Essential Research and Morgan: more coronavirus polling

Two new polls suggest support for the federal government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis is still on the rise.

I’ll be taking part in the Political Geekfest videocast through Zoom with Peter Lewis of Essential Research and Katharine Murphy of the Guardian Australia at 1pm AEST today, which you can register for here. The subject of discussion will be this:

• The Guardian reports on another Essential Research poll focusing mostly on coronavirus, which would appear to be a weekly thing at least for the time being. The latest poll finds 59% rating the government’s response as about right, up from 46% last week and 39% in the two previous weekly polls; 13% rating it an overreaction, continuing its downward trajectory from 33% to 18% to 17%; and 29% rating it an underreaction, which bounced around over the first three weeks from 28% to 43% to 37%. Respondents were also asked to rate their state governments’ reactions, though with sample sizes too small to be of that much use at the individual level: the combined responses for very good and quite good were at 56% for New South Wales, 76% for Victoria, 52% for Queensland, 79% for Western Australia and 72% for South Australia. The poll also records a surprisingly high level of general morale, producing an average 6.7 rating on a scale of one to ten, unchanged from May last year. The full report should be published later today. UPDATE: Full report here.

• Also apparently a weekly thing is Roy Morgan’s coronavirus polling, which is being conducted online and not by SMS as I previously assumed – indeed, I believe this is the first online polling Morgan has ever published. Last week’s tranche showed a sharp rise in approval of the government’s handling of the matter from a week previous, with 21% strongly agreeing the government was handling the matter well (up twelve), 44% less strongly agreeing (up ten), 23% disagreeing (down ten) and 6% strongly disagreeing (down ten). Respondents had also become more optimistic since the previous week (59% saying the worst was yet to come, down 26 points, 33% saying the situation would remain the same, up 22 points, and 8% expecting things to improve, up four), and, contra Essential, slightly more inclined to consider the threat was being exaggerated (up five points to 20%, with disagreement down six to 75%). The poll was conducted last weekend from a sample of 987.

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.

1,397 comments on “Essential Research and Morgan: more coronavirus polling”

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  2. C@t:

    Once Trump decides you’re gone, you’re gone. Fauci needs to learn that:

    Windsor Mann@WindsorMann
    ·
    24 Oct 2019
    General rule: The worse Trump treats you, the better history will treat you.

  3. I hope so poroti. I’m sick of watching highlights of the 2010 AFL Grand Final and various Anzac Day triumphs. I need fresh victories.

  5. Victoria @ #49 Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 – 8:25 am

    C@t

    Everything Trump touches dies.

    Except Trump. Sadly. Sometimes I must about what steps he really is taking behind the scenes to avoid catching COVID-19. He’s supposed to be a germaphobe, after all. So, is the White House disinfected daily? Is he wearing a mask behind the scenes?

  8. Scrotty’s locked in a second term…getting the recovery right and he’s there for a decade……oh well……plenty of time for some Labor talent to come through.

  9. If it wasnt so serious…….

    Media
    Likes
    Tea Pain’s Tweets
    Tea Pain
    @TeaPainUSA
    ·
    20m
    Holy crap. Trump is playin’ a propaganda-filled campaign video durin’ his daily presser. This is worse than a fart at a funeral.

  12. BK

    Seems like it. The climate deniers are also refusing to follow social distancing. They are all suspicious of ‘experts’ who tell them what they should do. Of course their leader is Trump!!

  15. Confessions says:
    Tuesday, April 14, 2020 at 8:32 am

    Rick Wilson@TheRickWilson
    ·
    3m
    The media fights are boob bait for his base. Watch.
    _________
    the smartest thing confessions has ever posted.

  17. AS it is a disaster, from a personal point of view best outcome for Anthony Fauci is to be fired because we was no nice to the baby.

  18. The 2012 grand final should be on permanent cycle.

    John Kennedy Snr looked unhappy, John Kennedy Jnr looked happy, and Josh Kennedy looked just right (according to Mrs Shellbell)

  19. Victoria @ #59 Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 – 8:30 am

    If it wasnt so serious…….

    Media
    Likes
    Tea Pain’s Tweets
    Tea Pain
    @TeaPainUSA
    ·
    20m
    Holy crap. Trump is playin’ a propaganda-filled campaign video durin’ his daily presser. This is worse than a fart at a funeral.

    Brad Parscale should just change his name to Leni Riefenstahl and be done with it.

  20. …the National Rugby League has never needed any help falling apart (despite the appalling low blow just delivered by league’s free-to-air broadcaster, Nine, and dutifully narrated by its Sydney newspaper).

    No, we refer to Goyder’s chairmanship of Qantas, where three weeks ago chief executive Alan Joyce picked the mother of all fights, launching a frontal assault against competitor Virgin Australia, mobilising the Qantas workforce (which he’d just immobilised without pay) to badger their local MPs into letting Virgin collapse. Even to those against Commonwealth intervention in the aviation market, the performance was in extremely poor taste. Joyce’s profound silence ever since has been most welcome. And how his chairman felt about the brouhaha we probably now know.

