Resolve Strategic, Essential Research and more

A new federal poll from Resolve Strategic plus a data dump from Essential Research equals a lot to discuss.

First up, the Age/Herald bring us the forth instalment in its monthly Resolve Strategic poll series, which has so far come along reliably in the small hours of the third Wednesday each month, with either New South Wales or Victorian state numbers following the next day (this month is the turn of New South Wales – note that half the surveying in the poll due tomorrow will have been conducted pre-lockdown). The voting intention numbers have not changed significantly on last month, with the Coalition down two to 38%, Labor down one to 35%, the Greens up two to 12% and One Nation up one to 4%. This series seeks to make a virtue out of not publishing two-party preferred results, but applying 2019 election flows gives Labor a lead of around 51.5-48.5, out from 50.5-49.5 last time.

There seems to be a fair bit of noise in the state sub-samples, with Queensland recording no improvement for Labor on the 2019 election along with an unlikely surge for One Nation, which is at odds with both the recent Newspoll quarterly breakdowns and the previous two Resolve Strategic results. From slightly more robust sub-sample sizes, New South Wales and Victoria both record swings to Labor of around 2.5%; at the other end of the reliability scale, the swing to Labor in Western Australia is in double digits for the second month in a row, whereas Newspoll had it approaching 9%.

Scott Morrison records net neutral personal ratings, with approval and disapproval both at 46%, which is his worst result from any pollster since March last year. Anthony Albanese is down one on approval to 30% and up two on disapproval to 46%. Both leaders consistently perform worse in this series than they do in Newspoll and Essential Research, perhaps because respondents are asked to rate the leaders’ performances “in recent weeks”. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister is at 45-24, little changed from 46-23 last time. Labor’s weakness in the Queensland voting intention result is reflected in Albanese’s ratings from that state (in which he happened to spend most of last week) of 22% approval and 53% disapproval.

The poll continues to find only modest gender gaps on voting intention and prime ministerial approval, but suddenly has rather a wide one for Albanese’s personal ratings, with Albanese down five on approval among men to 28% and up six on disapproval to 51%, while respectively increasing by two to 31% and falling by two to 41% among women. The full display of results is available here; it includes 12 hand-picked qualitative assessments from respondents to the poll, of which four mention the vaccine rollout and two mention Barnaby Joyce. The poll was conducted last Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1607.

Also out today was the usual fortnightly Essential Research poll, which less usually included one of its occasional dumps of voting intention data, in this case for 12 polls going back to February. Its “2PP+” measure, which includes an undecided component that consistently comes in at 7% or 8%, has credited Labor with leads of two to four points for the last six fortnights. The most recent result has it at 47-45, from primary votes that come in at Coalition 40%, Labor 39%, Greens 11% and One Nation 4% if the 8% undecided are excluded. If previous election preferences are applied to these numbers, Labor’s two-party lead comes in at upwards of 52-48.

All of this provides a lot of new grist for the BludgerTrack poll aggregate, but it’s done very little to change either its recent trajectory or its current reading, which has Labor leading 52-48 on two-party preferred. The Resolve Strategic leadership ratings add further emphasis to established trends, which saw Morrison taking a hit when sexual misconduct stories hit the news in April, briefly recovering and then heading south again as the politics of the pandemic turned against him, while Albanese has maintained a slower and steadier decline.

The Essential poll also includes its occasional question on leaders attributes, although it seems to have dropped its practice of extending this to the Opposition Leader and has become less consistent in the attributes it includes. The biggest move since mid-March is a 15% drop in “good in a crisis” to 49%; on other measures, relating to honesty, vision, being in touch, accepting responsibility and being in control of his team, Morrison has deteriorated by six to nine points. A new result for “plays politics” yields an unflattering result of 73%, but there’s no way of knowing at this point how unusual this is for a political leader.

The poll also finds approval of the government’s handling of COVID-19 has not deteriorated further since the slump recorded a fortnight ago, with its good rating up two to 46% and poor up one to 31%. State government ratings are also fairly stable this time: over three surveys, the New South Wales government’s good rating has gone from 69% to 57% to 54%; Victoria’s has gone from 48% to 50% to 49%; and Queensland’s has gone from 65% to 61% to 62%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1100.

In a similar vein, the Australia Institute has released polling tracking how the federal and state tiers are perceived to have handled COVID-19 since last August, which records a steadily growing gap in the states’ favour that has reached 42% to 24% in the latest survey. Breakdowns for the four largest states find Western Australia to be the big outlier at 61% to 11% in favour of the state government, with Victoria recording the narrowest gap at 34% to 25%. Fully 77% of respondents supported state border closures with only 18% opposed.

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.

1,799 comments on “Resolve Strategic, Essential Research and more”

Comments Page 10 of 36
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  1. At first Scotty wore a worried frown. Now he thinks he’s won the day and is wearing his usual smirk. (And what’s the point of repeating the family history of vax?)

  2. lizzie

    Was that in Australia or England?

    I seem to have gotten the impression, over the years, that you were in Australia at quite a young age.

  3. Alpha

    I dispute the language of the UK “spike”.

    A ‘spike’ suggests relatively short lived and with a physical process that will cause it to peak. The problem here is there is no mechanism that will restrain the UK ‘spike’, except natural immunity. In other words, we’re not seeing a spike, we are seeing the end game where the virus burns through the entire community, or at least that (large) fraction not vaccinated.

    And in comment to those who seem to think that the vaccine will control hospitalisations and deaths. Well, it will have some effect on the rate, but not the final count. At least not among those not vaccinated. For the non vaccinated, the only protection is herd immunity.

  4. It gets to a certain stage and three quarters know that when Morrison opens his mouth he is a lying politician. More than half know that he is piss poor in a crisis. More than half know he does not deliver. More than half know that he is out of touch with them. And so on and so forth.
    Every single time he avoids the truth he is reinforcing all the above.

  5. “We’re up to it and we’ll deal with it, just as we’ve dealt with each and every one of the challenges to date,”

    …badly.

  6. kezza2

    That was me pretending that I was still a spry young thing. I’ve given that up now. 😆
    My parents brought me to Aus before I could take up a place at Uni. I was going to major in Mediaeval English.

  7. Cud

    Yes. The cartoons from the UK show they get it.

    Spreading the virus through nightclubs is a sure fire way to get the herd immunity strategy that Denmark abandoned.

  8. “When it comes to the other issues, of course, the ATAGI advice, the TGA advice, I’ll always be very respectful of that.

    … before I ignore it.

  9. lizzie says:
    Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 1:59 pm

    At first Scotty wore a worried frown. Now he thinks he’s won the day and is wearing his usual smirk. (And what’s the point of repeating the family history of vax?)
    ___________________
    I felt so too. Perhaps it’s a smirk of cathartic release after all the shouting is out of his system.

    He might also be pleased that the press didn’t ask about his Pfizer fuck up.

  10. “ My dear Roy, the health.gov website indicated the first shipment of Pfizer arrived on 14 April.”

    And a month later………….
    .
    Backlash after Morrison Government ministers insist vaccine rollout is ‘not a race’.
    https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/australia/backlash-after-morrison-government-ministers-insist-vaccine-rollout-is-not-a-race/news-story/69fce4c8f14302b91f7a6a0748bd26d2
    27 May 2021 — Here’s some of Prime Minister Scott Morrison talking about the vaccine rollout. not being a rush. It’s not a race. It’s not a competition
    https://www.facebook.com/MarkButlerMP/videos/watch-this-clipthis-is-scott-morrisons-health-minister-refusing-to-admit-they-go/804610256831109/

  11. Cheryl Kernot
    @cheryl_kernot
    ·
    9m
    Morrison says HE facilitated the bring forward of Pfizer vaccines by ringing the “head of Pfizer.” Pathetic ego competition showing what a little man he is! #auspol

  12. That’s enough of that, as soon as the smug smirk appears have to switch over, still no sure what the point of that press conference was

    A boast about empty figures of vac jabs?
    A backgrounder for potential dips in GDP and jobs? So now covid payments are to save the eonomy again???

    Taking credit for being forced to provide support payments – forget all the arm twisting and Victorians brought their lockdown on themselves so no support for you just a month or so ago.

    If it wasn’t for Vitoria and the pressure from Dan the Man and other premiers I doubt there would be any support now.

    So it has taken 6 days of absence to come up with this?

  13. guytaur

    We can do a lot better than the UK, but it means a) taking some serious action to get to a high vaccination rate and b) getting boosters into people, especially those who had AZ.

    Before taking any risks with the border.

  14. Cheryl Kernot
    @cheryl_kernot
    ·
    1m
    Big day today: Gladys discovered exponential growth & Morrison discovered Delta variant was a huge challenge! Convenient but not remotely convincing about either late lockdown OR inadequate vaccine procurement process by Morrison. When that fails blame ATAGI slowness again

  15. Cud

    Yes. My worry is that Morrison is listening to the same people as the UK.

    The only saving grace seems to be he is willing to keep waiting for data to save his political skin.

  16. Morrison did well there. Mentioning the temperature issues with Pfizer. He’s so much better when not yelling. He needs a barking collar.

  17. “ 1,000,888 over last seven days. Still needs to be a fair bit higher, hopefully by Oct end we are getting there.”

    Another Liberal Party turd polishing.

    Let me rewrite this on an alternative time line where our faux PM actually turned up to work between November- when first advised that the UQ vaccine was a bust and getting millions of Pfizer fast tracked in February and March.

    On March 21 the PM said:

    “1,000,888 over last seven days. Still needs to be a fair bit higher, hopefully by June end we are getting there.”

    Capice?

  18. guytaur

    Its an ill wind and all that, but the slow vaccination process here might have bought us some time and more data from overseas.

  19. Cud it will spike for the simple reason of how readily and rapidly it spreads…

    I worry for one simple reason – repeat infections. It isn’t get it once and your done.

  20. Does anyone else have problems with this Lars person and their lies? First it was the vaccines weren’t delivered until late March. When proven wrong, it was claimed the early approvals were only provisional. When that was proven wrong, it became the case that Pfizer was not delivered until April. From the government website no less. Apparently.

    And yet this link: https://www.health.gov.au/news/first-pfizer-vaccine-doses-arrive-in-australia

    Tells us this on that page:

    First Pfizer vaccine doses arrive in Australia
    More than 142,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine have arrived at Sydney airport in a major milestone in Australia’s response to the pandemic. Read more about how the vaccines will be rolled out.

    ListenPrintShare
    Date published:
    15 February 2021

    This would tell us how Morrison barged his way to the front of the queue to get his Pfizer. He could. He got his second dose on March 14th. Not bad for a vaccine that wasn’t delivered until April.

    It just lies and lies and lies and lies and when it is caught out lying, lies some more.

  21. Foolish journo starts asking a good question on Jobkeeper, but spoils it by trying for a gotcha at the end. “Are you an absent PM?” Scott answers easily “No”. That young lady needs to back to interview school.

  22. “We all know they are the result of many factors. People have perfect hindsight after these events, but let’s remember we were focusing on vaccines that we knew could be manufactured in Australia.

    “This was very important. Known is making Pfizer outside of this country other than those who are making it before.”

    Is there a handy translation for this?

  23. Recon
    What did he say re temperatures ? The cold requirements have for months been far less onerous than the original required storage specs.
    .
    .
    Broader storage conditions for Pfizer vaccine bring GPs into the fold
    Anastasia Tsirtsakis

    12/04/2021 4:47:56 PM
    TGA-approved guideline changes have opened the possibility for general practices to take part in the rollout of the mRNA vaccine.
    https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/broader-storage-conditions-for-pfizer-vaccine-brin

  24. Cud Chewer says:
    Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 2:11 pm

    Recon

    Bringing up the temperature issues with Pfizer just shows how disingenuous the prick is.
    _________
    Yes I agree that not getting Pfizer insurance was a big mistake, but as a defensive measure it’s not bad. Particularly as it relates to regional and rural viewers.

  25. poroti says:
    Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 2:15 pm

    Recon
    What did he say re temperatures ? The cold requirements have for months been far less onerous than the original required storage specs.
    ____________
    I think he was referring to the initial Pfizer negotiations.

  26. Sceptic @ #483 Wednesday, July 21st, 2021 – 2:14 pm

    “This was very important. Known is making Pfizer outside of this country other than those who are making it before.”

    Is there a handy translation for this?

    I think it is a transcription error. It perhaps should read “No-one is making Pfizer outside of this country other than those who were making it before”

  27. So, in essence, this presser is all about shifting responsibility to ATAGI.

    In true form, AGAIN, Morrison is running from responsibility.

  28. @sarahinthesen8 tweets
    When Scott Morrison is under pressure he first hides, then gets ranty. Hardly draws breath. Stubborn and determined to blame everyone else, and avoid responsibility.

    In a crisis, we need a leader to be cool-headed, not pig-headed.

  29. “Particularly as it relates to regional and rural viewers.”

    Bullshit

    There aren’t any places in mainland Australia that can’t be reached by a cold chain involving CO2 ice. It was always a pathetic excuse. Like a million other pathetic excuses used by this pathetic excuse for PM.

  30. Summary of state of play.

    @murpharoo tweets

    PM: “All states need to lift their vaccination rates”.

    States: we need more Pfizer

    #auspol

  31. Morrison is asked if he is prepared to concede that one of the challenges of the vaccine rollout has been caused by his own government’s miscommunication about the AstraZeneca vaccine.

    “Well, I cannot control what Atagi advises,” he says.

    Atagi will come out swinging any day now..

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