As reported by The Guardian, the fortnightly Essential Research poll (a sequence complicated by a bonus coronavirus poll last week) includes the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings, which reflect the findings of Newspoll in very slightly lesser degree. Scott Morrison is up on approval from 41% to 59% (compared with 41% to 61% in Newspoll) and down on disapproval from 49% to 31% (compared with 53% to 35%), while Anthony Albanese is respectively up from 41% to 44% (compared with 40% to 45%) and down from 33% to 29% (compared with 40% to 36%).
For the fifth successive poll, Essential asked respondents about their level of concern about the threat of coronavirus to Australia, to which the combined very concerned and quite concerned responses climbed from 68% to 63% to 82% to 88%, and has now remained steady at 88%. No information is provided on preferred prime minister — we will have to wait for the full report later today to see, among other things, if the question was asked.
UPDATE: Full report here. Scott Morrison now holds a 46-27 lead as preferred prime minister, out from 40-35 last time (note that the BludgerTrack trends are now updated with the latest Essential and Newspoll numbers). The government’s response is now rated good by 58%, up from 45% a week ago, and poor by 21%, down from 31%. The poll also finds 29% expecting a lengthy recession due to coronavirus; 51% expecting that “the economy will be impacted for 6-12 months or longer and will stagnate or show slow growth thereafter” (which for my tastes is not sufficiently distinct in its wording from the first option); and 11% expecting the economy will “rebound within 2-3 months”. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1069.
EGT depends on whether “reactivation” also means infectious.
New thread.