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 11 of 36
1 … 10 11 12 … 36

  1. Cud Chewer says:
    Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 2:19 pm

    “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.
    _________
    Maybe, I’m not an expert in cold storage and transport. But if it’s not true, doesn’t mean people won’t believe him.

  4. 7 minutes and 26 seconds
    guytaur says:
    Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 2:22 pm

    Recon

    People believe that OECD chart. They know being last is not bad luck. It’s bad management
    ____________________
    Yes, I agree. The buck stops with him. I expected him to come out and throw some more cash about after the latest polls.

  5. @australian tweets

    Scott Morrison has attempted to offer a vision of hope, but has resisted calls to reinstate JobKeeper as half the country stays home.

  10. frednk says:
    Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 2:26 pm

    Regon
    Your defense seems to have been reduced to, can the man bullshit his way out of this.
    ________
    defense of what? I’ve never defended Morrison.

    But yes, I am wondering if he can bullshit his way out.

  11. One thing about the SA Premier- yes he has been quite good lately (even more so the CMO Prof Spurrier)….but that is partly because the opposition has been quite good too (five scalps already) at keeping them semi-honest and the press give the opposition airtime on nearly every issue.
    Things are just that bit more polite and less heated here. Dare I say old-fashioned, but in a good way!

  12. poroti,

    Apparently collective nouns for a group of weasles are a “sneak,” a “boogle,” a “gang,” or a “confusion.”

  14. Andrew_Earlwood @ #443 Wednesday, July 21st, 2021 – 1:55 pm

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

    Exactly. So, 11 weeks after approval.

    And here we are, almost to August, and not even 15% fully vaccinated. And prune that 15% to reflect just the people fully vaccinated with at least one Pfizer shot, because we’re dealing with Delta, and what is it? Probably nothing too good.

  15. Big A Adrian says:
    Tuesday, July 20, 2021 at 1:58 pm
    “Menzies wanting to ensure Australia was a reliable ally under ANZUS.”

    From memory, Menzies went “all the way with LBJ” into Vietnam even before The President asked him to. Menzies then went on to lie to parliament about it.

    ——————————————————————–
    Remind you of John Howard, George Bush and Iraq?

    Menzies undoubtedly gave Johnson what he wanted in 1964: more Australian support in Vietnam.

    However, the “all the way with LBJ” quote is more properly attributed to Harold Holt who widened Australia’s participation in Vietnam when he succeeded Menzies in early 1966.

    And the slogan was used earlier by Johnson himself in his own political campaigns for the Senate.

    Excuse the length, but here is how I interpreted it, in a post-mortem broadcast commentary for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, about the 1966 elections in Australia and New Zealand which were held on the same day.

    Incidentally, my commentary on the CBC national radio network prompted Australia making a formal diplomatic protest to the Canadian government over its content. And an Australian diplomat at a diplomatic cocktail party, as much as called me, a fellow Australian, a traitor. So much for freedom of speech in that turbulent time.

    And how outrageous was it for the American President to visit both New Zealand and Australia at the climax of their national elections, supporting the sitting governments on the major issue of the campaigns, one week before the November 26 vote. The arrogance of the Holt and Holyoake governments in allowing this to happen is breathtaking.

    ——————————-

    “Nowhere, I suggest, was the result of Australia’s election more warmly received last weekend than the ranch White House in Texas. If President Johnson wants to, and I suspect he might, he can interpret Prime Minister Harold Holt’s victory as approval of US policy in the Vietnam war.

    There can be no doubt that the President’s personal intervention in the Australian campaign during his Pacific tour, strengthened Holt’s position. The over-riding issue was the participation of Australian troops in the war and Australia’s support of U.S. policy in Vietnam.

    It’s worth noting that the President included Australia and New Zealand on his Pacific itinerary just after Holt made his first official visit to Washington. It was at these talks that Mr. Holt jingoistically declared that Australia would go “all the way with LBJ” in Vietnam.

    To hear the President, in his hectic three-day visit down under, you might have been excused from thinking that Mr. Johnson was running for Prime Minister of Australia and New Zealand. The President, however, will have to wait another two years to find out whether the U.S. voter shares the enchantment with Vietnam expressed in last weekend’s government victories in the two Pacific nations.

    It would be a mistake, however, to read too much into the Holt victory. The result, I feel, does not necessarily mean that Australians overwhelmingly approve of the presence of 4,500 Aussie soldiers and airmen in Vietnam.

    The ruling Conservative coalition faced a disunited Labor Party opposition led by an aging leader who did not have the dynamic physical and mental attributes that we are told that modern political leaders must have. (I went on to explain the impact of the DLP split).

    While the Labor Party is busy rebuilding for the next election, the Holt government will have to live with the Vietnam war.

    Holt undoubtedly will interpret the election as a mandate for his Vietnam policy and will now fulfill his end of the bargain with President Johnson by sending another battalion to the war. They will include the 21-year-old conscripts whose dispatch last year created Australia’s most emotional election issue in recent years.

