Essential Research state and federal leadership polling

High and improving personal ratings for all incumbent leaders, as concern about COVID-19 eases just slightly.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research survey includes the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings, which find Scott Morrison up three on approval to 66% and down two on approval to 25%, Anthony Albanese down four on approval to 40% and up four on disapproval to 39%, and Morrison holding a 53-24 lead as preferred prime minister, out from 50-25. There was also a six point increase in the government’s good rating on COVID-19 response to 67%, with the poor rating steady on 15%.

As it did a fortnight ago, the poll also asked about the mainland state premiers from the small sub-samples in the relevant states: Gladys Berejiklian was at 75% approval (up seven) and 17% disapproval (down four); Daniel Andrews at 65% approval (up four) and 28% disapproval (down five); Annastacia Palazczuk at 65% approval (steady) and 27% disapproval (up three); Mark McGowan at 87% (up nine) approval and 7% disapproval (down five); and Steven Marshall, who was not featured in last fortnight’s polling, at 60% approval and 21% disapproval. State government handling of COVID-19 was rated as good by 82% of respondents in Western Australia, 76% in South Australia, 75% in New South Wales, 71% in Queensland and 59% in Victoria.

Respondents were asked how much attention they had been paying to recent news stories, with 73% saying they had closely followed the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in Victoria, 68% the US presidential election, 36% the allegations of sexual misconduct raised by the ABC’s Four Corners, and 29% Joel Fitzgibbon’s resignation from the shadow cabinet. It also finds an easing in concern over COVID-19, with 27% rating themselves very concerned (down three), 44% quite concerned (down two), 23% not that concerned (up three) and 6% not at all concerned (up two). The peak of concern was in early August, when 50% were very concerned, 40% quite concerned, 7% not that concerned and 3% not at all concerned.

The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1010.

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.

2,211 comments on “Essential Research state and federal leadership polling”

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  1. A bit from the ABC story on the AFP and NSW police raiding the CFMEU:

    The raids — on both CFMEU offices and homes — began early this morning, but no arrests have been made at this stage.

    So ABC is speculating some CFMEU officials will be arrested – sort of saying that an Indigenous/Coloured person has entered a shop but has not yet been arrested for stealing.

  2. BK @ #44 Wednesday, November 18th, 2020 – 9:58 am

    I have been having an intermittent, frequent sequence of internet drop outs and slower download speeds. This morning I called Telstra ang got straight through to a tech support person (Tess, with a lovely phone manner) who asked me a few questions and then ran some diagnostics. She confirmed the intermittency and booked an NBN service person to come on Friday morning to sort it out. Can’t complain about that service!

    I was experiencing frequent annoying dropouts. Telstra ran some tests and on about the 5th contact gave me the information that the fault is likely in the home wiring. Everything else was checking out as OK.
    I have electricians booked to arrive in the next hour or so and we will see what they find.

  3. When we were forced, finally, to switch from “Telstra-broadband” to “Telstra-NBN” we took the opportunity to quit Telstra. The reason we waited was to avoid disruption. When we were forced onto NBN, Telstra was at pains to hide the fact we could switch to a different provider. But at the end they made it easy enough. We switched because Telstra customer service was spotty, occasionally excellent but most of the time hopeless, and to save money. (We switched to Exetel-NBN and our phones to Aldi mobile.)

  4. Mavis @ #40 Wednesday, November 18th, 2020 – 9:49 am

    Mrs. Birminghan’s young son Simon has learned the art of deflection very well. Asked by Hamish (RN) why the Feds haven’t been critical of the SA government for the C.19 cluster in Adelaide, he responded (wwtte): “Look, I don’t want to get into semantics”.

    Actually, he said ‘word semantics’….which made me chuckle.
    A bit like Hamster and Simon chuckled away when Birmo recycled known bullshit about Victoria which Hamster said would need to be fact checked ….because he thought it “might” not be correct…and they had a good ol’ chuckle….
    FMD

  6. mundo

    Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 8:56 am
    Slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, catchee Scrooter.

    Albo is on the hunt…………

  7. poroti @ #NaN Wednesday, November 18th, 2020 – 10:51 am

    mundo

    Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 8:56 am
    Slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, slowlee, catchee Scrooter.

    Albo is on the hunt…………

    ” rel=”nofollow ugc”>

    I see you two still think you’re funny and contributing something of worth here.

  8. I refuse point blank to listen to the MSM these days, the only time I watch commercial TV is on Friday nights, and that’s simply because my Wife loves Better Homes and Gardens. I suspect I am far from the only person.

    +1

    Can’t stand BH&G though, the fakery of the presenters (they’re always SO happy!), gets on my goat.

    We haven’t had the TV for 3 months since we moved and I haven’t really missed it that much. I can catch up on most of the shows I like on my laptop. As they only provided a connection to Foxtel I said, yeah nah.

    However, I am getting an aerial put onto the house at my own expense because. Olympics. 😀

    You just don’t get the full experience on 15″.

  9. I agree with the commentary that Biden is doing some good staff picks
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/17/joe-biden-appointments-jen-o-malley-dillon

    I also think it’s great that the US has a President FOR union rights.
    We might see a return to 60’s union power in the US.
    Reaganism and Thatcherism finally having nails in its coffin.
    It’s going to be a very rough four years for the LNP as the media changes its tune.

    It’s also going to be very rough for Murdoch. 20 years of demonising unions on the record being undone.

    Using police to raid unions for political purposes will be seen as the attack on democracy that it is.

  10. The telstra modem I have for my NBN connection also has a 4G chip in it, so if the NBN goes down, it automatically cuts over to 4G.

    There are limitations on excessive data use while on 4G but in almost 2 years on NBN (Fibre to the basement) problems with NBN have been rare.

    More trouble with my old desktop’s WiFi card then the NBN.

  11. Laughtong

    I was experiencing frequent annoying dropouts. Telstra ran some tests and on about the 5th contact gave me the information that the fault is likely in the home wiring. Everything else was checking out as OK.
    I have electricians booked to arrive in the next hour or so and we will see what they find.

    _______________________________

    It’s always worth checking out the home wiring. I’m on Turnbull’s Fraudband (aka FTTN). A friend recently suggested I get a data cabling professional to come out and look after I mentioned we had these phone sockets that we never use. I was referred a tech (who was ex-Telstra) and he identified a number of problems.

    After a couple of hours work (costing about $335) the system downloaded 50% faster than previously (up to 40 mbps, rather than 30 mbps). And very few drop-outs now, except when the weather is bad. I suspect my problems are now to do with the external line (exposed to bad weather) and I should get hold of Optus to get NBN to sort it.

  12. Trump fires cybersecurity official who debunked the GOP lies about election fraud

    On Tuesday, outgoing President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he is firing Chris Krebs, the Director of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who was behind the government statement last week that the election was the most secure in history and “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

    In his tweets, Trump said that he explicitly is firing him over the statement, saying that he does not believe this to be true — and baselessly claiming that the election was in fact riddled with fraud.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/trump-fires-cybersecurity-official-who-debunked-the-gop-lies-about-election-fraud/

  13. We are going to see four years of the US President being Doug Cameron doing Adam Bandt style climate policy.

    Think about how that makes Joel Fitzgibbon and his allies look.

  15. Confessions @ #NaN Wednesday, November 18th, 2020 – 8:43 am

    Rick Wilson@TheRickWilson·
    8h
    Republicans start to relent: ‘It looks like it will be President Biden’ https://politi.co/2H8xSdN via @politico

    Relent faster.

    It truly has been astonishing how many Republicans have fallen in line behind Trump’s tantrum. Democrats were saying similar things in 2016, borne out of disappointment, but those were all random Dem people on Twitter, not sitting members in the congressional party.

    They are trying EVERYTHING to turn the election result around in Trump’s favour. This is the latest wrinkle that they’ve pulled out of their trick bag (apparently Joe Biden was too successful here):

    DETROIT — In a party-line vote, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers failed on Tuesday to certify its ballot count, punting the question of who won the state’s most densely populated region to a state regulatory board that meets Nov. 23.

    The four-member board’s two Republicans voted against certification, while its two Democrats voted to certify the results. Joe Biden holds a lead of nearly 148,000 votes in Michigan, and Democrats in the state believe the partisan split of the board in Wayne County – home to heavily Democratic Detroit — simply delays an inevitable official victory for Biden in the state.

    But in the short term, the standoff provides a public relations win to the Trump campaign and a group of Republican lawyers and activists who have questioned the legitimacy of the count in Detroit, which went overwhelmingly for Biden.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michigan-vote-canvassing-board/2020/11/17/12141222-287c-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html

  21. guytaur

    Fires DHS Secretary for election is secure comments

    Trump is doing him a yuge favour. Being sacked by Trump will brighten your employment chances post Trump. There’s probably a queue of staff trying to be fired.

  23. Poroti

    Yes. Look at how much Democrats listened to ex Governor Kasich for not being Trump. This despite his anti choice record on abortion and other issues the Democrats have as part of their core policies.

  24. Premier Steven Marshall has been probed about a listening device being placed in a State Government meeting room in “error” by South Australia’s corruption watchdog.

    The past and present Independent Commissioners Against Corruption are being asked to explain themselves after their agency wrongly bugged a government meeting room.

    Labor and SA Best want former Commissioner Bruce Lander and current Commissioner Ann Vanstone, as well as the ICAC reviewer, to front parliament’s Crime and Public Integrity Committee to answer questions about the “unprecedented” incident.

    Mr Marshall was asked about the incident in State Parliament on Wednesday morning, on the first day of estimates hearing aimed at scrutiny of the State Budget and SA’s finances.

    The Premier was also probed about a controversial travel rort, investigated by ICAC, and revealed four MPs have reimbursed the parliament for payments “in the hundreds” after the scandal was revealed.

    Questions about a listening device came after the 2019/20 annual review into the ICAC’s operations revealed that the agency bugged an unnamed “government meeting room”.

    “One matter related to an error in the installation of a listening device in a government meeting room,” it read.

    “As soon as the error was discovered, which was shortly after the error occurred, appropriate action was taken to remove the device and no information obtained was used by ICAC for any purpose.”

    The report said the Supreme Court was advised of the error “as soon as it became known”.

    No other details were provided.

  25. a major sticking point in years of negotiations on the defence agreement: whether ADF members may potentially face the death penalty if convicted of serious crimes such as murder while in Japan.

    Scrott does a fine impersonation of Sir Humphrey when asked about this. With so much ‘Ssir Humphrey’ I guess the answer is “Yes”………..

    11:41

    Daniel Hurst Daniel Hurst

    JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, under the Reciprocal Access Agreement, the in principle agreement signed today, will Australian troops be subject to the death penalty in Japan?

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/nov/18/south-australia-covid-hotel-quarantine-nsw-victoria-politics-japan

  27. Cat

    I get where you are coming from. I understand how this government is driving you to make comments undermining innocent until proven guilty.

    The problem with Robodebt is the lawyers settling in such a way the government gets away with it.

    It’s the same the world over.
    Labor needs to make the LNP pay politically. From what I have seen on twitter Labor is trying.

    These things keep improving for Labor as Murdoch loses the power of credibility.

    I still want to see Labor take a leaf out of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s book and put in place real antitrust legislation that gives our Competition and Consumer Protection some real enforcement powers.

    If AG Barr and the Democrats can go after Google and the Democrats can break up Facebook so Instagram and Whats App are no longer part of it Labor can break up concentration of media ownership in Australia.

    Thus ensuring never again will the LNP get a propaganda outlet like Murdoch.

  28. No one does a bitch slap like Vogue:

    “Rise and tweet” is her father’s modus operandi, but today Ivanka Trump—First Daughter, ineffectual White House adviser, and former purveyor of mass-market handbags—got in on the action, tweeting a quote from Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and—stay with me—urging her 5.7 million followers to “Focus on what is before you, on what you can control and ignore the trolls!”

    https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1001434734306709507

    If you can possibly believe it, this tweet may have been less a genuine attempt at motivating the masses and more a thinly veiled response to criticism recently lobbed Ivanka’s way. On Sunday, Ivanka posted an Instagram of herself nuzzling her youngest son, Theodore . . . shortly after the country learned that U.S. officials have lost track of nearly 1,500 immigrant children, many of whom had crossed the Mexican border into the United States from Central America. This, in the wake of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy on undocumented immigration and penchant for separating children from their parents.

    The response was swift and impassioned, with the likes of political strategist Brian Klaas tweeting in response: “This is so unbelievably tone-deaf, given that public outrage is growing over young kids being forcibly ripped from the arms of their parents at the border—a barbaric policy that Ivanka Trump is complicit in supporting.” Or, as comedian Patton Oswalt put it:

    https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/status/1000800559681626112

    It makes Ivanka’s sage advice to “ignore the trolls!” seem as out of touch as ever. (Though, for what it’s worth, she may want to share this hot tip with her dad, Twitter’s reigning troll in chief. What is it with Trump women making cyberbullying their pet project?) Who are the true “trolls” in this scenario: federal agents separating families at the border or, um, people criticizing Ivanka for not doing enough about it? Suffice to say there are much bigger bad guys out there than the people in her mentions. But it seems Ivanka, former Instagram influencer, may have forgotten that she’s an adviser to the president of the United States now, with ostensible power and influence—not just online, but in real life.

    https://www.vogue.com/article/ivanka-trump-instagram-scandal-ignore-the-trolls

  29. The Premier, SA Health and Police Commissioner will provide a major COVID-19 update at 12.30pm (SA time), with a significant escalation expected to be announced.

