Category: Federal Politics 2022-2025

Morning Consult: Albanese approval 56, disapproval 31 (open thread)

Six months along, only minor signs of erosion in Anthony Albanese’s honeymoon poll ratings.

I have nothing much to offer in the way of new material for an open thread post, for reasons I hope you’ll understand. My standby on such occasions is the regularly updated tracking poll of Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings from US pollster Morning Consult, which currently has him at 56% approval and 31% disapproval. This leaves his approval about where it was mid-year, with his disapproval having climbed a few points.

Miscellany: federal Morgan, Tasmanian EMRS, British generation gap (open thread)

Labor steady federally, Liberal up a little in Tasmania, and Britain’s Tories facing the similar generational challenges to Australia’s.

A couple of things to be noted as the Victorian election dominates my attention:

• The weekly Roy Morgan video update tells us that federal Labor’s two-party lead is steady at 53.5-46.5, and nothing further.

• The quarterly EMRS poll of Tasmanian state voting intention gives the Liberals their best result this year, up one to 42% with Labor down two to 29% and the Greens up one to 14%. Jeremy Rockliff’s lead over Rebecca White is 46-34, little changed from 47-35 in August. The poll was conducted November 8 to 15 from a sample of 1000.

• Something that caught my eye from Charlotte Ivers in Britain’s New Statesman, as it seems more than relevant to Australia:

In 2019 57 per cent of people aged 60-69 voted Tory, but only 23 per cent of people aged 25-29. Of course, it is news to nobody that young people vote Labour and older people vote Conservative. What is alarming Conservative MPs is that the tipping point age at which people become more likely to vote Conservative than Labour is going up, and it is going up quickly. Before the 2017 election, research by the Onward think tank found, the tipping point was 34. By 2019 it was 51.

MPs can also tell you why this is. People vote Conservative as they age not because of some innate law, but because ageing has traditionally been associated with the other markers of a Conservative vote: home ownership, a stable job, increased income or capital. It looks like this link is breaking.

Polls: Essential Research and JWS Research (open thread)

Essential Research finds Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings as strong as ever, but perceptions of the national direction have taken a knock.

Without bursting out of the confines of the error margins, the monthly prime ministerial ratings featured in the fortnightly Essential Research poll give Anthony Albanese his highest approval rating to date, up two points to 60%. His disapproval is up one to 27%, which leaves him one point shy of his previous best net approval rating. However, an occasion question on the national direction finds a five-point increase since September for “wrong” to 34% and a two-point drop for “right” to 46%.

Once a lengthy explanatory spiel was out of the way, 50% expressed support and 27% opposition to the government’s multi-employer bargaining laws, and has further results supporting industrial relations policies that strengthen the hand of low-paid workers. The poll also finds 43% of the view that it is inappropriate for politicians to use Twitter, compared with 16% favouring the option that it is a “vital channel” for politicians and 41% for a middle course. The full report is here – the poll was conducted last Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1035.

JWS Research has also released its occasional True Issues survey on issue salience, distinct from the one a fortnight ago that focused specifically on the budget. Asked unprompted to name the three most important issues, 44% came up with a response the pollster categorised as “cost of living”, up from 38% in August and all the way from 11% a year ago. Housing and interest rates increased over the year from 10% to 19%, which environment and climate change was steady at 26% and hospitals, health and ageing fell eight points to 29%. The poll was conducted October 28 to 31 from a sample of 1000, and also features results on national direction and government performance in various policy fields.

Note that a dedicated thread for discussion of the Victorian election continues in the post below.

Australia Institute gas industry poll (open thread)

A finding of strong support for gas export gaps and windfall profits taxes offers the only relief amid a post-budget polling trough.

The only recent poll I’m aware of is an Australia Institute survey on gas industry policy, which finds overwhelming support for export caps (52% strongly in favour, 28% somewhat so, 5% opposed and 2% strongly opposed) and a windfall profits tax (39%, 31%, 7% and 5%). However, the setting of the questions, which noted that the proposals had been made by former ACCC chair Rod Sims, might be thought encouraging to favourable responses. The poll was conducted November 1 to 4 from a sample of 1001, using an online panel licensed from Dynata. Such a poll wouldn’t normally be enough for me to hang a post on, but a new open thread is needed and I’ve been too consumed by the Victorian election to look into anything else. So there you have it.

Miscellany: leadership approval and JSCEM (open thread)

Stable personal ratings for Anthony Albanese; election staffing concerns at the AEC; and a call for more territory Senators.

The flood of polling in the week after the budget is inevitably followed in the week after that. Here’s all I have:

• The tracking poll of Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings maintained by US pollster Morning Consult records no significant change, with Albanese starting November on 57% approval and 30% disapproval, down one and up two from the start of October.

• As reported by Anna Macdonald at The Mandarin, Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers told the Joint Standing Committe on Electoral Matters the commission was struggling to attract staff at election time due to low pay and “bizarre behaviour” at polling places. Specifically, Rogers said the May federal election was marked by “people coming into the polling place and recording interactions with our staff, shouting at our staff, and some fairly bizarre behaviour that we haven’t seen previously”.

• Independent ACT Senator David Pocock has made a submission to the inquiry calling for the two territories to have six Senators serving six-year terms on the same staggered cycle that applies to the rest of the Senate, as distinct from the current situation where they have two Senators each whose terms are tied to the House.

Polls: federal and WA leaders, budget response, foreign policy (open thread)

Familiar results on the budget and federal politics generally, plus a finding that Mark McGowan continues to reign supreme in Western Australia.