    Joyce had (largely) kept his volatile temper in check since removing Fairfax newspapers from Qantas lounges, gates and aircraft in 2014 after he posted a $2.8 billion loss and The Age’s Adele Ferguson called for his resignation. He tried no such thing on News Corp over its mastheads’ attacks on him over his (and the airline group’s) advocacy of marriage equality.

    Qantas is now withholding the landing fees it owes domestic airports for February and March, despite already having on-charged them to its passengers. That’s the Spirit of Australia right there.

    Virgin Australia is of course the AFL’s airline partner, which even in peace time leaves Goyder in the delicate position of Switzerland. All of which still beats the hell out of chairing the NRL…

    https://www.afr.com/rear-window/no-time-to-pick-fights-says-alan-joyce-s-chairman-20200413-p54jcm

  24. It’s great to see journos (apart from Fox) taking their gloves off with their questioning of the Trump, who’s obviously lost the plot over his mishandling of C-19, using his morning pressers as quasi election campaign speeches.

  25. Dr. Dena Grayson
    @DrDenaGrayson
    ·
    4m
    This #COVID19 “briefing” is getting worse by the second for
    @realDonaldTrump
    .

    @CNN
    just changed its chyron to “Trump Uses Task Force Briefing to Try and Rewrite History on #Coronavirus Response.”

    #CoronavirusTimeline #TrumpLies #TrumpMeltdown
    Show this thread
    Dr. Dena Grayson
    @DrDenaGrayson
    ·
    10m
    Whoa. This
    @CNN
    chyron says it ALL: “Angry Trump Turns Briefing Into Propaganda Session.”

  27. Ah, that explains it!

    Daniel Dale@ddale8
    ·
    20m
    Trump sometimes does his most bitter, least-on-script rally speeches after he hasn’t appeared in public for a few days. We had a briefing-free weekend, and here we are.

  28. nath

    There are now only 200 active cases in Victoria yet some people are saying the peak is coming in July. Am I wrong or are we just weeks away from beating this thing?

    I think we’re probably best placed to implement “The Hammer and the dance” strategy outlined last month. As Islands Australia and NZ should hopefully be able to contain or eradicate the virus locally and then monitor points of entry. This is somewhat more problematic for other nations but relatively wealthy nations with strong management of border entry points should be OK. Of course we’ve got Dutton and “Border Force” who with the Ruby Princess have proven themselves to be incompetent of the job but one hopes lessons have been learned.

    https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

  29. And a pertinent and interesting comment from the Deputy Editorial Page Editor for The Washington Post:

    Truth is the first casualty in war, goes the old saying; the corollary might be that journalists are often the collateral damage. That has probably never been more universally true than in the ongoing battle against the coronavirus. Across the world, both autocratic and democratic governments have responded to the epidemic by restricting information, criminalizing independent reporting and harassing reporters — verbally and sometimes ­physically.

    “Call it the covid-19 crackdown,” says Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. His organization has compiled what he says is a partial list of 200 cases of arrests, threats and harassment related to media coverage of the pandemic. That includes the jailing of journalists in the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Iran, Liberia and Turkey.

    No, no one has yet been arrested in the United States; President Trump has limited himself to lobbing insults and smears at the reporters who attend the daily reality show he calls a press briefing. But Trump has given governments around the world a template for suppressing independent journalism about the epidemic: the construct of “fake news.”

    …Indian journalists who buck this (government-mandated ‘news’), regime risk extraordinary harassment. Vidya Krishnan, a freelance health-care reporter, produced reports pointing out the government’s failure to stockpile protective equipment. Predictably, officials labeled them “fake news,” and she was subjected to vicious trolling online.

    ….Krishnan’s case is typical of the situation in many countries where harassment is directed at journalists who report on medical shortages or question official figures about the number of infections or deaths. Case zero may have been Chen Qiushi, a Chinese video journalist who traveled to Wuhan in January and posted YouTube videos reporting that hospitals there were overwhelmed with patients and short on supplies.

    On Feb. 6, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Chen disappeared after telling his family he planned a report on a temporary hospital. He has yet to be heard from.

    Numerous similar cases have followed. Three Algerian journalists who questioned test results from a state lab are being prosecuted. An Iranian journalist was arrested after criticizing on Twitter his government’s failure to prepare for the pandemic. In Haiti, eight journalists investigating whether a government office was forcing people to crowd together were assaulted by plainclothes thugs.

    Foreign correspondents have not been immune. Egypt expelled a correspondent from the British newspaper the Guardian who questioned official figures on infections; Iraq suspended the license of the Reuters bureau in Baghdad for doing the same. China’s expulsion last month of journalists from The Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal was nominally not linked to the epidemic, but it is having the effect of greatly reducing independent reporting at a time when the regime of Xi Jinping is suspected of falsifying statistics.

    Simon points out that China is openly pushing the notion that information control is essential to stopping the disease. “There is a grave risk,” he said, that this argument “is taking hold around the world.” If it does, one main reason will be that the world’s leading democracy not only is doing nothing to stop the “covid-19 crackdown,” its president is actively abetting it.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/truth-is-the-first-casualty-in-war-including-this-one/2020/04/12/44c5ea44-7a88-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html

  30. I suggested the other day that the majority of the much maligned but politically active ‘bernie bros’ would vote democrat.

