Essential Research: leadership ratings and climate change

The first public poll of the year finds little change on leaders’ ratings, but more sanguine attitudes on climate change policy than prevailed a year ago.

Essential Research has opened its account for the year with a poll that include its monthly-or-so leadership ratings, which record only slight changes on the end of last year: Scott Morrison is down a point on approval to 61% and up two on disapproval to 30%, Anthony Albanese is down one to 42% and up four to 33%, and Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister goes from 50-24 to 51-25.

The survey also posed some semi-regular questions on climate change, finding a striking increase in the view that Australia is doing enough to address it (from 19% a year ago to 35%) and a corresponding decline in the view that not enough is being done (from 62% to 42%), with the “doing too much ” response up two to 10%. Despite this, 58% of respondents believed climate change related to human activity (up two on a year ago) against 32% who considered it part of normal climactic fluctuation (steady).

The other questions in the survey for the most part aren’t particularly political, relating to COVID-19 vaccine uptake and Australia Day. The change to the words of the national anthem finds 54% support and 16% opposition, with 30% on the fence.

In other poll news, The Australian yesterday related that polling conducted by Community Engagement for the CFMEU suggested Labor was in big trouble in the Hunter region seats of Paterson (Liberal up from 32.5% to 42.9%, Labor down from 41.1% to 30%, Greens down from 6.9% to 6.8%, and One Nation down from 14.2% to 6.9%, Nationals on 1.8%) and Shortland (Liberal up from 37.4% to 44.9%, Labor down from 41.1% to 28.3%, Greens down from 8.3% to 6.2%, One Nation on 8% and Nationals on 1.3%). The polls were conducted in November from samples of 955 per electorate. Given the evident interest of the client of putting pressure on the opposition leadership over coal mining, and all the other qualifications that apply to reports of private polling, a degree of caution is advised.

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.

2,129 comments on “Essential Research: leadership ratings and climate change”

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  1. Newspoll tonight? Thought there was supposed to be one last weekend? Came looking but guess not. Keen to see if SfM’s coronabounce has come to an end yet. It’s about time!

  2. Speaking of the Lords Prayer

    Back at Newcastle University’s Maths Building there was a computer system whose System Manager was named Albert..

    Our Albert
    Who Art in V202
    Hallowed be thy password..

    I can’t remember the rest, but it was taped to the door of the terminal room for some months.

  3. Pfizer. After the second shot it will be interesting to see what reality is.

    UK examining data suggesting first shot immunity as low as 33%

    The deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said it is examining data from Israel indicating that immunity after a first dose of Covid-19 vaccine could be as low as 33%.

    Prof Anthony Harnden told Sky’s Sophie Ridge On Sunday:

    The Israeli data is preliminary data, it does involve PCR testing which is of course asymptomatic cases as well as symptomatic cases. They have not followed up for more than three weeks and the statistical methods they used are not clear. We will be looking at this in detail but at the moment our clear steer is the delayed second dose strategy is going to save many lives nationally.

    He added that people could end up needing an annual coronavirus shot to keep up with variations in the virus.

    We may well be in a situation where we have to have an annual coronavirus vaccine much like we do with the flu vaccine, but the public should be reassured that these technologies are relatively easy to edit and tweak, so once we find strains that are predominant, the vaccines can be altered.

    At the moment it is really good news that these vaccines we are delivering at the moment do seem to be effective against the major circulating strains and the variant strains in the UK at the moment.

  4. DisplayName says:
    Sunday, January 24, 2021 at 8:27 pm

    …..arguably our news industry should be paying Google and not the other way around.

    Correct.

  5. Nsays:
    Sunday, January 24, 2021 at 10:40 pm

    I agree, you are using Google’s services, you should pay for it.

    Just be lucky they haven’t sued the news agencies for being news aggregator, without permission.

  6. … …..arguably our news industry should be paying Google and not the other way around.

