Essential Research: leadership and COVID-19 approval ratings

A narrowing lead for Scott Morrison as preferred prime minister punctuates an otherwise stable picture in Essential Research’s latest set of leadership and COVID-19 performance ratings.

The Guardian reports the latest fortnightly Essential Research poll includes its monthly leadership ratings, which find Scott Morrison’s lead over Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister is now at 49-26, in from 55-22 last time and the narrowest it has been since early February. However, movements on leaders’ ratings are apparently more modest: Morrison is down two on approval to 64%, with his disapproval rating yet to be disclosed (UPDATE: Up five to 28%, so perhaps not as modest as that), while Albanese is steady on approval at 44% and down one on disapproval to 29%.

Fifty-nine per cent now express approval for the federal government’s handling of the pandemic, down two on a fortnight ago. The poll was conducted before Sunday’s announcement of extended restrictions in Victoria, but the small-sample breakdown for that state finds approval of the state government’s performance up three to 50%, compared with falls of two points in New South Wales to 57% and six points in Queensland to 66%. The WA government is up three to a new high of 87%, although at this point sample sizes get very small indeed: as with much else in this poll, we will have to wait for the publication of the full report this afternoon for numbers from South Australia. The latter figure aside, the following chart shows how the various governments’ favourable ratings on this measure have progressed since March:

Concerning COVID-19 outbreaks in aged care facilities, 41% now blame the providers, down a point on a fortnight ago, with 31% blaming the federal government, up three, and 28% blaming state and territory governments, down two. The poll finds 36% support for increasing the Medicare levy from 2% to 2.65% to fund improvements to aged care, with 32% opposed and 32% uncommitted.

Forty-nine per cent favoured a proposition that Google and Facebook should have to pay for news content, compared with 38% for the alternative that “it is not up to the tech giants to support media companies” (as per the wording in The Guardian’s report). The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1076.

UPDATE: Full report here.

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.

1,463 comments on “Essential Research: leadership and COVID-19 approval ratings”

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  1. The delightful Murdoch orc Mr Benson reminding us how “we are all in this together” 🙂
    …………………………………………………………
    MORRISON’S WARNING

    Your mess, Dan, you can pay for it

    Scott Morrison has accused the Andrews government of sentencing Victorians to a lockdown longer than necessary due to inadequate contact tracing.
    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/morrison-warns-premier-of-federal-review-says-your-mess-you-pay-for-it/news-story/2d9e28e0d0df0af34ae73a159bcf9989

  2. lizziesays:
    Tuesday, September 8, 2020 at 6:07 pm
    It’s “get stuck into Dan Andrews” again on The Drum.
    __________
    Good. He deserves a modicum of criticism for the debacle he has overseen.

  3. Craig Platt
    @CPtraveller
    ·
    44m
    I’d like to see some more opinion pieces on the #COVID19Vic recovery roadmap from people with no expertise. I feel like there’s a huge gap in the market for this.

  4. poroti @ #351 Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 – 6:08 pm

    The delightful Murdoch orc Mr Benson letting us now “we are all in this together” 🙂
    …………………………………………………………
    MORRISON’S WARNING

    Your mess, Dan, you can pay for it

    Scott Morrison has accused the Andrews government of sentencing Victorians to a lockdown longer than necessary due to inadequate contact tracing.
    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/morrison-warns-premier-of-federal-review-says-your-mess-you-pay-for-it/news-story/2d9e28e0d0df0af34ae73a159bcf9989

    It’ll be Morrison that pays for it unless people like you follow trough on your anti-Labor obsession.

  5. Very interesting. A piece on CNN (and confirmed by a cursory glance at the 538 snake) saying that, in a tightening race, Nebraska could be the tipping point state. More correctly; the single electoral college vote of Nebraska 2.

    One might be concerned about this (F, if it comes down to one electoral college vote it will be like the Dont Panic scene from Flying High), but the chap on CNN is saying that this congressional district of Nebraska has a very high level of college graduates. Much higher than many other close states.

  6. Greensborough Growler
    You must inhabit a hyper partisan political world to think a disillusioned Labor voter = anti Labor obsessive.

