Essential Research: COVID-19, leader attributes and more

A new poll finds a dip in the federal government’s still strong ratings on COVID-19, with only a small minority of respondents planning to skip the vaccine.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll does not include leader ratings or voting intention, but does have the following:

• The regular question on COVID-19 response finds the federal government’s good rating suffering a seven point dip to 62%, returning it to where it was for several months before an uptick in November, with the poor rating up two to 14%. The small sample results for mainland state governments also record a drop for the Victorian government, whose good rating is down ten to 49%, while the New South Wales government holds steady at 72% and the Queensland government’s drops three to 73%. As ever, particular caution must be taken with the Western Australian and South Australian results given the sample sizes, but they respectively retain the best (down three to 85%) and second best (down one to 78%) results out of the five.

• The poll finds 50% of respondents saying they will get vaccinated as soon as possible, 40% that they will do so but not straight away, and 10% that they will never get vaccinated. Variation by voting intention is within the margin of error. By way of contrast, a US poll conducted by Monmouth University last month produced the same 50% result for the “soon as possible option”, but had “likely will never get the vaccine” markedly higher at 24%. This increased to 42% among Republicans, and doesn’t that just say it all.

• The poll includes a pared back version of the pollster’s semi-regular suite of questions on leaders’ attributes in relation to Scott Morrison, but not Anthony Albanese. The consistent pattern here is that Morrison is a bit less highly rated than he was last May, but substantially stronger than he was during the bushfire crisis in January. However, he has done notably better on “good in a crisis” (from 32% last January to 66% in May to the current 59%) than “out of touch” (from 62% to 47% and now back up to 59%), whereas his gains since January on “more honest than most politicians” (now 50%), “trustworthy” (52%) and “visionary” (41%) are all either 11% or 12%. Two new questions have been thrown into the mix: “in control of their team” and “avoids responsibility”, respectively 56% at 49%.

• Respondents were asked to respond to a series of propositions concerning “the recent allegations of rape and sexual assault from women working in Parliament”, which found 65% agreeing the government has been “more interested in protecting itself than the interests of those who have been assaulted”. Forty-five per cent felt there was “no difference in the way the different political parties treat women”, though the view was notably more prevalent among men (54%) than women (37%), and among those at the conservative end of the voting spectrum (53% among Coalition voters, 41% among Labor voters and 30% among Greens voters).

• A number of questions on tech companies found an appetite for stronger regulation, including 76% support for forcing them to remove misinformation from their platforms.

The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1074; full results 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.

2,565 comments on “Essential Research: COVID-19, leader attributes and more”

Comments Page 52 of 52
1 51 52
  1. Kate:

    It will be interesting to see if Professor Van Der Kolk responds to this characterisation of him by The Australian’s Jamie Walker as “a devotee of discredited recovered memory therapy”

    Quite possibly actionable I would have thought.

    The author of the Crikey! article has been conducting a campaign against the use (he would say abuse) of psychoactive drugs in treating psychological conditions, and this has led to complete loss of perspective, a general antipathy against psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry and to the loss of his ability to adopt an objective view.

    Crikey! were naturally inclined to support his fighting the man (i.e. Big Pharma) but were very unwise to allow this situation to develop, and must be quite concerned about how it will turn out.

  2. Now there are two four-letter words I haven’t heard for a while- Fred Nile.
    Sat accross from him when his wife and my friend were visiting oncologists at St Vincent’s hospital…his wife was delightfully chatty but he didn’t once look up from his paper.
    Humourless git!!

  3. Just watched “Rocketman” on Netflix. Not a bad flick, bringing back memories of when in ’84 he got married at St Mark’s Church, Darling Point, where I was living at the time and where half the suburb turned out to witness it. Of course, it didn’t last long – the marriage, that is. The amazing thing is that the wedding was kept under wraps,
    otherwise half of Sydney may’ve turned up.

  4. Imacca taking a cue from KayJay. If I can’t get an image to post I upload it to postimage. Click on direct link.
    Paste into pb and viola. Every time.
    I don’t think you even need to set up an account. KayJay will confirm. Probably tomorrow.

Comments Page 52 of 52
1 51 52

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *