As reported by The Guardian, the latest Essential Research poll is one of the quarterly releases in which it unloads its voting intention data from the preceding period. This includes the pollster’s “two-party preferred plus” result, which uses respondent-allocated preferences for minor party and independent voters who indicate such a preference, previous election flows for those that don’t, and does not exclude those who were undecided on the primary vote. This produces a result of Coalition 48%, Labor 45% and 8% undecided. That’s all we have for now, but the full release today should have primary vote and two-party preferred plus results for the pollster’s other five fortnightly polls going back to August, which will reportedly show the Coalition leading in four but Labor ahead in a poll in early September.
Also featured are leadership ratings for the federal leaders, as well as for the state leaders based on what I presume to be small state-level sub-samples. The former record little change on the last such result six weeks ago, with Scott Morrison down one on both approval and disapproval, to 63% and 27% respectively; Anthony Albanese perfectly unchanged at 44% approval and 29% disapproval; and Morrison’s preferred prime minister lead nudging from 49-26 to 50-25.
The state results suggest last week’s unpleasantness has not done Gladys Berejiklian the slightest harm, with her approval rating at 67% – identical to the result of a YouGov poll in the Sunday Telegraph, on which more below. This puts Berejiklian clear of both Daniel Andrews on 54% and Annastacia Palaszczuk on 62%. Mark McGowan is on 84% and Steven Marshall 51%, though here sample sizes get very small indeed. McGowan’s rating is in line with polling elsewhere, but Marshall’s is at odds with the 68% he recorded in a much more robust poll in mid-September.
Other questions focus on the budget, finding 56% expecting it will help Australia recover from the recession and 53% that it will create jobs. However, 58% felt it would create long-term problems needing to be fixed in the future, and 62% believed current government debt and deficit would place “unnecessary burdens on future generations”. Fifty-four per cent felt it “balanced the needs of the genders”, contrary to much media analysis, but 45% thought it put the interests of younger Australians ahead of older people compared with 34% who thought it balanced. Forty-two per cent thought it put the interests of businesses ahead of employers, compared with 14% for vice-versa.
UPDATE: Full report here. The latest primary vote numbers are Coalition 39%, Labor 35%, Greens 9% and One Nation 3%, which becomes Coalition 42.4%, Labor 38.0%, Greens 9.8% and One Nation 3.3% if the 8% undecided are excluded.
In other news:
• The aforementioned YouGov poll in the Sunday Telegraph had Gladys Berejiklian at 68% approval and 26% disapproval, and found 60% support for her to remain as Premier, with only 29% saying she should resign. Forty-nine per cent said she had done nothing wrong, compared with 36% who felt otherwise. Thirty-six per cent were more likely to vote Coalition if Berejiklian was Premier, compared with 22% less likely and 42% no difference. The poll was conducted Friday and Saturday from a sample of 836.
• Sunday’s Nine News bulletin had grim polling for federal Labor in two of its most marginal seats, showing the Coalition leading 51.2% to 27.9% on the primary vote in Macquarie and 53.2% to 31.1% in Dobell. The poll was conducted by the Redbridge Group, which also had bad seat polling for Labor in August. However, it should be noted that the pollster is careful not to stake its reputation on its voting intention polling, with Samaras having observed that “Labor and the National Party always under-report in telephone surveys because they generally have a larger number of supporters who are difficult to engage”.
• I had a paywalled piece in Crikey yesterday considering the implications of Saturday’s results in New Zealand and the Australian Capital Territory.
UK, Europe and the US are now recording the highest daily cases since pandemic started.
They are coming into their winter.
It’s going to be brutal.
Meanwhile as continues to happen in Victoria, despite restrictions this virus continues to spread in any given cluster. Sigh…….
ABC radio yesterday morning interviewed a doctor who runs a Covid clinic in one of the Victorian hotspots, the first he new that his clinic was in a hotspot were media reports, nothing from Victoria’s DHHS. Seems to be ongoing problems with Vic health.