    Holt’s “all the way with LBJ” policy, I feel, is a misguided position for Australia to adopt. It involves more danger to that country than the threat of South Vietnam falling to the North.

    Once again Washington has conned Australia into believing that because the United States helped defend Australia against the Japanese 25 years ago, Australia should blindly support American military excursions anywhere in Asia.

    This argument and the usual State Department jingoism about the gradual takeover of Asia and ultimately of Australia, sounds a bit strange in this age of bringing Communist China into the world community. The Americans are also trading on Australia’s justifiable pride in its military tradition.

    Australia is an Asian neighbour and it should remember that it has to live in Asia with the Asians. Rather than sending soldiers to kill Asians, Australia should be sending more engineers, doctors, teachers and other non-military assistance to Vietnam and other countries.

    By slavishly following the policies of a country that does not have to live in the region, Australia runs the risk of losing friends all over Asia. Some of its neighbours may support the allied cause today, but could turn against it tomorrow.

    Australia’s much-vaunted new awareness of its responsibilities as an Asian nation will be rapidly discredited if it continues to have its foreign policy made in Washington and not in Canberra.”

    ——————-

    I learned about the diplomatic protest years later when I had become, ironically, Official Spokesman for Canada’s foreign office. My new diplomatic colleagues smiled broadly when I asked them what Canada’s response had been. Those smiles told me that it probably was: GAGS; in diplomatic language of course.

  17. Morrison is still banking on a short memory when vaccination rolls out. Labor has been excellent in preventing that election strategy.

    Like the phrase black armband of history and Tampa, vaccine failure is in the popular lexicon.

  18. I see Rupert till covering his bets…

    https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/scott-morrisons-covid-vaccine-rollout-torn-to-pieces-by-experts/news-story/1358998290399ef61758a6f57dc17d00#bottom-share

    Scott Morrison’s covid vaccine rollout torn to pieces by experts
    As Scott Morrison faces more backlash over the vaccine rollout, experts say it will go down as one of Australia’s biggest stuff-ups.
    Scott Morrison’s handling of Australia’s coronavirus vaccination rollout has been labelled one of the worst public policy failures in recent times.
    The Prime Minister is under growing pressure over the slow and problem-plagued delivery of Covid-19 jabs, blamed for the worsening and extended lockdowns now affecting 12 million people.
    Australia has ranked last of all OECD countries in terms of percentage of the adult population vaccinated and is even lagging some developing nations.

  19. The damage control has done well. 🙂

    @mjrowland tweets

    The PM denies he has been an ‘absent leader’. #auspol #COVID19Aus

  20. Dandy Murray at 2:28 pm

    poroti,

    Apparently collective nouns for a group of weasles are a “sneak,” a “boogle,” a “gang,” or a “confusion.”

    Sounds like a Scotty alright.

  22. guytaur @ #517 Wednesday, July 21st, 2021 – 2:46 pm

    The damage control has done well. 🙂

    @mjrowland tweets

    The PM denies he has been an ‘absent leader’. #auspol #COVID19Aus

    So why is he MIA so much?

    ‘Where do you go to my Scotty,
    When you’re alone in your head?
    What are the thoughts that surround you?
    I want to look inside your head!’

  23. @Rob_Stott tweets

    Asked about AZ hesitancy, Morrison says “well we have two vaccines and we’ll soon have a third”, and never comes close to saying “Astrazeneca is safe”. He’s undermining the rollout.

    __________________

    @JEChalmers tweets

    The only reason Scott Morrison held this press conference was to call off the search party. Australians want to know how he’ll fix his vaccines debacle and all he could offer is proof of life. This is a Prime Minister who hides while people hurt. #auspol

  24. @JEChalmers tweets

    The only reason Scott Morrison held this press conference was to call off the search party. Australians want to know how he’ll fix his vaccines debacle and all he could offer is proof of life. This is a Prime Minister who hides while people hurt. #auspol
    ___________
    Pretty accurate comment from Big Ears Cry Baby.

  25. @JEChalmers tweets

    The only reason Scott Morrison held this press conference was to call off the search party. Australians want to know how he’ll fix his vaccines debacle and all he could offer is proof of life. This is a Prime Minister who hides while people hurt. #auspol
    ___________

    Would be easier just posting a photo of SfM holding that days newspaper every week or so

  26. Some real information from the waffle of that Morrison presser.

    @fictillius tweets

    Apple Wallet vaccination certificate is coming to Australia

  31. @Rob_Stott tweets

    Asked about AZ hesitancy, Morrison says “well we have two vaccines and we’ll soon have a third”, and never comes close to saying “Astrazeneca is safe”. He’s undermining the rollout.

    It’s safe, but less effective. Pushing the line that all vaccines are equal also undermines the rollout. People know better.

    Pushing the line that if everyone just gets vaccinated with AZ we can stop having lockdowns and open up turns us into the UK. People can see what’s happening there.

  33. ar

    Conflating the UK experience with Australia is a problem.

