Essential Research leadership ratings and end-of-year review

Scott Morrison’s personal ratings maintain a downward trend, as the government scores middling ratings for its overall performance for the year.

Essential Research has published its final fortnightly poll for the year, which includes its monthly leadership ratings. Scott Morrison is down two on approval to 46% and up two on disapproval to 44%, his weakest numbers since the onset of COVID-19 and a continuation of a downward trend since March. Anthony Albanese is steady on 40% approval and up one on disapproval to 36%. Essential’s numbers for both leaders are consistently more favourable than those for other pollsters. Morrison’s lead on preferred prime minister is down from 44-28 to 42-31, the narrowest it has been all term.

The federal government’s ratings for COVID-19 response have deteriorated after a three-month improving trend, down six on good to 41% and up seven on poor to 32%. The equivalent results for the states record a one point drop in the New South Wales government’s good rating to 54%, an eight point drop in the Victorian government’s rating to 43% and a three point drop for Queensland to 57%. The Western Australian government is up four to 78% and the South Australian government is down three to 57%, with due caution to the tiny sample sizes in these cases.

Respondents were asked about the Coalition’s performance on various matters since it came to power in 2013, and were interestingly given the opportunity to indicate whether the issue was important or unimportant to them in addition to evaluating the government’s performance. Its worst results came for handling sexual assault and misconduct, with 35% from the 50% who rated it poorly considering it an important issue, and handling of corruption allegations, rated likewise by 35% from 49%. However, the government now records neutral ratings on the vaccine rollout and is rated very favourably for the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

As it does at the end of each year, the pollster asked if had been a good or a bad year for various actors, with the federal government deemed to have had a good year by 34% and a poor year by 38%. Thirty-eight per cent considered it had been a good year for them and their family compared with 23% for poor; 37% rated their personal financial situation favourably compared with 30% for unfavourably. As usual, large companies and corporations were deemed to have done best of all, at 52% for good and 21% for poor. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of around 1000.

Another poll worth noting is a Western Australian survey for Painted Dog Research, published today in The West Australian, which found more respondents considering the state’s recently announced opening up date of February 5 to be too soon (36%) than too late (18%), with 46% deeming it right. Mark McGowan was credited with a 77% approval rating, down from 88% in a previous survey in February. The poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday from a sample of 811.

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.

2,431 comments on “Essential Research leadership ratings and end-of-year review”

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  1. Firefox says:
    Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 10:47 am

    A Labor-phobic Green campaigns against Labor over breakfast. Ho hum. The only party capable of enacting change in Australia is vilified by a self-styled leftie. Yet again.

    I am going to take up the case inside Labor for the relegation of the Greens on HTVs. They are among our foes. We should not favour them with prefs.

  2. I’d like to know what is stopping Omicron moving from the Bronchi to the Alveoli?
    To know the answer to that might help us stop Covid moving futher than our noses or something if we could develop a nasal spray with that protective chemical in it.

  3. Bludging:

    We have had just one victory from Opposition since 1996 and that was in 2007. Looking at the record, we may wait until 2050 before winning again.

    This is a nonsense combination of the Gambler’s Fallacy and cherry-picking.

    You know who else has had just one victory from Opposition since 1996? The Liberal/National Coalition.

    But if Labor’s chances are poor, the chances that the electorate will vote for a minority government are even lower. This has occurred just twice since WW1. We might well wait until 2070 before we see another such result.

    The electorate never really “votes for a minority government”. People vote for a local member, and if enough cross-benchers are elected, the chance of a minority government goes up. I suppose you could total up all the votes that aren’t for one of the “parties of government” and consider all those to be “votes for a minority government” if you wanted – if you did so, you’d find 25% voted that way at the 2019 election.

  4. Mike Carlton
    @MikeCarlton01
    ·
    9m
    Butcher – very unhappy – tells me people are now cancelling their Xmas meat orders. Taking personal responsibility, they’ve abandoned the family Christmas. It’s going to cost him a lot.

  5. He also plans to end “private pensions” – sounds like a raid on peoples superannuation. I don’t see that going well.

    Firefox @ #150 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 10:47 am

    “Anyway, the new leader of Chile is not a Green, he’s a Social Democrat. Big difference. More like the Labor Party.”

    ***

    Almost as funny as when you tried to claim AOC as a Laborite and made a complete fool of yourself lol. You really don’t have a clue, do you.

    Chile’s new leader is a leftist – nothing like the ALP who are a party of the centre-right. He’s vowing to take serious action to address the climate emergency and wants to shut down coal mines and power plants, not open them up and back coal beyond 2050 like Labor has committed to. He plans to tackle economic inequality, not team up with the right and make it worse as Labor does.

  6. C@t, have you seen this:

    *intranasal heparin*

    Monash and Oxford Universities, his team has been able to replicate international findings that heparin can block the transmission of COVID-19 and prevent infection.The treatment has received $4.2 million from the Victorian government to undergo clinical trials.

    Over the next six months, 340 Victorian households will be given the heparin nasal spray or a placebo, within hours of their household contact testing positive, to reduce transmission.

    “The treatment will be given to household family contacts of the persons who get COVID, and we will also give it to the person who is infected,” Professor Campbell said.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-22/melbourne-researchers-trial-use-of-common-drug-to-combat-covid/100717224

    Morrison about to turn up in a lab coat any day.

  7. Chile’s new leader is a leftist – nothing like the ALP who are a party of the centre-right.

    You are a bigoted against the Centre Left, fool, Firefox. Not to be taken seriously at all.

  8. zoomster @ #146 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 10:45 am

    As for Haines policy, as I’ve outlined before, she wants to mandate that renewable companies investing in regional areas will make additional investments in the local community. Which would mean that renewable companies would face increase costs, which would make investing less attractive.

    Well, I’ve read her website and her discussion paper, and I can’t see anything like what you describe. It all sounds quite sensible and rational. Even mundane.

    https://www.helenhaines.org/issues/energy/

    Can you point me in the right direction?

  9. Oops, sounds like what Labor are campaigning on:

    Central to the protesters’ claims has been the idea that the promises of the establishment — that the market will produce prosperity, and that prosperity will fix their problems — have failed them. More than 25 percent of the wealth produced in the country is owned by one percent of the population, according to the United Nations. Low wages, high levels of debt and underfunded public health and educations systems continue to keep people waiting for opportunity.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/world/americas/chile-boric.html

  10. Mike Carlton
    @MikeCarlton01
    ·
    9m
    Butcher – very unhappy – tells me people are now cancelling their Xmas meat orders. Taking personal responsibility, they’ve abandoned the family Christmas. It’s going to cost him a lot.

    Never really understood this style of commentary/framing-device. It’s like, discouraged for people to change their behavior because other people have set up businesses that assume current behavior won’t change, or something? So we all just have to play along, because businesses need an easier time and mustn’t lose money or be forced to actually adapt?

    Money is a warped way of evaluating what things should/shouldn’t be done. 😐

  11. Firefox at 10:47 am
    Of course he is just like ‘Labor’ , I mean just look at the headlines. How much more 2021 Labor can you get ? 😆

    Chile elects millennial who wants to tax the rich as new president

    Chile’s new president promises to bury neoliberalism

  12. And this is what Gabriel Boric campaigned on (sounds very Labor to me):

    Mr. Boric won the election on Sunday with 55 percent of the vote, 11 points ahead of Mr. Kast — a strong popular mandate to restructure the country in light of his promises.

    They include shifting from a private pension system to a public one; pardoning student debt; increasing investment in education and public health care; and creating a care giving system that would relieve the burden on women, who do most of the work of tending to children, older relatives and others. He has vowed to restore territory to Indigenous communities and to support unrestricted access to abortion.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/world/americas/chile-boric.html

  13. poroti @ #NaN Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 11:05 am

    Firefox at 10:47 am
    Of course he is just like ‘Labor’ , I mean just look at the headlines. How much more 2021 Labor can you get ? 😆

    Chile elects millennial who wants to tax the rich as new president

    Chile’s new president promises to bury neoliberalism

    Is snark by headline quoting all you’ve got? Just proves you don’t have any legs to stand on.

  14. C@tmomma @ #159 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 10:57 am

    ItzaDream @ #NaN Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 10:29 am

    Does anyone still make a trifle? Much underrated, a good one mean.

    Or a pudding with coins in it? Or are they too toxic these days? 🙂

    We have a family collection of non-toxic sixpences. Retrieved after pudding consumption, for use the next year. Have been in annual use since 1967.

    Each sixpence is swapped for a scratchie when found. We have to be very careful that younger grandkids don’t swallow them. Their servings are dismembered and decoined prior to consumption.

  15. Oh dear. Reality bites:

    Mr. Boric will face a pandemic-battered economy, a divided Congress, and the high expectations of voters: those on the left, who rallied behind him in the first round of the presidential election, and those in the center, who flocked to him in the second round, when his rhetoric became more moderate.

  16. The acid tests for Indies are their policies on taxation, social housing, Indigenous affairs, health and education.
    Taxation is skirted, naturally.

  17. “Oops, sounds like what Labor are campaigning on:”

    ***

    Just don’t mention the fact that Labor teamed up with the Coalition to give tax cuts to the rich while also leaving some of the most disadvantaged in the country below the poverty line. Listen to the spin that Laborites like Cat come up with, don’t judge Labor by what they actually do – that might mean they’d have to be held accountable for once. Can’t have that.

  18. Boerwar @ #NaN Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 11:11 am

    Boric is certainly up against it.
    I wish him well.

    Yep. It all comes down to this:

    This election left clear that the majority of Chileans are demanding significant change, said José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch (and a Chilean himself).

    The question is what comes next, he said, because Mr. Boric “will be judged on whether has the capacity to deliver.”

    Pie-eyed idealists never deal in reality but political leaders have to.

  19. Re McGowan fall in popularity, in my limited circle of acquaintances the prime reason is the intention to open the borders in February. We’re quite happy living virus free thank you.

  20. I’m astonished by the incredibly specious comparison between Labor and the party led by the new Chilean President.

    Like the two countries are peas in a pod.

    Same type of government and electoral system – very similar histories (especially the bit about a Marxist President being overthrown by a military dictatorship which ‘disappeared’ political opponents).

    Very similar population structure and economic history. Even have the same colonial master and achieved independence in the same way.

    Yep – like for like – why can’t we be the same?

  21. P1

    Thanks for that. She was big on it on social media originally and there was an on line policy at one stage which was more explicit.

    She appears to have backed away from her original proposal, in which case that’s a good move.

  22. Interesting juxtaposition re Gabriel Boric’s win in Chile’s Presidential election:

    Pinochet’s widow Lucia Hiriart died last week at 98. She was said to have had a significant influence on the Chilean dictator.

    “She was believed to have had a hand in the dismissal of ministers, and General Pinochet acknowledged that she had pushed him, when he was the head of the armed forces, to participate in the 1973 coup d’état that deposed Chile’s socialist president, Salvador Allende.

    “One evening, my wife took me to the bedroom where our grandchildren were sleeping,” General Pinochet wrote about the eve of the coup in a memoir. “She turned to me and said, ‘They will be slaves because you haven’t been able to make a decision.’ ”

    Soon after that, General Pinochet signed on to the coup attempt, which ousted President Allende on Sept. 11, 1973, in a swift attack on La Moneda. He was installed at the head of the military junta, and his dictatorship ruled Chile until the country’s return to democracy in 1990.” New York Times obit.

  23. “Oh dear. Reality bites:”

    ***

    Yeah, the reality that you really don’t know what you’re on about. While Chile’s new leader moves to end coal, take the climate emergency seriously, and tackle economic inequality, Labor is doing the complete opposite. They’re worlds apart.

  24. For what any poll run by the West is worth, the 77% for McGowan is really saying nearly 8/10 people are in synch with McGowan’s approach.
    However, if one tunes to the likes of 6PR there has been a steady queue of whingers claiming the government lacks ‘compassion’ when inconsistencies turn up and – it must be said, – some odd decisions are made ….
    The likes of Liam Bartlett has been stirring the “WA hospitals are broken” line for months, blaming the former Health Minister Cook (and by implication McGowan) together with ambulance ramping and death of a small child added to the whinge list…..

  25. zoomster @ #180 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 11:17 am

    P1

    Thanks for that. She was big on it on social media originally and there was an on line policy on that stage which was more explicit.

    She appears to have backed away from her original proposal, in which case that’s a good move.

    Goodness, fancy a politician actually listening to feedback and amending their policies!

    I guess this must be an Independent thing?

  26. C@tmomma at 11:08 am
    So you reckon he is same same with Labor ? Labor would be too scared to even whisper such things , that is if they’d even want to take any action on such issues. Your party has however got very good at explaining why it is ‘clever politics’ to roll over on issues they supposedly believed in. Which makes it harder to believe any promises made or claimed beliefs/principles.

  27. Leon says:
    Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 11:13 am
    Re McGowan fall in popularity, in my limited circle of acquaintances the prime reason is the intention to open the borders in February. We’re quite happy living virus free thank you.

    _______________________________________

    Not much experience of WA from what I’ve read, but that seems about right to me.