    I’m surprised that Google don’t put in a counter claim – that the old media pay them for linking their crap to potential new subscribers.

    The Federal Government wants to shake down new media to subsidise their propaganda outlets.

  7. frednk

    Too many things going on all at once with that vaccine first shot. At least delaying the second shot will now give us some data on the effect of the vaccine after just one shot and after a month and two months and possibly three.

  8. Another thing about Google is that they made it very simple technically to tell Google’s robot to ignore your site and not link it. Oddly enough, media sites don’t choose to do that.

  9. Briefly:

    DisplayName says:

    Sunday, January 24, 2021 at 8:27 pm

    …..arguably our news industry should be paying Google and not the other way around.

    Correct.

    I don’t use Facebook so I don’t know what they do, but in respect of Google Berners-Lee etc are correct (notwithstanding they are paid by Google) links should not be charged

    News Ltd could try to argue they own the headlines of their articles, which typically as the “title” of the link. In fact this is plausible as the only thing they seemingly contribute is a lurid headline that triggers a click (to an article often contradicting its own headline)

    News Ltd would want to be very careful what they wish for – Google can easily replace the News Ltd authored headline with a more accurate one that is automatically generated from the linked article using AI. This is likely to have a devastating effect on the News Ltd business model. Note that Google will be under pressure to do this anyway – a large part of the News Limited strategy for lying with impunity is producing misleading headlines that are inconsistent with the articles (which will be truthful) and relying on their target audience forming impressions without actually reading the article.

  10. So I think I get it.

    Player One, who hates the Labor Party with the passion of a million dying suns, knows precisely what the Labor Party must do to win an election.

    And Player One, from a homeopathically soaked hillside (hot tip, its just water) knows precisely what gets governments elected.

    I must say I’m dubious.

  11. I’m confused.

    Newscorp and many other media outlets have a paywall.

    If they don’t want people reading their articles for free, then don’t create links that allow someone to do so.

  12. Player 1,
    I am curious about your comments on an article that reports that modelling shows that the world population will peak in circa 2070, and then plateau, and gradually decline: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521

    Your comments piqued my interest because you have frequently said that you will not give your first preference vote to party that does not have a sustainable population policy for Australia.

    You have never been explicit about the number of persons you believe can inhabit Australia with it being sustainable,but the rhetoric you use is that of parties that believe that Australia’s population should be frozen at the circa 25 million we currently have.

    So, to the article and your comments:

    frednk @ #1912 Sunday, January 24th, 2021 – 3:43 pm

    Haven’t you caught up yet; birth rates are below 2 in most counties. We are in for a population crunch but it is not overpopulation.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521

    Player 1
    Sure, birth rates are below 2 … unless you include all those countries where the birth rate is above 2.

    You know, the shithole countries …

    What about Africa?

    The population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to treble in size to more than three billion people by 2100.

    And the study says Nigeria will become the world’s second biggest country, with a population of 791 million.

    Prof Murray says: “We will have many more people of African descent in many more countries as we go through this.

    “Global recognition of the challenges around racism are going to be all the more critical if there are large numbers of people of African descent in many countries.”

    I just want to go back to your comment above:
    Sure, birth rates are below 2 … unless you include all those countries where the birth rate is above 2.

    You know, the shithole countries …

    What about Africa?

    For those who want the context to my questions to Player 1, read the article on the
    BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521 and then consider my questions to P1.

    Firstly, what do you have against people in Africa, and why do you describe them as shithole countries?

    I cannot think of a single reason why you would think African countries are worse than European countries, once you remember that all the white, European countries only came to dominate Africa in the last 200 years- a tic of history – almost all humanity lived in villages without power or a water supply only 100 years ago. If white Europeans were so superior to Africans, how come they missed out on showing their superiority for all but 0.2% of the last 5000 years since humanity discovered intensive agriculture and population growth took off.

    Second, from the article: As a result, the researchers expect the number of people on the planet to peak at 9.7 billion around 2064, before falling down to 8.8 billion by the end of the century.