    AZ is effective. The Pfizer vaccine is more effective. Don’t confuse the two. The Delta spread is amongst the unvaccinated

    Don’t create vaccine hesitancy by claiming AZ is less effective and you need to wait for Pfizer. Boosters are options.

  35. guytaur @ #530 Wednesday, July 21st, 2021 – 3:26 pm

    The Delta spread is amongst the unvaccinated.

    Hospitalizations and deaths are amongst the unvaccinated. Delta’s spread is wider, and symptomatically involves some 40% of people fully vaccinated with AZ.

    Boosters are options.

    Once approved, they are. However that’s not presently the case. Hopefully it will change soon.

  36. Gladys..
    Premier Gladys Berejiklian says NSW must rely on lockdown conditions to quash the outbreak, with vaccine supply still so low the state is unable to stock its vaccination hubs with enough Pfizer doses.

    Ms Berejiklian on Wednesday said restrictions across Greater Sydney would not ease until the number of infectious cases in the community fell close to zero, given the state’s low vaccination rates and the threat of the Delta strain.
    “[Vaccine supply] is one thing the NSW government can’t control. We can’t control the doses we get. But I can assure you as soon as we get those doses, they will be going into arms”.

    Over to you Scotty.. has he found his hose?

  37. By allowing Jenny to have A-Z, is Morrison trying to prove that they are equally effective, or does he not care what she gets?

  39. I thought AZ was at or near 100% effective at preventing ‘serious’ illness (however that is defined). In my book that makes it pretty worthwhile to use.

  41. guytaur

    “AZ is effective. The Pfizer vaccine is more effective.”

    Yes. All animals are equal but some are more equal.

    “Don’t confuse the two. The Delta spread is amongst the unvaccinated”

    Is it? How do you explain that a large fraction (about half) of deaths in the UK are among the vaccinated? There’s been significant breakthrough into vaccinated people in the UK. That’s from official figures (see below for comparison to US).

    What we don’t have (yet) is the precise breakdown for Pfizer versus AZ in terms of breakthrough serious cases and deaths. But it is reasonable to conclude that if AZ is 60 percent effective, then 40 percent of those vaccinated with AZ who are exposed (and this is pretty much going to be everyone, real soon) are going to get symptoms and if AZ is 92% effective against hospitalisation, then 8% of those vaccinated with AZ that are exposed are going to end up in hospital. Twice as many, proportionally as for Pfizer. And I’ll say it again, pretty soon, pretty much everyone in the UK will be exposed. The virus might spread faster in the non vaccinated, but its affecting (and to some extent spreading) in the vaccinated.

    “Don’t create vaccine hesitancy by claiming AZ is less effective and you need to wait for Pfizer. Boosters are options.”

    Being less than entirely honest with people promotes vaccine hesitancy. Yes, boosters are options, but when is a booster going to become official policy? Part of the reason it isn’t is the needless insistence that the vaccines are equivalent. They aren’t and that’s precisely why we need booster.s

    “Conflating the UK experience with Australia is a problem.”

    They’re actually quite comparable given the use of AZ in both countries. I think its likely that Australia will end up with fewer vaccinated with AZ than in the UK. Which is a good thing.

    Here’s another thing for you to contemplate. There’s a lot of breakthrough of the virus in the UK into the vaccinated. We know this from the official figures. Whereas in the US, deaths and hospitalisations are almost exclusively found in the non vaccinated. Why the difference? Because maybe the US didn’t use AZ.

  43. Cud Chewersays:
    Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 3:43 pm

    Here’s another thing for you to contemplate. There’s a lot of breakthrough of the virus in the UK into the vaccinated. We know this from the official figures. Whereas in the US, deaths and hospitalisations are almost exclusively found in the non vaccinated. Why the difference? Because maybe the US didn’t use AZ.
    _______________________
    Just saw a report on Sky earlier that pretty much said the same.

  45. Cud

    I have not seen the figures on vaccinated people in hospital and/or dying.

    So that’s news to me.

    I have seen plenty on unvaccinated people.

    Sorry regarding boosters. I agree official approval has to come so we know it’s not just a company seeking more profits.

  46. There was no point in my worrying over which vax would be “the best” for me, when I was offered one immediately, or the possibility of the other in the distant future. Besides which, the rollout has been such a shambles that the distant future may never happen.

  47. boerwar

    Wicked, wicked Lithuania.

    In WWII they were. The Baltic states punched well above their weight for Waffen-SS holocaust related atrocities.

  48. Scotty from Marketing failed to take up Pfizers offer last year then failed to sell the benefits of our only other option AZ.

    You could not ask for a more incompetent performance.

    We now see 11,000,000 people locked down.

  50. Tricot (Wednesday, July 21, 2021 at 10:23 am):

    There are a few here (mainly LNP apologists) who are lauding the progress of the vaccine roll out.
    My take is that if you put a garden hose in a swimming pool …

    Fake News – everyone knows he doesn’t hold a hose

Comments Page 11 of 36
1 … 10 11 12 … 36

Leave a Reply

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