Also yesterday there was a protest by the so called freedom fighters, which has become mainstream around the globe.
Aligning itself with far right wing,
anti vax
deep state pedo ring belief cabal
Children in the tunnels
Virus is a hoax etc.
The reporting by the media has been disingenuous to say the least. They reported the protests as against the lockdown.
They totally omitted this from their reports.
The media is a disgrace.
Vogon Poet
Perhaps Jenny Mikakos was wise to jump ship early.
We are now just 1 Scarramucci away from the US election.
Holdenhillbilly @ #1500 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 8:35 am
Trump is cutting it a bit fine to announce a new miracle cure or vaccine before election day to harvest a few more gullible vaters.
Surely GladysB is done.
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@MFWitches
Waiting with bated breath now for how #NewsCorpse will spin this tomorrow into being #DansFault or maybe #BrettsFault but certainly *not* the fault of poor widdle unlucky-in-love silly-laydee-brain Gladys …
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MFW
@MFWitches
· 13h
Imagine @GladysB thinking it’s okay to shred/delete thousands of relevant incriminatory documents, but we ordinary plebs have to be able to produce tax records & receipts going back 7 years for the ATO or Centrelink or face serious penalties?
This is beyond disgraceful.
Obviously needs serious investigation. 😆
lizzie @ #1508 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 7:48 am
It seems you can add the Wellness industry in general.
For the too serious: this above is an exaggeration, but does super fitness lead to a sense of having infallible judgement?
The obscenity that Scotty is pretending to be enraged about is small bikkies compared with the obscenity of CEO salaries and bonuses. Talk about gaslighting!
Barney ITB
Yep. The wellness industry which is very big on multi level marketing.
Bullshit on steroids.
It appears Greg Sheridan has the scoop on the coming reshuffle- and has commenced the softening up by the proven Murdoch/Liberal approach of questioning the competence of women…
‘When he comes to do his cabinet reshuffle, probably early or mid-December, Prime Minister Scott Morrison should move Linda Reynolds out of Defence and replace her with Peter Dutton.
Defence industry has been alive with rumours that both Reynolds and the Defence Industry Minister, Melissa Price, were likely to be moved. Now a widespread view in the government is that replacing Reynolds with Dutton would be the best move, but it’s unlikely to happen.
There are all sorts of plausible political explanations for this. Why disrupt a harmonious ship, etc? But Morrison should make the change.
At a time of unprecedented strategic challenge, we have, in Reynolds and Foreign Minister Marise Payne, the most weirdly silent duo we have ever had.
In terms of media profile, Reynolds makes Payne look like Kevin Rudd. But neither projects any strategic narrative.
To consider how bizarre this is, just try to imagine any national government in which the Treasurer and the Finance Minister had both effectively taken vows of silence — a government in which neither contested, daily across all media, the economic debate.
………
Both also have the reputation with stakeholders of being very hard to get to see personally. A government can have one such minister in national security. To have two is crazy.
There are broader criticisms of Reynolds’s performance. Defence is critical and should always be held by a first division political figure. Reynolds is a good and conscientious person, but not even her best friend could argue she is a first division player in politics. How many Australians have even heard of the Defence Minister?
Malcolm Fraser went from defence minister to prime minister (via a few other roles). Kim Beazley and Brendan Nelson went from defence to lead their parties. Robert Hill as defence minister was leader of the government in the Senate. They are the sorts of politicians who should hold Defence.
Despite the fact that Morrison, and Peter Dutton on the homeland security side, are doing well, there are some real problems the government is neglecting. One is the French submarines. I am perhaps the last mainstream newspaper commentator who fully supports this submarine program. Because the government never says boo about the issue, the debate is now substantially led by folks who wouldn’t know a submarine if it bit them at bath time.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/pm-must-replace-linda-reynolds-with-peter-dutton-at-defence/news-story/2010cae952534015bf83a32ce03b6262
Lizzie, I think it’s down to susceptibility to the boutique pseudoscience whoo that characterises the beauty industry generally. The idea that the person in the mirror knows something that others do not, hooking into the quasi-religious belief systems that so often go with the promise of physical personal perfectibility. A cult of visible narcissism in which solipsism takes strange forms and which embraces magical thinking as evidence of personal discernment.
Vanity of vanities. And yeah, multilevel marketing.
Warrigal
Excellent descriptor! Vanity of vanities.
sprocket_
The point is not their gender, but their competence in their positions. It’s difficult to any female OR male pollies in Morrison’s gov who are satisfactory.
There’s this meme emerging that Gladys has dropped her standards, ethics, propriety. Well fmd. Am I the only one who thinks she never had any? It’s a simple as the old adage of judging people by the company they keep. And I don’t mean Dashing Daryl. I mean John Howard and the whole lousy lot of them who drafted and slipstreamed in his foul air.
Not to mention action speak louder than words, and any other number of proverbs and proverbial wisdoms.
End. Of. Rant
Bring on the storms.
lizzie @ #1510 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 9:51 am
Sure. Physical fitness inspires self confidence. The physical confidence is obvious. And little things occur like respect. Just knowing you have (or had) the ability to become fit boosts confidence some more. I imagine you might conflate that with an ability to succeed in other things. Over confidence might be a common outcome. Dunning-Kruger?
lizzie @ #1511 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 10:54 am
Her first mistake was being a female.
France 42,000 new cases, 298 deaths.
Late Riser
Yes, I was thinking Dunning Kruger, too.
On the politics of gender
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/24/queensland-election-has-palaszczuk-helped-defeat-the-politics-of-gender
I swear Greg Sheridan was one of those telling how qualified Linda Reynolds was when she was appointed to the portfolio. I can’t get through the paywall to find anything however.
ItzaDream
A pointless, but vaguely interesting, exercise would be to compare Abbott’s and Morrison’s attitudes to women.
[‘What does Amy Coney Barrett mean for the Supreme Court?’]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/opinion/supreme-court-amy-coney-barrett.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
I think the fitness freaks are overcompensating for poor self esteem. And holding strong opinions contrary to the mainstream helps bolster a sense of being an individual of independent thought, while sadly lacking the insight into the reality that they are actually exposing their stupidity.
ItzaDream
Very seductive. The weakling who turns himself into Superman.
There is the other view, of course, like Barnaby’s ex-wife who became a champion body-builder. And who would criticise her for that? 🙂
lizzie says:
Saturday, October 24, 2020 at 10:54 am
The obscenity that Scotty is pretending to be enraged about is small bikkies compared with the obscenity of CEO salaries and bonuses. Talk about gaslighting!
Cartier signifies a set of neo-aristocratic values. This includes the idea that luxury belongs to the elite….and vice versa. By identifying oneself with Cartier – by decorating your body with jewellery and gold – a wearer is saying they not only deserve but also understand beauty. This is pure snobbery, to say the least. Money is not good enough for those who love themselves so well. They need to be adorned too.
It really says something about the Australia Post board that they think they should be decorating themselves – prettifying themselves – while the economy is stifled by Covid and while their workforce is being worked harder and tougher than ever.
Morrison has nailed it this time. He’s done a Mao.
There is a solace in fitness. I remember well a handful of years of very high work stress and how the gym helped.
ItzaDream @ #1459 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 11:20 am
Extreme exercise regimes lead to excess male hormones in both men and women, leading to a tendency towards aggression. Sufferers also tend to have low iron reserves and low white blood cell counts. Steroids add to the imbalances.
Looks like final ACT election has been declared as Labor 10 Greens 6 Libs 9
Undoubtedly the best Greens result for the ACT
Must be somewhat galling for the carbon club having to lobby and convene amidst a city now so overtaken by foresight, with a more representative democratic system and no significant fossil fuel resource they can use to try and blackmail the politicians and citizenry with in regard to some imaginary economic survival.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-24/electoral-commissioner-announces-final-act-election-results/12809834
Greens took two seats off each of Labor and Liberal it seems.
https://antonygreen.com.au/act-2020-election-post-election-updates/
There is a solace in fitness. I remember well a handful of years of very high work stress and how the gym helped
Indeed. Exercise is a very effective mental health intervention, but I think Lizzy is talking about something more ego-enmeshed. A kind of narcissistic supply.