  7. Very clear now all this politicking from Morrison and his minions is a temper tantrum after not getting his way in national cabinet.

    Victorians will remember.

  8. poroti @ #355 Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 – 6:17 pm

    Greensborough Growler
    You must inhabit a hyper partisan political world to think a disillusioned Labor voter = anti Labor obsessive.

    Not particularly. But, you have announced you would preference against Labor at the next Election. I’m just reminding you of your announcement.

    If you are happy to recant, I can rest safe.

  12. nath

    It is said that Victoria is 30% of the Australia economy.
    If Morrison genuinely cared about recovery he would do everything he could to encourage confidence in Victoria, but he and the LNP/business lobbies are leaching that confidence away.

  15. guytaur says:
    Tuesday, September 8, 2020 at 3:45 pm
    Taylor

    Such desperate claims don’t fool Australians.

    Income support called social security has been a Federal Responsibility for decades.

    Social security provisions were enacted by Curtin and Chifley during WW2. This required a constitutional amendment, which they proposed and secured.

    This changed Australia.

    There is little doubt that had the Greens been around at the time they would have set out to spoil this endeavour for their own narrow political purposes and thereby hoped to fuck Labor, as has been their record over the last 25 years.

  22. sprocket

    I find it ironic reading a former Labor strategist talking about the fragmentation of the vote…surely something that, in his former job, he was meant to be preventing.

    I had an argument with Kos on facebook at about this time in the last election cycle, when he was predicting that several Victorian seats were in danger of falling to PHON.

  23. Simon Katich says:
    Tuesday, September 8, 2020 at 6:49 pm

    Croweaters will be fuming if WA steals the ‘murder capital’ tag like the Vics stole the F1.
    ________________
    Didn’t Melbourne already steal that during the gangland murders?

    The Melbourne gangland killings were the murders of 36 criminal underworld figures in Melbourne between January 1998 and August 2010.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_gangland_killings

  24. Some comments on the Redbridge polls by Dr Kevin Bonham…

    After redistributing the large % of initially undecided, these samples still have the ALP primary down a few points in Lilley and Hunter (both would be lost on these numbers). Corangamite would probably be retained. Usual warnings re seat polls apply.

    NB I actually don’t see those numbers as pointing to a further trend away from major parties. After redistributing undecided, Hunter shows strong swing to majors (away from ONP). Corangamite shows swing away, but ONP did not contest in 2019.

  26. [‘There is a case to be put that WA is the preferred venue for the wrongful conviction.’]

    What’s certain is that the Aboriginal incarceration is way out of kilter.

  28. zoomster @ #371 Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 – 6:55 pm

    sprocket

    I find it ironic reading a former Labor strategist talking about the fragmentation of the vote…surely something that, in his former job, he was meant to be preventing.

    I had an argument with Kos on facebook at about this time in the last election cycle, when he was predicting that several Victorian seats were in danger of falling to PHON.

    A lot of people have been riding on the ‘seat warmers’ coat-tails for a while.

  31. I can’t see Labor holding Hunter much longer. Too many tradies, environmental vandals, racist bogans etc. who see ScoMo as their saviour. Then there’s Fitzgibbon fracturing the progressive vote over coal mining. Labor need a really savvy representative to thread that needle.

  32. Simon Katich:

    Tuesday, September 8, 2020 at 6:49 pm

    [‘…WA steals the ‘murder capital’…’]

    Of late NSW is deserving that moniker.

  33. Re Rex @6:27.
    Even Steve Price is onto it.

    According to Steve Price on #TheProject the Canberra & Vic Senior Libs have phoned business execs & asked them to kick up a stink in Victoria & blame Dan Andrews for everything…

    Probably calling journalists too. The whole thing gives the impression of being a co-ordinated pile-on.

  35. The Greens are significantly more progressive on economic policy than the ALP, and for that reason they deserve to be supported. But they do not yet embody best practice on economic policy. To attain that level they need to stop giving credence to the myths propounded by mainstream macroeconomists, such as the claim that a growing amount of Australian Government bonds in the present will require tax increases in the future to “pay back” this so-called debt, or the claim that Australian Government bond issuance is needed at all, or the claim that the constraint on Australian Government spending is a budget or financial constraint rather than a real resource or inflation constraint. The Greens need to improve. But make no mistake: they are significantly better on economic policy than the ALP, who are deeply mired in economic illiteracy.

