Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor

Essential Research at long last emerges from the voting intention wilderness, although its results going forward will be carefully rationed.

Another pollster returns from the naughty corner today to chance its arm at voting intention, which now makes three if you count the erratically published Roy Morgan series (which I incline not to myself). That pollster is Essential Research, which has remained prodigious with attitudinal polling since the May 2019 federal election, and has maintained its monthly leadership ratings, while offering no clue as to its voting intention numbers beyond the inclusion of raw figures in reporting its sub-samples.

Unhappily for we salivating dogs in the psephoblogosphere, these figures will only be published on a quarterly basis. This appears to mean that every sixth or seventh fortnightly Essential Research release will provide the fortnightly voting intention results of the preceding period. This, the pollster says, will “mitigate the tendency to report on minor movements as some sort of political horse race”. This latest release confuses the issue by providing weekly numbers through June, but I believe this is an artefact of a temporary move to weekly polling to track reactions to COVID-19.

Essential will also make a point of not excluding the undecided from its headline results, arguing the conventional practice entails a “lack of nuance”, though no doubt rivals will accuse the pollster of hedging its bets. The pollster still follows the conventional practice of prodding the initially undecided with a follow-up that asks who they are leaning towards. A proportion of these persist in declining a response, but remain in the sample with responses included for the other survey questions.

The latest primary vote numbers show the Coalition on 38% (up one), Labor on 35% (up one), the Greens on 9% (down one), One Nation on 4% (steady) and others on 6% (steady). If the undecided were excluded, the results would be Coalition 41.3%, Labor 38.0%, Greens 9.8% and One Nation 4.3%, and 51-49 to Labor on two-party preferred (for the sake of consistency with other pollsters, it’s the latter figure that I will continue to use in my headlines). Compared with the 2019 election result, this leaves Labor up nearly five points but the Coalition hardly changed, with the slack taken up from smaller parties and independents.

Labor with 47% of the decided two-party vote (up one on a fortnight ago) to the Coalition’s 45% (steady), leaving an outstanding 8% potentially to be called on to fill the gap between the reported numbers and an actual result. The pollster’s two-party numbers look to be consistent with a 2019 election preferences allocation, although the report is not specific as to whether this method or respondent allocation was used. In his piece in The Guardian, Peter Lewis of Essential Research explains: “We will now be asking participants who vote for a minor party to indicate a preferred major party. Only when they do not provide a preference will we allocate based on previous flows.“

These results are obviously a lot better for Labor than what has come through from Newspoll and Morgan, and are clearly an established peculiarity of the series. Where headline results over the past two months have shown Labor matching or exceeding their primary vote at the election despite the inclusion of a 7% to 9% undecided component, the Coalition have been coming in two to four points lower. The Greens are reckoned to be about where they were and the election and One Nation a little higher, though the latter is complicated by their tendency to only run in selected seats.

Also featured in the latest poll:

• The federal government’s ratings for COVID-19 response are unchanged at 64% good and 16% poor, and the combined response for state governments has shifted only negligibly, with good and poor both up a point to 65% to 18% respectively.

• The small-sample results for individual state governments show the Victorian government up four points on both good and poor, to 53% and 30% respectively. This still leaves it with the weakest figures out of the mainland state governments, with the Western Australian government recovering its title of strongest performer (up five to 82%) from South Australia (down three to 76%).

• On JobKeeper and JobSeeker, 69% supported businesses being retested for eligibility, with 9% opposed; 66% supported continuing payments for six months, with 12% opposed; 54% supported reducing the amount of the payments, with 21% opposed; but only 29% supported excluding casual workers, with 40% opposed.

• Forty-three per cent rated themselves very concerned about COVID-19, up seven on a fortnight ago, with quite concerned down four to 44%, not that concerned down three to 9% and not at all concerned up one to 4%.

• Fifty-six per cent favour a “suppression strategy” and 44% an “elimination strategy”.

• Sixty-eight per cent support mandatory face masks. with 13% opposed; 19% believe them very effective, 46% quite effective, 20% not that effective and 5% not effective at all.

The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1058.

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.

1,645 comments on “Essential Research: 51-49 to Labor”

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  1. There was a long running meme “Kim Jong Un Looking at Things” . Scrott looks to be auditioning for his own “Looking at things”. Getting inspiration from the original ‘Kim Jong Il looking at things”

  2. A good argument from Daniel Andrews.

    It’s good to see him doing what Federal Labor cannot do. As a manager of preventing the spread of C19 Andrews has the same rally the flag effect Morrison has.

    If Andrews is successful Morrison will end up with polling numbers like Trump for the same reason.

    Very smart Labor. Very smart.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/28/premier-daniel-andrews-says-he-has-no-confidence-in-private-aged-care-covid-19-response

  3. Well, I never………….53-47 or 51-49? …………Take your pick………………
    Given the 53-47 was the first really significant shown shift to the LNP in months, the 51-49 is odd. But then, Newspoll was out touting its numbers long before this recent set of figures from above. But then again with a MOE of up to 3% one way or the other, it is conceivable that the above figures are on the ball as well. It is noteworthy that the 53-47 was not made a big fuss of in the right wing press and I don’t suppose the 51-49 one will be mentioned at all………………One thing is certain, despite Morrison walking/talking Great White Father, the LNP is nowhere near lay down misere for an election win.

  4. The Australian Government is ”extending” Jobseeker – according to a Government ad just now. They will be ”adjusting” the amount.

  5. William:

    The pollster’s two-party numbers look to be consistent with a 2019 election preferences allocation, although the report is not specific as to whether this method or respondent allocation was used.

    Peter Lewis’ article in the Guardian described their new preference allocation strategy thus:

    We will now be asking participants who vote for a minor party to indicate a preferred major party. Only when they do not provide a preference will we allocate based on previous flows.

    This sounds closer to respondent-allocated to me.

    I assume when Essential release a large batch of prior period results, you’ll be retrospectively including those in bludgertrack (if you re-start a 2PP series, that is)?

  6. Sounds like Morrison has learned from his mistakes from the bushfires. Cutting short his campaigning in Qld to deal with the Vic covid stuff. Does this mean that finally the feds are going to do something in response to the escalating crisis in aged care?

    10 News First@10NewsFirst
    ·
    3h
    The #COVID19Vic crisis has forced Scott Morrison to cut his Queensland trip short, the Prime Minister heading back to his desk at Parliament House. #auspol | @vanOnselenP

    https://twitter.com/10NewsFirst/status/1288015088490893312

  7. Labor should be ahead 60-40 like NZ Labor. Suggests fundamental problems with Australian Labor that they’ve flatlined in vote terms in the middle of the worst economic (in 90 years) and health (in 100 years) crisis.

  8. Fess, this twitter post explains Morrison’s behaviour..

    ‘Have I got this correct? The day after Vic records 500+ cases, with a high number in aged care, Morrison flies to Qld in election mode for a business which donated $2000 to the Lib party. While there, he announces he suddenly has to fly back to ACT b/c of aged care situation.’

  9. In fact very interesting reading Roman Quadleivig’s book – he is very insightful describing Morrison’s impulsive, self serving behaviour in crisis situations.

    It goes something like – jump to the front, twist half truths into the narrative, deflect the inevitable failures. In Roman’s mind, solid operators like him are relied upon to do the pooper scooping.

  10. Looks like Morrison has got the shits with Andrews for rightly calling out the commonwealth for its responsibility in the aged care sector.

    The MSM has been drip fed a story claiming Andrews took too long to make the decision to suspend elective surgery in Victoria despite Morrison pushing for it to happen sooner.

    Tomorrow will be a interesting day especially the reply from Andrews and perhaps Sutton. The two seem to have a close working bond.

    It all appears to be getting quite dirty as Morrison reverts to form when placed under pressure once again.

    Cheers.

  11. Where is boewar now ?

    ABC News
    @abcnews
    ·
    9h
    #BREAKING: Police have detained at least three people, including organiser Paddy Gibson, at a Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney.

  12. Zerlo says:
    Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 9:36 pm
    Lars Von Trier

    Didn’t I tell you why in NZ thread as to why it will not be the case?
    _______________________
    You know how much I admire your youthful precociousness.

  13. Dan Andrews trying to shaft Morrison on Aged Care at the first opportunity to deflect his responsibility for the Melbourne disaster. It will be interesting to see if Morrison returns fire and starts naming Andrews for the quarantine fuck up of all fuck ups.

  14. nath

    Their is laws, and legislation called Aged Care Act 1997 which says the following:

    54‑2 Aged Care Quality Standards

    (1) The Quality of Care Principles may set out Aged Care Quality Standards. Aged Care Quality Standards are standards for quality of care and quality of life for the provision of *aged care.

    (2) The Aged Care Quality Standards may set out different standards for different kinds of *aged care.

    https://www.agedcarequality.gov.au/providers/standards

    The following guidance material is intended to assist aged care services to implement and maintain compliance with the Quality Standards. It describes the intent of the Standards and the Commission’s expectations of performance and provides supporting information and examples of evidence of compliance. It also provides an indication of matters that quality assessors consider in assessing compliance.

    So stick your state issue up your ass.

  15. Zerlosays:
    Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 9:54 pm
    nath

    So stick your state issue up your ass.
    _______________________
    Settle down zoidy. We all know Morrison should have deployed thousands of nurses and doctors under the control of the Federal Health Department. We all know that private Aged Care Homes are all mini Federal territories with no relationship to the state surrounding it.

  16. Lars Von Trier @ #20 Tuesday, July 28th, 2020 – 9:33 pm

    Labor should be ahead 60-40 like NZ Labor. Suggests fundamental problems with Australian Labor that they’ve flatlined in vote terms in the middle of the worst economic (in 90 years) and health (in 100 years) crisis.

    They should rename La La Land,
    Lars Lars Land.

  17. nath

    Your ignorance is or blindness is on entirely different level than some .

    Aged Care makes billions in profits, like the banks, fail in all safety measures.

  18. I don’t believe it because there has been no real federal government debacles in the last few weeks and the 2pp is not consistent with other evidence such as the by-election result, Newspoll, and the PM’s huge advantage on the preferred leader score.

  19. sprocket_ @ #38 Tuesday, July 28th, 2020 – 10:00 pm

    A great photo of a young Dotard, with his father Fred – who made his money as a slum lord in Brooklyn.

    ” rel=”nofollow”>

    Fred Drumpf looks like he is doing a Charlie Chaplin impression and young Donald Drumpf looks like he is going bald already under the massive combover. Must’ve been before the scalp lift.

  20. This couple seem to be following the same script as the woman in Bunnings.

    A man and woman from the New South Wales South Coast who filmed themselves refusing a COVID-19 compliance check after returning from Victoria have been fined and ordered to attend court for breaching quarantine for a third time.

    The video, which was widely shared on Facebook before being removed, showed Lake Illawarra officers attending the Kiama Heights home, south of Wollongong, to check its occupants were self-isolating.

    The occupants, a 36-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman, refused to open the door for the officer or answer his questions.

    The couple repeatedly asked the Leading Constable to provide his name, badge number, and personal liability insurance.

    They then accused the officer of trespassing on their property and said they planned to “go after” him personally.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-28/kiama-couple-fined-video-refusing-covid-19-compliance-check/12500206

  21. sprocket_says:
    Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 10:00 pm
    A great photo of a young Dotard, with his father Fred – who made his money as a slum lord in Brooklyn.
    ____________
    Was he a slum lord though? The stuff I’ve seen indicates he discriminated against blacks to create lower middle class enclaves, and it seems that he made creative use of federal funds to feather his nest but I’ve seen no claims about slum lord activities. Though it may have been part of his little empire.

  22. citizen @ #44 Tuesday, July 28th, 2020 – 10:03 pm

    This couple seem to be following the same script as the woman in Bunnings.

    A man and woman from the New South Wales South Coast who filmed themselves refusing a COVID-19 compliance check after returning from Victoria have been fined and ordered to attend court for breaching quarantine for a third time.

    The video, which was widely shared on Facebook before being removed, showed Lake Illawarra officers attending the Kiama Heights home, south of Wollongong, to check its occupants were self-isolating.

    The occupants, a 36-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman, refused to open the door for the officer or answer his questions.

    The couple repeatedly asked the Leading Constable to provide his name, badge number, and personal liability insurance.

    They then accused the officer of trespassing on their property and said they planned to “go after” him personally.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-28/kiama-couple-fined-video-refusing-covid-19-compliance-check/12500206

    Oh well, when someone from their house calls the cops for help in the future and the cops remember not to set foot on their property, they’ll only have themselves to blame. 😐

  23. NSW has had 199 new Covid cases in the last 14 days, averaging 14 per day, with no discernible trend either way. In spite of outbreaks, it seems to be holding the line, avoiding the precipice. I would put that down to a mix of good management with a measure of good luck. The closure of the border with Victoria seems to have worked.

  24. nath,
    Fred Trump was notorious for spending little on maintaining his properties. Kind of sounds like the makings of slums to me.

  25. Trump Village certainly wasn’t a slum:

    The Coney Island complex, completed in 1964, was no luxury residence either. It was a modest brown-brick development, seven sturdy 23-story towers in a park, each containing carpeted hallways but no air conditioning. The middle-class homes were supposed to be nice but not that nice, given that the government helped finance their construction.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/10/the-middle-class-housing-empire-donald-trump-abandoned-for-luxury-building/

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