
    @adrianmcgregor
    · 2h
    Replying to @latingle
    I was tested on Friday in Sydney for #COVIDー19 and the hospital just told me there is huge back log of test results pending – minimum a week to receive results – the government infection numbers are a week out of date

  37. Cud Chewer says:
    Sunday, March 15, 2020 at 5:22 pm
    China pioneered the use of CT scans for diagnosis.
    If you anything irregular showed in your lungs, you automatically got a PCR test.

    It is just extraordinary that Australia is on the cusp of being unable to diagnose cases of COVID 19. In cases of social spread, it has never been in a position to screen for cases. Not for one day.

    In the face of imminent pandemic, testing will be practically unavailable. The incompetence of this Government is truly remarkable.

  38. Boerwar
    Is he really an expert?

    Looking at his CV. He has been a director of Nephrology (Kidneys) at St Vincent’s among other directorships.

  39. I was tested on Friday in Sydney for #COVIDー19 and the hospital just told me there is huge back log of test results pending – minimum a week to receive results – the government infection numbers are a week out of date

    Seriously? F!
    That study from Cud (and the vid from GG) suggests a CT would do it more accurately and stat.

  40. Tested myself just now with the kitchen IR thermometer, my forehead is 35.5C, no change from an hour ago.

    But on a more serious note, security (in this case health) is a layered process. The combined effect of several complementary overlapping actions provides security. The Chinese example is worth considering.

  41. I would have loved to see the journos on Insiders ask the Health Minister a couple of simple questions.

    What is Australia doing to obtain more testing kits/materials/making kits of its own?
    Are officials on the phone offering cash to whoever is necessary to get it done?

  42. “What’s interesting about Sydney is there’s really only four roads out of it and all but one has a bridge crossing.”

    Been years since I’ve been.

    Sounds like a bombing run would be easy

  43. Calliope Zac
    @calliopezac
    · 1h

    My mum is a teacher in a lower socioeconomic area & said they can’t close schools. They’ll find houses full of kids and no one there. They’d have to keep at least a skeleton staff on.

  44. LR

    Could Australia CT screening on the scale they did in China? I doubt it.
    Is Australia urgently buying more CT machines?

  45. Via Guardian blog, 15 new cases in Qld today, biggest number so far, and

    “Palaszczuk said there were heavy fines for anyone who did not follow the directive to self-isolate under the ‘Public Health Emergency Act’.

    “That bill was passed in early February and there are penalties for not complying with the notification and that is around $13,000,” she told AAP.

    “We have random police checks to make sure people are compliant with that notice.”

  46. Rather than closing schools, maybe we shouldn’t let the kids leave?

    Parents can drop a food and clothing package every few days.

    Once we’re all dead, the kids can come out and rule the world. Not sure Greta would do any worse.

  48. Blobbit @ #3441 Sunday, March 15th, 2020 – 5:36 pm

    “What’s interesting about Sydney is there’s really only four roads out of it and all but one has a bridge crossing.”

    Been years since I’ve been.

    Sounds like a bombing run would be easy

    Why bomb them? Let them live in their misery is the ultimate punishment.

  49. It is hardly pioneering to use a CT scan to diagnose lung disease.

    But again we operate from a degree of ignorance here in Australia as to what the course of diagnosis in Australia is.

    If someone returned a positive test on a swab here, is there a follow-up scan?

Comments Page 69 of 73
1 … 68 69 70 … 73

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *