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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  1. “First up would be the hypochondriacs just ahead of the worried well followed by those desperate for an excuse to go out.”

    I probably fall into the first category. Not sure if I would though.

  2. Seen from afar, the Labour party in the UK could have been led by anyone and the result might not have been much different in the last election.
    In simplistic terms, the Tories had over 13 million people vote for them, Labour just over 11 million. Meanwhile, Labour ceased to exist in Scotland and the Tories almost as invisible. Labour used to hold 40 or more seats in Scotland. For some reason the Great Red Wall did not hold for Labour in the North as emigration and welfare counted for more than anything else.
    Apart from that, something like a third of the electorate did not vote at all…..
    Labour, as it currently is constituted, may be in for a long spell in Opposition in the UK……….while the Tories are able to exploit the Put Britain First stuff forward, yet only being able to speak for something around 40% of eligible voters.
    Now come to think of it, this reminds me of another democratic, English speaking country whereby about 40% of the eligible voters has their party of choice in power……….Oh, and in that country some 800,000 plus voters manage to get 20 of their reps back while, another party, with over a million PVs manages just one lower house member. Democracy at its best!

  3. I was declined a flu shot this morning at my GP due to a shortage.

    Greg Hunt failing to deliver on the most basic of tasks.

  4. Any bets with the “illegal party” of medical workers in Tassie that it was Doctors, senior hospital admin and management toffs involved?

    I doubt that there would have been any involvement of medical scientists, nurses, ancillary, cafe or lower down the food chain staff…

  5. KayJay
    Thanks for the Bypass Paywalls advice. I turned incognito on but cannot read the Advertiser. Some items are not pay-walled but most are.

  6. Blobbit

    One group who would have a lot of takers would be those who had some cold type symptoms back in Feb,March. Was it flu or wuhu ? I’d definitely go.

  7. And in amazing news, WA police act reasonably

    “Commissioner Dawson said police had not needed to issue a single infringement at beaches over the Easter weekend.

    “We are extremely pleased with the way the community has rallied together,” he told ABC Perth.

    “It is physically and mentally healthy for people to get out and exercise … providing we are exercising in a way that doesn’t compromise anyone else’s safety.””

  8. “One group who would have a lot of takers would be those who had some cold type symptoms back in Feb,March. Was it flu or wuhu ? I’d definitely go.”

    Yeah, that would be a reasonable group to get a handle on.

    I’ve not had any symptoms or any particular reason to suspect I’ve been infected. No one in the family is showing any signs. I’d go get tested if there was some sort of random sampling program put in place, where you were asked to get tested.

    I guess I’m just musing as to what the reaction will be when testing is opened up.

    (and I think that opening it up, when it becomes practical is a good thing)

  11. One group who would have a lot of takers would be those who had some cold type symptoms back in Feb,March. Was it flu or wuhu ? I’d definitely go.

    You’d need a separate, probably antibody-based test for that.
    The screening test presumably only looks for active infections – otherwise you’d never be given the all-clear to be let out of quarantine.

  14. Jeager

    The antibody test would help you find a past infection. But bear in mind that antibody tests can also pick up false positives from past infections of similar viruses. In other words, interesting from the point of view of science but not a whole lot of use to the person getting tested. There is just a chance that in the data there might be valuable geographical clues that might help locate previously missed clusters though.

  17. CMO Murphy on the Tasmanian illegal dinner party:

    This morning in discussions with the New Zealand parliamentary committee I referred to a suggestion that a dinner party may have been the source of some of the transmission in the north west Tasmania cluster of cases.

    Whilst this possibility had previously been mentioned to me, following investigations I am confident it has not occurred. Tasmanian officials are continuing their investigations.

  18. Confessions

    No Ruby Princess no infection. At least from what I understand.

    Bit hard to blame the NSW government for that one.

  19. The Recession word being bandied about. I remember how hard Labor worked to avoid even mentioning the word. Let alone have one.
    Being fair I know the crisis are different.

    The contrast is still sharp.

  20. mmmmm – very interesting

    What Do Countries With The Best Coronavirus Reponses Have In Common? Women Leaders

    Looking for examples of true leadership in a crisis? From Iceland to Taiwan and from Germany to New Zealand, women are stepping up to show the world how to manage a messy patch for our human family. Add in Finland, Iceland and Denmark, and this pandemic is revealing that women have what it takes when the heat rises in our Houses of State

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwittenbergcox/2020/04/13/what-do-countries-with-the-best-coronavirus-reponses-have-in-common-women-leaders/#264189f23dec

  21. mundo @ #351 Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 – 1:26 pm

    itsthevibe @ #333 Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 – 1:19 pm

    I just can’t see any reason why labor needs to let this year slide by.
    It has a job to do. Hold the bastards to account and win government next election.

    You’re just itching to be written off as a Menzies House concern troll with that type of crazy talk, aren’t you?

    or worse…a sock puppet!

    Nah, I think pathetic just about covers it.

  22. Australia’s chief medical officer Dr Brendan Murphy said the staff from the North West Regional
    “We thought we were doing really well in the last week and then we had a cluster of 49 cases in a hospital in Tasmania just over the weekend. Most of them went to an illegal dinner party of medical workers, we think,” Dr Murphy told a New Zealand parliamentary committee on Tuesday.

    Pretty unequivocal by Murphy – poor form.

  25. C@tmomma,
    You’re a very negative person. Especially considering I’m not attacking you.

    Labor can get medias attention by talking to the media, It just needs to do it a lot more. And start making it a constant hum. It needs to stop taking turns to get a message out and start saturating messages to media markets. Notice how there’s always a front bencher from the gov talking and also a bunch of back benchers doing local media and talking on twitter. the ALP are too quiet.

    If information war is about ‘the vibe of the thing’ then labor need to essentially have a comms plan that is stratified by tier, 1 people who are branded labor, then 2 people who repeat that but to smaller trusted circles, and then 3 people who just put shit all over the lnp with no connection to labor.

    Labor and their team always act like they are waiting for an invitation to get a message out.

    Anyway this isn’t really worth the fight when the stakes are so low around here.

    Take care as best you can.

  26. So Virgin has $5 billion in debt? How? Total revenue in 2018 was only $5.8 billion. Or is this “loss” the accumulation of the accounting stunts you pull to ensure you pay no tax locally.
    https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/virgin-australia-enters-trading-halt-for-aid-restructuring-talks-amid-coronavirus-crisis-20200414-p54jlw.html

    With great sympathy to its employees, it is hard to see the ethical justification to use Australian taxpayers’ money to bail out this foreign owned, zero tax paying company. Several countries are looking at airline bailouts. I am not aware of any planning to bail out foreign owned airlines. And we should be talking about buy-outs (in return for equity) not bail-outs. If we are going to have a government owned national carrier, it should be Qantas. Which government funds two national carriers?

    Besides, Virgin was already in financial trouble before Covid19 struck.
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-28/virgin-to-chop-750-jobs-as-it-posts-349m-loss/11455840

  27. And on a similar theme, this article on the Conversation came out yesterday evening.

    https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-debate-turns-to-whether-australia-should-embrace-elimination-strategy-136186

    To those who continue to defend Brendan Murphy I have the following quote..

    Murphy said: “The challenge with elimination is that nobody yet knows whether it’s possible. We don’t know to what extent there is asymptomatic transmission of this virus.

    “The challenge … also with an elimination strategy is that you have to keep the most aggressive border measures in place for a very long time – potentially until you’ve got a vaccine.”

    Murphy said one reason for New Zealand’s keenness to be very aggressive was its shortage of critical care beds. It had fewer of these beds as a proportion of population than Australia had.

    Lets unpack that.

    Firstly, Brendan Murphy is right to point out that elimination is difficult. But his record speaks for itself. You would expect him to at the very least ask researchers and modellers to investigate what elimination would involve. Whether we need more testing and precisely where. What the targets should be. Instead he’s being dismissive. In this case raising the problem of asymptomatic transmission. Yes, it is a problem, but why is our Chief Medical Officer not seeking input from experts on how to deal with it?

    Secondly, he engages in spin and bullshit. The second paragraph I’ve already dealt with earlier, but the bottom line is that aggressive border measures will have to be in place for a very long time, whether we implement elimination or merely suppression. In other words, its a broken argument. And someone who is supposed to be a scientist should never say things like this.

    Thirdly, and I only noticed this late last night. Think about the implications of what he is saying about critical care beds. What he is actually saying is, Australia can afford a suppression strategy (as opposed to an elimination one) as in NZ, because we have more critical care beds. Again, this is a dangerous argument. Its also yet again a distraction that allows him to avoid talking directly and factually about elimination. This is certainly not the behaviour of a calm, professional scientist. Its spin and bullshit from someone who is politically compromised.

  30. Confessions @1:15

    So Brendan Murphy is back peddling and also admitting that he believes what he reads in social media. Not a good look.

  32. Re Guardian readership numbers. A pithy comment.

    Dan Stinton, managing director of Guardian Australia, said almost half the country read Guardian Australia last month and it’s a readership that is deeply engaged with its journalism.

    “Our reach is now bigger than almost any other advertising platform – including most free-to-air television shows – and we believe our readers trust us a lot more than someone watching Married at First Sight or a re-run of an old footy final,” Stinton says.

    As I may have mentioned before, we have a direct family relationship with a senior person in marketing at the Guardian. Chuffed.

  33. Mundo
    Jason Clare this morning
    “Look it’s a disaster. One in 10 people who have got the virus in Australia are linked back to that cruise ship. One in three people who have died from the virus in Australia are linked back to that cruise ship. You’ve got 1,000 doctors and nurses and kitchen hands in the hospital system in north-west Tasmania that are in effective lockdown now, because no one was checked when they got off that cruise ship. You’ve got 5,000 people in Tassie who are in quarantine.

    If I was in Tasmania at the moment I’d be bloody angry because there’s been a massive failure of border protection here. It just goes to show if you don’t check people when they get off a cruise ship, then it can cause all sorts of mayhem. We’re witnessing that in Tasmania right now.”

    I’ve seen Jason Clare at least twice a week on ABC or Sky in similar vein, others on a daily basis, but it’s rarely picked up by the media.
    I here your screams and often feel the same way as you about Labor’s bods being neglected in main news spots even tho they are out and about relating Morrison’s blind spots.

    How well we remember the Abbott Opposition years when every bulletin, TV and radio, began with the words “The Federal Opposition says blah, blah, blah”. The ABC joined in.
    It’s not something that will be replicated for Labor unless they learn to lie and cheat as well as the LNP do. It rolls effortlessly off their tongues.

    Atm I don’t think it’s the right time for either Labor or the Greens to go full bore but in 12 months’ time I hope they will.

  36. BH

    I missed that one. If I don’t see a presser live it’s hard to know there was one.

    With 24 hour news online and live news there is no excuse for not giving opposing parties relevance.

  37. The real reason why they want to bail out Virgin is the amount of service duplication and thus jobs it provides. The airports would love to cater for 700 airlines all offering the same thing. Having their own terminals, etc.

    Isn’t private ownership and management of things meant to be more efficient??

  38. Cud Chewer @ #366 Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 – 1:20 pm

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/it-s-worth-a-shot-australia-s-endgame-must-be-total-elimination-of-the-virus-20200412-p54j71.html

    For those who missed it. And btw, this article was the subject of ABC radio’s late night talkback show early this morning. The majority of callers basically said we need to eliminate the virus.

    More evidence that the Australian public are well ahead of the federal government on this.

  39. BK @ #355 Tuesday, April 14th, 2020 – 1:30 pm

    KayJay
    Thanks for the Bypass Paywalls advice. I turned incognito on but cannot read the Advertiser. Some items are not pay-walled but most are.

    I also run “Anti-Paywall” in parallel with “Bypass Paywalls”.

    Downloadable from

    https://github.com/nextgens/anti-paywall

    With the usual process to Extract all and slide onto Chrome Extensions. Fix for incognito —

    Pain in the …. but I can read all of The Agoniser. Sometimes difficult to know which extension is effective.

    Back to my book – where mysterious creatures are trying to wipe out an entire town.

  41. Bad news in SA. RAH ICU nurse diagnosed with coronavirus which it appears she got from covid patient despite PPE. 22 doctors and nurses in quarantine.
    That’s the first ICU failure in Australia.

  42. Was the parties position on Brexit to blame? Perhaps at a surface level. Deeper down Brexit was only a symptom of a deeper malaise – the disconnection of Labour from ‘its people’ outside London: by not engaging with them (although professions to be deeply concerned about their plight – safely ensconced at a distance in academic cloisters and their inner urb coffee shops and watering holes) Labor effectively vacated the field since 2010. Nature abhors a vacuum. If Labour wasn’t going to articulate a contemporary and relevant platform on basic socio-economic issues, then it was an open invitation for these vote to be caught up in the thrall of Brexit bullshit.

    Now, that ‘contemporary and relevant platform’ can be as left wing as you like. Along as the voters are engaged in it: not just ‘the left’, or ‘progressives’ but a coalition that includes enough moderates and centrists to be electorally viable.

    I really liked this. 40 years of trickle down has created a lot of problems and resentment that many people don’t seem to recognize unless it is manifesting as overt racism.

    The not far right parties need to say and show and convince people they’ll address the underlying failures and injustices, not just play at the edges.

    The LNP’s lies about labor taxes, were believable.

    The deep and systemic changes labor were proposing to address the issues, no wait they didn’t even have such proposals they might have looked at some of them when they won.

  44. Currently sitting in on a webinar with the Director General of Dept Communities, President of WACOSS and the WA Mental Health Commissioner outlining coronavirus response and recovery. Very interesting.

  46. Dennis Atkins

    How heavy hands and a tin ear have left Palaszczuk facing political isolation

    https://inqld.com.au/opinion/2020/04/14/how-a-tin-ear-and-heavy-hands-have-left-our-premier-facing-political-isolation/

    As you’d expect in a federation, state leaders have responded to the COVID-19 health and economic crisis in different ways. The big players, backed by big populations and hefty gross state products, have been throwing their weight around – pushing the national agenda and at times seeming to relish the new, often unquestioned powers they’ve acquired.

    New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian has watched her government transform into a clown-car fleet with a death cruise ship disaster haunting everything and confusion on who can do what, how they can do and where it’s permissible. To the south, Daniel Andrews is running Victoria like a new faction of the Labor Party, issuing edicts and threatening harsher restrictions every few days. He’s maintaining community support but overreach such as police interrupting funeral services could unwind that.

    Tasmania’s Peter Gutwein appeared to have things under control before the whole of the northwest of his island state was thrown into strict lockdown following a rapidly spreading cluster of infections from private and public hospitals.

    Similar experiences are panning out in Western and South Australia where early action on closing borders, effective rapid health responses and efficient health regimes put in place have shown results in keeping the spread of the disease under control – despite two clusters emerging in SA.

    Here in Queensland, we have had a mix of good early intervention, tough border controls and a reasonably responsive health system which has kept the spread of the disease below that of other eastern states and an encouraging lack of community transmissions.

    However, we have been let down by mixed messages on two fronts – what was and wasn’t permissible in terms of movement and contact and the differing treatment of various regions and provincial centres.
    :::
    Today’s Essential Poll confirms these observations. Western Australia has the highest level of popular support in handling the crisis at 79 per cent, followed closely by Victoria on 75 per cent and South Australia on 71 per cent.

    After those three states (Tasmania wasn’t included because of the small sample size), it’s a sharp drop to NSW with just 56 percent support. Then there’s Queensland, with a bare majority public backing on just 52 per cent.

    It’s clear the Palaszczuk Government is the laggard among states. Confused messages, restrictions that appear too stringent and inconsistent, overreach by often too-eager police personnel and a lack of a consistent, empathetic, positive message from the Premier are the reasons for that very poor rating.

  47. guytaur

    Yep, I often see biting comment from Labor pollies through the day but it doesn’t cut it for the evening news or even ABC radio bulletins. I usually channel hop around the commercial TV stations to catch the headline news only but don’t listen to commercial radio so don’t know what goes on there.

    If I’m awake I listen to Philip Clarke’s talk session at 1am and his audience seem more critical of the Govt than I expected.

  48. Cud Chewer

    Oh shit !!!! I forgot what President Comacho’s previous profession was . OMG that takes it to ‘a whole new level’ of appropriate 😆 Well I did say after seeing it it was a documentary.Although back then I was thinking of Dubya.

  49. Pegasus

    Of all those perceived failings of QLD, the ones that actually matter don’t get a mention.
    Still far to restrictive testing and still patchy tracking and tracing.

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