    When you think about it, all the other explanations really only impact a small proportion of the population, despite the grossly outsized reporting. But everyone can be worried by the importation of a plague as a result of looser border restrictions.

    Losing the Test is a particularly poor argument. After all, as a result of the border closures they got a once in a lifetime AFL Grand Final, while an Ashes test will be on the agenda for the next tour. For WA sports lovers it sounds like a good deal to me.

  28. sprocket_ @ #105 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 10:01 am

    I must say Hamilton was good live, but the Sydney production and cast a shadow of the US one you can see on the Disney Channel.

    I thought the production was good but Covid has made things a bit patchy in the theatre industry – cast member gets a sniffle and they’re straight out. It means changes right up until the last minute for each show. We saw it recently and got a White Hamilton. Not even an understudy, just someone on call. Not terrible, but not great either. The main cast – as cast – is actually very good IMO. Brent Hill As King George is exceptional, he’d hold his own in any company.

  29. Not sure why Daniel Andrews is attending Morrisons look-at-me exercise today. Merlino and Sutton have previously showed they can keep things ticking along. Victoria has adequate measures in place at the moment.

  30. Rex Douglas says:
    Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 11:23 am
    zoomster @ #180 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 11:17 am

    P1

    Thanks for that. She was big on it on social media originally and there was an on line policy at one stage which was more explicit.

    She appears to have backed away from her original proposal, in which case that’s a good move.
    Misrepresentations are your specialty.
    ____________________________________

    In a nutshell, the problem this site has with posters. Poster A says something; Poster B responds with evidence that it is now wrong; Poster A then acknowledges the error.

    And then one of the most pointless, useless and least constructive posters comes on with a snarky bit of gratuitous abuse.


  31. C@tmommasays:
    Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 11:07 am
    And this is what Gabriel Boric campaigned on (sounds very Labor to me):

    Mr. Boric won the election on Sunday with 55 percent of the vote, 11 points ahead of Mr. Kast — a strong popular mandate to restructure the country in light of his promises.

    They include shifting from a private pension system to a public one; pardoning student debt; increasing investment in education and public health care; and creating a care giving system that would relieve the burden on women, who do most of the work of tending to children, older relatives and others. He has vowed to restore territory to Indigenous communities and to support unrestricted access to abortion.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/world/americas/chile-boric.html

    C@tmomma
    All those policies were introduced and implemented by ALP over a period of time. So FF is wrong again. ‘-)

  32. TPOF @ #193 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 10:30 am

    In a nutshell, the problem this site has with posters. Poster A says something; Poster B responds with evidence that it is now wrong; Poster A then acknowledges the error.

    And then one of the most pointless, useless and least constructive posters comes on with a snarky bit of gratuitous abuse.

    Even with the final paragraph, that’s still less dysfunctional than like 99% of online forums.

  33. How deadly is the omicron variant? Here’s what we know

    On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the omicron variant now accounts for nearly 73 percent of new coronavirus infections in the United States. That rise is astonishing given that, in the beginning of December, the new variant only made up less than 1 percent of new infections. This means that the variant has successfully outcompeted the delta variant, ushering in a new stage of the pandemic scientists long feared would arise.

    Currently, much of the country is seeing a dramatic increase in the number of COVID-19 cases thanks to omicron. In New York state, new coronavirus cases have increased more than 80 percent over the last two weeks.

    “It is a predictor of what the rest of the country will see soon, and the minimum — since NYC is highly vaccinated — of what other parts of the country will experience in under-vaccinated cities and states,” Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Reuters.

    https://www.rawstory.com/omicron-variant/

  34. Rex Douglas @ #189 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 8:23 am

    zoomster @ #180 Wednesday, December 22nd, 2021 – 11:17 am

    P1

    Thanks for that. She was big on it on social media originally and there was an on line policy at one stage which was more explicit.

    She appears to have backed away from her original proposal, in which case that’s a good move.

    Misrepresentations are your specialty.

    Where was the misrepresentation?

    zoom highlighted a policy advocated in the past and then acknowledged positively when she found out that it was no longer being advocated.

  35. Good one Barrie…

    Barrie Cassidy
    @barriecassidy
    ·
    46m
    Can smokers light up again indoors as a celebration of the new era of personal responsibility?
    Quote Tweet
    The Today Show
    @TheTodayShow
    · 2h
    “We don’t have to mandate people wearing sunscreen and hats in summer.”

    Scott Morrison on reimposing mask mandates as NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet resists calls to reintroduce the measure. #9Today

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