    The 2060-2080 peak for the number of humans on the planet at a bit under 10 billion, is a fairly stable prediction, given that it has been mirrored in many statistically valid studies.

    Are you saying you disagree that the population peak will occur as above, after which the world’s population will decline? Do you think the world’s population will keep growing?

    Are you saying, that because of shithole countries such as Africa, where women have too many children, the world population will keep rising without limit?

    Or are you saying that the population peak of circa 9.7 billion people will occur around 2070, and after that, the population will plateau and then start to gradually decline, but the majority of the population will be made up of people from shithole countries like those of sub-saharan Africa, and that this will be a bad thing?

  13. D&M, in response to P1:

    Are you saying, that because of shithole countries such as Africa, where women have too many children, the world population will keep rising without limit?

    P1 is Thomas(ina) Malthus – you know it makes sense!

  14. A few days ago we saw comment about WAXIT, moves by West Australian Conservatives to secede from the Federation. In 1933, West Australians did actually vote by referendum to secede but the vote was ruled invalid by the British Parliament.

    It was touch and go as to whether or not WA would join the Federation in the first place. Colonists opposed joining but the vote to join was carried by residents of the newly discovered goldfields. Many of these residents came from the Eastern States.

    An interesting development was that when it appeared that coastal citizens would vote no to the federation referendum, was a move by goldfields residents to form a new state called Auralia (latin for gold apparently) in the southeast corner of what is now WA with the intention of that becoming a part of the Australian Federation. For more, go here:

    https://www.outbackfamilyhistoryblog.com/auralia-a-brave-new-colony/

    There has been chatter recently about the WA Nationals refusing to join a coalition with the Liberals after to approaching election. Regional Sandgropers have never liked those Perthite city slickers much.

  15. The latest version of Windows Insiders has a “Taskbar Icon” for “News and Interests” which shows local weather, traffic and a myriad of assorted bits and bobs – sample below 👇👇👇

    One item of particular interest – What Does the Prime Minister Do?

    https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/test-results-say-teens-don-t-understand-shared-values-do-you-pass/ar-BB1cWhB5?ocid=winp1taskbar

    Many students could not even explain what the Prime Minister does.

    ‘It is disappointing that the results suggest our next generation isn’t demonstrating a sufficient level of understanding of the significance and history of our democracy and shared values,’ said David de Carvalho, CEO of the Australian Curriculum Assessment Authority.

    Help wanted.

    What does the Prime Minister do ❓

  16. Douglas and Milko @ #2120 Monday, January 25th, 2021 – 12:15 am

    Firstly, what do you have against people in Africa, and why do you describe them as shithole countries?

    OMG. I can’t believe I need to explain this.

    I was deliberately using Trump terminology (remember his appalling ‘shithole countries’ crack? No? Look it up) to make a point – i.e. to ridicule people who apparently think it is perfectly reasonable to just ignore half the countries in the world when declaring that the fertility rate is now below 2 (Look it up), and also that therefore either (a) we don’t have to worry about overpopulation any more, or (b) that underpopulation is now a major problem we must now address. Neither of these are true, of course. Unless you limit your thinking to the wealthier countries.

    Honestly. Ever heard the term ‘First World Problem’? This is a classic one. How about we try addressing the problems in those ‘shithole’ countries before we start worrying about the impacts on our retirement portfolios?

    We really do need a sarcasm emoji on here.

  17. Player One says:
    Sunday, January 24, 2021 at 9:56 pm
    Zerlo @ #2099 Sunday, January 24th, 2021 – 9:54 pm

    Player Onesays:
    Sunday, January 24, 2021 at 9:50 pm

    nah nah P1, you thinking Labor will win 2000 elections if Labor does what you say.
    Right. Because Labor doing nothing is working out so well.
    ……………………………………..

    So, not following your advice P1.

    Just your lead.

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