Warrigal, agreed. My comment was more “babies and bathwater”. I should written “also a solace”.
‘She did what!?’: Wound-up PM goes into bat for ‘quiet Australians’
Scrooter wins again.
How about this;
WOUND UP OPPOSITION LEADER CALLS OUT PMs ‘STAGGERING’ HYPOCRICY’
Yeah, right.
Today Melbourne got to the 5 new infections per day over 14 days.
Taylormade’s favourite epidemiologist is once again shown up for the nobody he is.:
The Lincoln Project have gotten under the skins of Jared and Ivanka…..
GG
Tim Smith and the rest of his fellow travellers have been very unhelpful from the get go.
Good to see the five case average arrive, but this latest cluster from Preston may delay lifting further restrictions.
It’s all rather frustrating
Sprocket
Lol,it can’t be defamatory. I recall Kushner saying that,
Tim Smith, Magniloquent Prick?
I’m also thinking what has Emma Alberici got to say as well. Her defence of GladysB was embarrassing.
That Antifa Dr Sheep PersonSeedlingDroplet
@noplaceforsheep
So how are the romance narrative journos explaining away Gladbag’s foray into the shredding room then?
7:00 AM · Oct 24, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
Trumps Crime Family keeps growing:
https://youtu.be/-qriLPZOGLE (CNN).
Kronomex @ #1540 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 12:04 pm
He’s a traitor who deliberately undermined efforts to contain a pandemic.
He’s a social terrorist.
Red Douglas
Not sure if correct term is social terrorist, but he has been absolutely disgraceful.
Victoria @ #1541 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 12:06 pm
There’s a bit of elitism with some of Gladys’ defenders.
Victoria @ #1538 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 10:59 am
As situations evolve changes can be made. It’s not hard, or it shouldn’t be. But winner takes all politics means that changes are interpreted as admitting a mistake, doing a U-turn or an about face, succumbing to pressure, etc. That the goal has been achieved is hugely admirable. It always represented a fundamental change of conditions. Those conditions have been achieved. Well done Melbourne and Victoria! The “pivot” could/should now be to tactics more suited to the new situation.
Hello. I am seeking advice from the political activists present who have had practice dealing with RWNJs. Some acquaintances on facebook have posted this right wing attack article about Hunter Biden. The source is a dubious right wing blog run by Michelle Malkin, formerly of Fox News. Timing is “conveniently” close to the US election.
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2020/10/22/case-closed-hunter-bidens-business-partner-confirms-emails-real/?fbclid=IwAR03bvTg1JtDbtUtKMFWVqgoLAerZhlvJdAZEqaxZVBj7q_bkyMQvn7ORNk
My question is, how do you deal with this? It is obviously propaganda, but when I pointed that out, I was suddenly a political hatemonger and “deluded”, even if I posted links to items clearly disproving it. How do you puncture the RW delusion-sphere for those living in it?
Rex Douglas
Whatever it is, they should be ashamed,. Do they have anything at all to say about the latest revelations. What excuse are they going to have for GladysB this time?
Socrates
There is so much disinformation being propagated. Frankly my view is that these people want to believe it, so therefore nothing anyone can say will change their mind.
The anti lockdown protestors here in Melbourne, actually believe that Daniel Andrews locked down the city so he can bring children through the tunnels
These children are supposedly being used For blood harvesting and abuse
How can people believe this shit. But alas they do.
Socrates @ #1547 Saturday, October 24th, 2020 – 12:11 pm
You can’t. The more you argue the more positions are hardened.
I recommend treating those acquaintances like the virus – socially distance.