    I might have underestimated just how angry they are, they seem to be abandoning Bernie (and his endorsement of Biden) at a high rate, which is ironic given how they were dismissed as a cult of a single personality.

  31. Boerwar @ #27 Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 – 8:08 am

    BTW, BK, thank you.

    I am prepared to stand up in court and swear to the fact that your daily service on Bludger is an ‘essential’ service!

    I suggest that should you be charged with an offence (……room for suggestions) the jury will be charged with looking very hard at ignoring prosecution witnesses and instead seek evidence of possible doubt.

    Nevertheless you will be found guilty and sentenced to watching continuous repeats of “Married …….” for “five to life”.

  32. I would say that anything Obama would have done remotely like Trump, would have garnered this response………

    Rick Wilson
    @TheRickWilson
    ·
    1m
    If Obama took this position on the power of the states, federalism, and the 10th Amendment, the entire GOP would be assembling a gibbet on the Oval.

  35. after November when he hopes the presidency changes

    The presidency changes in January, not November.

    And if Trump loses the election in November his 2 month long tantrum with executive power is going to be terrifying.

  36. Cat

    Regarding your ridiculing Sajaar Enjeti because he works for the Hill.

    He previously worked for Tucker Carlson.
    The show Rising he does with Krystal Ball (A Bill Maher guest) was given high praise by Joe Rogan.

    Rogan has the highest audience numbers of any online show.
    That’s millions of viewers.

    You may not like what is being said. You may even as one commentator has done call it swift boating.

    The point is to be aware of it. The Democratic centrists have no clue as to how to counter it politically. That’s why swift boating is effective.

    It’s good to be aware of what the right is doing. That way you are not in disbelief in seeing Trump ahead in the polls.

    Nicholas was talking about Biden’s weakness. This is one such weakness like it or not.

    Biden won due to cable news coverage. Trump does better at that than the Democrats do.
    Biden is no Obama. That’s the Democrats problem. They need an Obama to overcome the voter suppression and gerrymandering in a normal Presidential election.

    The virus and it’s effects may save Biden’s campaign due to Trump’s appalling record. Just don’t deceive yourself at what is appealing to voters.

    Sneering and insulting them doesn’t work when you need turnout. That’s excluding part of the base that needs turning out.
    So taking a right wing talking point and making it into a smear against Sanders is doing Trump’s work for him. Well done Cat. Way to turn off the voters.

    Note I made no comment about the allegation itself just about the swift boating strategy of the right. A criminal complaint has been filed and the legal process will play out. I suspect the NYT got it right. I don’t know until the legal process plays out. Neither do the Democrats.

    There was a reason the centrist Democrats tried all those other candidates for so long. Including looking at a Billionaire in Bloomsberg.

    Be in no doubt. Biden is a weak candidate and the right will have many more attacks. Things are just starting in what is expected to have the most misinformation etc.

    The economy being obviously bad by November is why Fox pundits are so eager to kill people to start economic activity back up again. That’s a low I have been surprised at with the GOP campaign. Surprised not shocked. I think desperation is showing. Expect many more to come.

    So don’t jump on posters for pointing out the weakness. That’s how you lose elections.


  38. WeWantPaul says:
    Tuesday, April 14, 2020 at 8:49 am

    I suggested the other day that the majority of the much maligned but politically active ‘bernie bros’ would vote democrat.

    I might have underestimated just how angry they are, they seem to be abandoning Bernie (and his endorsement of Biden) at a high rate, which is ironic given how they were dismissed as a cult of a single personality.

    Just another protect group keeping the right wing nutters in power. Bernie doesn’t cut it no more, the protest group need a new leader.

  41. I’m not American, but it made me want to vomit.

    Lincoln’s Bible
    @LincolnsBible
    ·
    49m
    This propaganda video being aired, via donald’s presser, by cable news outlets leads me to only one conclusion.
    I must have nodded off twenty minutes ago & slipped through a teleportation wormhole. Because I’m clearly awake now and living in North Korea.

  42. He always has a way with words

    Rick Wilson
    @TheRickWilson
    ·
    2m
    Anyone — and I mean, *anyone* –who tells you this presser is anything other than a complete meltdown shitshow on the top of the dumpster fire that tops burning-tie mountain is a liar.

  44. Tom Nichols@RadioFreeTom
    ·
    5m
    “When somebody is President of the United States, the authority is total.”

    Imagine Republicans if any other president said something as completely crazy as that.

    The ‘What If Obama Said…’ thing has gotten quite a workout with Trump.

  46. Financial writer for the Australian and all round superior git.

    Adam Creighton
    @Adam_Creighton
    ·
    1h
    A damaging over-reaction to an unremarkable virus

  49. Jackol @ #85 Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 – 8:58 am

    after November when he hopes the presidency changes

    The presidency changes in January, not November.

    And if Trump loses the election in November his 2 month long tantrum with executive power is going to be terrifying.

    Yes, I know that it formally changes in January but the adjustment in the nation’s mind comes when the election result is known. And, yes, the election result isn’t always known in November either.

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