  30. poroti @ #75 Wednesday, November 18th, 2020 – 11:59 am

    a major sticking point in years of negotiations on the defence agreement: whether ADF members may potentially face the death penalty if convicted of serious crimes such as murder while in Japan.

    Scrott does a fine impersonation of Sir Humphrey when asked about this. With so much ‘Ssir Humphrey’ I guess the answer is “Yes”………..

    11:41

    Daniel Hurst Daniel Hurst

    JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, under the Reciprocal Access Agreement, the in principle agreement signed today, will Australian troops be subject to the death penalty in Japan?

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/nov/18/south-australia-covid-hotel-quarantine-nsw-victoria-politics-japan

    Morrison is such an empty suit.

    I can’t believe how Labor is so hesitant or unable to go all out on him.

    Keating would have torn him to shreds by now.

  32. phoenixRED @ #62 Wednesday, November 18th, 2020 – 10:29 am

    Trump fires cybersecurity official who debunked the GOP lies about election fraud

    On Tuesday, outgoing President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he is firing Chris Krebs, the Director of the DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who was behind the government statement last week that the election was the most secure in history and “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

    In his tweets, Trump said that he explicitly is firing him over the statement, saying that he does not believe this to be true — and baselessly claiming that the election was in fact riddled with fraud.

    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/trump-fires-cybersecurity-official-who-debunked-the-gop-lies-about-election-fraud/

    Good career move for Krebs. (63 days 15 hours 12 minutes to go.)

  34. guytaur @ #63 Wednesday, November 18th, 2020 – 10:31 am

    We are going to see four years of the US President being Doug Cameron doing Adam Bandt style climate policy.

    Think about how that makes Joel Fitzgibbon and his allies look.

    It may enhance them, if they promote themselves as defiant heroes standing up for the victims of, I don’t know, something. Australia has a surprising number of Trump supporters. And Fitzgibbon’s non-allies already know how he looks.

  35. ‘American hero’ Chris Krebs praised after firing by presidential tweet: ‘Truth is kryptonite to Trump’

    On Tuesday, after President Donald Trump fired top DHS cybersecurity official Chris Krebs for defending the integrity of the presidential election, commenters on social media poured out their gratitude to the terminated civil servant — and buried the president in scorn for his efforts to undermine democracy.

    Krebs told the truth, and Trump’s lies have no basis in fact. He was fired for telling the truth to the American people. https://t.co/9uqmwTP2Va — Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti)

    Trump just “terminated” Chris Krebs, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director. By tweet, of course. As predicted. His reason? That Krebs dared to call the Nov. 3 election “the most secure in American history.” The truth is kryptonite to Trump.

    — Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw)

    https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/american-hero-chris-krebs-praised-after-firing-by-presidential-tweet-truth-is-kryptonite-to-trump/

  43. Afternoon all. I commented a few days ago that it was hard to believe the NSW Transport overpayment for land could happen by accident, if you knew the processes involved. Sure enough, NSW Liberal Transport Minister Andrew Constance was warned in advance the site was contaminated. Why did he still sign off on the payment?
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/18/nsw-parliament-to-vote-on-referring-535m-parramatta-land-purchase-to-icac

    So on the same day in NSW we have details of a scandalous, possibly criminal waste of $50 million of public money being public yet not being referred to ICAC, while the NSW and Australian Federal Liberal Police Farces are raiding a union office where there is no public evidence of any crime??

    Keating was right, we have become a banana republic. It took Ferdinand Morrison and Imelda Berejiklian to do it.

  48. “SA Chief Health Officer, Nicola Spurrier, is a real class act!”

    State medical staff have to deliver services, not policies. You don’t make it to CMO in the State system without knowing something about health.

  49. “I need everybody to basically find a safe place for the next six days and stay there as much as possible” – SA’s chief health officer Nicola Spurrier

  50. I think the Covid standard has now been set for Australia, how state governments shall act any time an outbreak occurs. I think the public will back this sort of response every single time from now on with the exception of the conspiracy nuts.

    I think Hotel Quarantine will need to be moved to regional locations and avoid the cooler climates during the winter months.

    I still think that there is big dollars in rolling out global Quarantine hubs in this country…

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