  36. The real issue I see in Victoria’s response was the 2009 rejection of the Rudd reform of establishing viable local health districts.
    Victoria now has 89 districts compared to NSW’s 17 and WA’s 4
    This made impossible to effectively decentralise public health which became a hollow log in central office for successive governments.
    The results:
    Poor governance of hotel quarantine
    Poor tracing
    Delayed response to rapidly rising cases
    Absolute disaster

  37. Nicholas @ #384 Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 – 7:24 pm

    The Greens are significantly more progressive on economic policy than the ALP, and for that reason they deserve to be supported. But they do not yet embody best practice on economic policy. To attain that level they need to stop giving credence to the myths propounded by mainstream macroeconomists, such as the claim that a growing amount of Australian Government bonds in the present will require tax increases in the future to “pay back” this so-called debt, or the claim that the constraint on Australian Government spending is a budget or financial constraint rather than a real resource or inflation constraint. The Greens need to improve. But make no mistake: they are significantly better on economic policy than the ALP, who are deeply mired in economic illiteracy.

    Another masturbatory word salad that fails to raise interest anywhere else.

  38. Nicholas @ #383 Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 – 7:24 pm

    The Greens are significantly more progressive on economic policy than the ALP, and for that reason they deserve to be supported. But they do not yet embody best practice on economic policy. To attain that level they need to stop giving credence to the myths propounded by mainstream macroeconomists, such as the claim that a growing amount of Australian Government bonds in the present will require tax increases in the future to “pay back” this so-called debt, or the claim that the constraint on Australian Government spending is a budget or financial constraint rather than a real resource or inflation constraint. The Greens need to improve. But make no mistake: they are significantly better on economic policy than the ALP, who are deeply mired in economic illiteracy.

    The Greens are an endangered species.

    I give them 10 yrs, which is how long it will take before the corrupt fossil fuel boosters in NSW/Qld Labor are out of business.

  39. Oakeshott Country @ #385 Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 – 7:25 pm

    The real issue I see in Victoria’s response was the 2009 rejection of the Rudd reform of establishing viable local health districts.
    Victoria now has 89 districts compared to NSW’s 17 and WA’s 4
    This made impossible to effectively decentralise public health which became a hollow log in central office for successive governments.
    The results:
    Poor governance of hotel quarantine
    Poor tracing
    Delayed response to rapidly rising cases
    Absolute disaster

    Structual deficiencies going back a decade or more will get every one off the hook!

  40. It sounds like a job for a very expensive health consultancy from one of the accounting firms to review the Vic health situation OC!

  41. The real issue I see is a careless bunch of security guards and an apathetic section of the community.

    Way too much overthinking.

  42. Oakeshott Country:

    Tuesday, September 8, 2020 at 7:25 pm

    [‘Absolute disaster.’]

    Please stop over-egging it, Andrews dealing with 2020, not 2009. I mean who could’ve predicted what’s happening now?

  43. Lars Von Trier @ #390 Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 – 7:36 pm

    It sounds like a job for a very expensive health consultancy from one of the accounting firms to review the Vic health situation OC!

    See that clock on the wall. It’s ticking the same for everyone.

    Two years from now Electors will be dealing with issues that are not even on the agenda atm.

  45. Rex, do you think the Somyurek bugging op is a one – off or a long term development in Labor politics in Victoria?

    I have visions of bank vaults holding secret recordings waiting to be released at the right moment – not unlike the Stasi have its scent library amongst other things for dissidents in East Germany.

  46. red wombat
    @redwombat101
    ·
    44s
    And his dad was Alan Jones manager
    Quote Tweet

    Susan Mackay Face screaming in fear
    @mackaysuzie
    · 53m
    Ben Fordham is David Speers’s brother in law #TheDrum

  47. And the Victorian health minister in 2009 was….

    Dan Andrews

    ( although it must be added that it was Brumby who fucked over Rudd)

  48. It interesting that the Liberals are piling onto Andrew. They seem to have forgotten the next state to go to the poles is Queensland.

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