Essential Research leadership ratings

Yet more strong leadership ratings for Scott Morrison, although most give greater credit for COVID-19 management to their state and territory leaders.

The fortnightly Essential Research poll includes the pollster’s more-or-less monthly reading of the leadership ratings, which record a four point increase in Scott Morrison’s approval rating to 65% and a two point drop in disapproval to 28%. Anthony Albanese is respectively down two to 40% and steady on 33%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister increases slightly, from 51-25 to 52-24.

Also featured are the pollster’s regular questions on federal and state government handling of COVID-19, with the added twist of a question asking who respondents felt had performed better out of the Prime Minister and their Premier or Chief Minister. This found 52% favouring their state or territory leader compared with 30% for Scott Morrison. The poll nonetheless gives the federal government its strongest result for handling of the pandemic in at least six months, with 69% rating it good (up two on a fortnight ago) and 12% as poor (down two).

The state government results are little changed for the three states with passable sample sizes: the New South Wales government’s good rating is up a point to 72%; Victoria’s is down two to 59% (the state’s lockdown was announced on the third day of the six-day polling period); and Queensland’s is down two to 76%. Western Australia’s is at 88%, the highest reading in at least six months, after the conclusion of that state’s lockdown, which is up eight on the previous poll, conducted shortly before the lockdown began. However, here the sample size is below 200 and the margin of error as high as 10%. The same applies to South Australia’s 79%, down one on last time.

The poll also has questions about Craig Kelly’s recent behaviour, although I wonder about a question wording that says Kelly has been “sharing Covid-19 misinformation”, the consistently negative tone of the propositions being put to the respondents, and the lack of clear response options along the lines of “who’s Craig Kelly?”. The results find 41% agreeing that Morrison has showed poor leadership, without offering clarity on how many disagreed and how many had no opinion, and 56% agreeing Kelly was “more interested in sharing Covid-19 misinformation and building his media profile than representing his constituency”.

The full report features still further questions on COVID-19 and one on a 2050 net zero carbon emissions target. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1109.

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.

2,424 comments on “Essential Research leadership ratings”

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  6. SamraTW
    The lion’s share of the money goes to Murdoch. Let’s put it this way, Sky News in Australia was busy misinforming their viewers regarding the US election and Trump’s fraud claims even while their sibling Fox News in the US decided that their democracy was more important than Trump (at least, for a few hours :P). Sky News in Australia obviously has no stake in US democracy so couldn’t care less what lies they were peddling, but no doubt they would term what they were doing “public interest journalism” and how would anyone begin to contest that in terms of getting them to actually shift money somewhere else?

    As for tracking where the money goes, that’s literally impossible. There’s nothing to stop a business moving their money around (I think the term for it is fungible?). At best, whatever sum they get from these agreements becomes a floor for their spending on “public interest journalism”.

    Take the ABC. For example (all numbers pulled out of thin air), let’s say the ABC gets $10M dollars from Google/FB on top of $10M they currently spend on “public interest journalism” for a total of $20M. Over a decade, “efficiency dividends” whittle that amount down to the $10M marked as being from Google/FB. The rest is clawed back by the government. In the end, no extra money is spent on “public interest journalism”, though the government can’t drop below the $10M from Google/FB, and the government earned $10M to spend on election bribes.

    That’s assuming they even try to legislate that the money be spent on “public interest journalism”.

  8. Mavis @ #2032 Sunday, February 21st, 2021 – 9:54 pm

    So, the Joker’s wins his 9th AO men’s singles final. Not a particularly entertaining match and he only wins $US2,138,125, a whopping reduction of 33.25% from last year’s purse, with more money allocated to earlier rounds. And it seems that despite some early concerns, C.19 contagion has not been a factor. Sur Paris.

    So much for Djokovic’s stomach muscle tear. I turned the match off. He’s a charlatan, albeit with talent.

  9. Do NewsCorp outlets provide legitimate “public interest journalism”, in your opinion?

    Mostly not in my opinion, however News Corp would claim they do, and judging from the fact that the LNP have been in power for more than 19 of the last 25 years I would hazard to say that most of the Australian population believe they do also. It is only propaganda if people recognize it as such.

  12. Given the circumstances, these are truly appalling numbers for Albo.

    The electorate is clearly trying to tell them something, but Labor is apparently not listening.

  13. Interesting that the Coalition’s Primary Vote has stayed roughly the same since the ’19 election but Labor’s PV has risen by 4, which seems to have come from Others. I wonder whether that was from people who have gotten hip to Clive Palmer’s jive?

  14. And I have to ask at this point, are the Greens really so stup… *cough* naive that they think throwing in a line about “public interest journalism” is useful, other than for providing some nice propaganda for the news industry. Can’t be enforced but hey, now it’s official, this is being done for “public interest journalism”, even the Greens said so.

    Even the $10M (or whatever) they got for the ABC and SBS will be gone within a decade. Maybe they should go google “fungible”.

    :rolleyes:

  15. C@tmomma @ #2405 Sunday, February 21st, 2021 – 10:10 pm

    Mavis @ #2032 Sunday, February 21st, 2021 – 9:54 pm

    So, the Joker’s wins his 9th AO men’s singles final. Not a particularly entertaining match and he only wins $US2,138,125, a whopping reduction of 33.25% from last year’s purse, with more money allocated to earlier rounds. And it seems that despite some early concerns, C.19 contagion has not been a factor. Sur Paris.

    So much for Djokovic’s stomach muscle tear. I turned the match off. He’s a charlatan, albeit with talent.

    Couldn’t bring myself to watch it.
    The mad Serb is a strange fellow indeed.
    Kind of creepy.
    Rich, self absorbed and creepy.

  16. Uneventful Newspoll. The interesting thing is the gradual recovery in Labor’s PV appears to be sticking. I wonder where it is occurring…in which State/s; in which demographics.

    Not the worst poll I’ve seen.

    Morrison has been more visible than usual. Not surprising to see his ranking improve a notch….for the very little that measure is actually worth.

  22. It’s very gratifying to see that the vote shares of the misfit ON and No Windmills Parties are stagnating and the “other” vote is decaying. This is related to the pandemic and heralds a very poor showing by the micro/misfit/outlaw groups in the WA election.

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