Fair bit of polling doing the rounds this week, as is generally the case in the wake of a budget:

• The Age/Herald had further results from the Resolve Strategic poll on Tuesday, including ratings for the two leaders, which had 57% rating Anthony Albanese’s performance as very good or good compared with 28% for poor or very poor, with Peter Dutton respectively at 29% and 41%. The poll also found 40% supported allowing multi-employer bargaining, with 24% opposed; 26% supported mandatory multi-employer bargaining, with 32% opposed; and an even 29% favoured higher wages at the cost of higher prices and vice-versa.

• This fortnight’s Essential Research survey features the monthly prime ministerial ratings, which now involves directing respondents to give Anthony Albanese a rating from zero to ten. Forty-five per cent gave him between seven and ten, down one on last month; 28% gave him from four to six, down three; and 20% gave him zero to three, up three. Questions on the budget turned up one finding missed by the others: 45% said they had paid it little or no attention, around ten points up on the last three budgets, while 55% said a little or a lot, around ten points down. Fifty-two per cent expect economic conditions to worsen over the next twelve months, up twelve since June, while 24% expect them to improve, down eight. Respondents were asked to pick first and second most important contributors to energy price increases, which had excessive profits and efforts to fight climate change leading the field, international circumstances and a worn-out energy network somewhat lower, and too many restrictions on exploration well behind. The poll was conducted Saturday to Wednesday from a sample of 1058.

• Roy Morgan’s regular weekly video has included primary votes from its latest federal poll, conducted from October 24 (the day before the budget) to October 30, rather than just two-party preferred as per its usual form. This shows Labor on 38.5% (down half on the previous week), the Coalition on 37% (up one-and-a-half), the Greens on 12% (up one), independents on 6% (down two) and One Nation on 3% (down one-and-a-half). Labor led 55.5-44.5 on two-party preferred, out from 54.5-45.5.

• The quarterly-or-so True Issues series from JWS Research is a “special release” on the budget, as opposed to its usual focus on issue salience. It finds 14% of respondents saying the budget would be good or very good for them personally compared with 36% for average and 31% for poor or very poor; for the national economic impact, the respective numbers were 20%, 38% and 25%. However, respondents provided highly positive responses when asked about fifteen specific budget measures, all but one of which attracted a favourable response – the distinct exception being “axing” the low-and-middle income tax offset. The most popular spending measures involved health and the least popular (relatively speaking) involved parental leave and childcare subsidies.

• The University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre has results of a YouGov poll it commissioned encompassing 1000 respondents in each of Australia, the United States and Japan, conducted from September 5 to 9. It found 44% of Australians would support responding with force if China invaded Taiwan, compared with 33% of Americans; 36% of Australians felt the US alliance made Australia more secure, with 58% of Americans holding a reciprocal view, up from 44% in December; 52% of Australians felt China was “mostly harmful” in Asia, with 20% rating it “mostly helpful”; an interestingly even 28% and 31% felt the same way about the United States, in dramatic contrast to results of 7% and 52% among Japanese respondents; 36% approved of the federal government’s handling of the relationship with China, with 19% disapproving; 52% supported the nuclear submarines plan, with 19% opposed; and “one in two”. Thirty-six per cent of Australians felt it would be good for the country if Joe Biden won another term compared with 19% for bad, while 50% felt a return of Donald Trump would be bad compared with 26% for good.

• In a rare bit of interesting polling news from Western Australia, a Painted Dog Research poll for The West Australian finds Mark McGowan with an approval rating of 70%, up two from March, and a disapproval rating of 18%, down seven, suggesting a consistency of popularity beyond any Australian politician I could name. David Honey, leader of what remains of the state parliamentary Liberal Party, had an approval rating of just 9%, with 31% disapproving, 40% neutral and 19% oblivious. The poll also found stage three tax cuts supported by 53% and opposed by 32%. It was conducted from October 19 to 21 from a sample of 637.

Newspoll and Resolve Strategic post-budget polls (open thread)

Labor’s still healthy two-party lead cops a dent in the post-budget Newspoll, but Resolve Strategic finds no significant change on three weeks ago.

The post-budget Newspoll finds Labor’s two-party lead at 55-45, in from 57-43 at the previous poll eight weeks ago. Both major parties are up on the primary vote, Labor by one to 38% and the Coalition by four to 35%. All other players are down: the Greens by two to 11%, One Nation by one to 6%, the United Australia Party by one to 1% and all others by one to 9%. Anthony Albanese’s lead on preferred prime minister has slipped from 61-22 to 54-27, and he is down two on approval to 59% and up four on disapproval to 33%. Peter Dutton is up on both approval and disapproval, respectively by four points to 39% and three points to 46%. The poll was conducted Thursday to Sunday from a sample of 1500.

The poll also includes the same suite of questions on response to the budget that Newspoll has been posing since the late 1980s, which you can read about here – I’ll have more to say about those later. Note also the other new posts below this one – my own lengthy compendium of New South Wales state election news, and Adrian Beaumont’s coverage of Brazil’s presidential election and other international electoral events.

UPDATE (Resolve Strategic): Now there is a Resolve Strategic poll from the Age/Herald, with stronger results for Labor: their primary vote is unchanged on the poll three weeks ago at 39%, with the Coalition up two to 32%, the Greens up one to 13%, One Nation down one to 4%, the United Australia Party down two to 1%, independents down one to 8% and others up one to 3%. Anthony Albanese leads Peter Dutton by 53-19 as preferred prime minister, in from 55-17 three weeks ago. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1611.

The budget was rated good for “the country as a whole” by 44% and for “me and my household” by 28%, compared with 50% and 40% respectively for the March budget – it’s not clear how many of the remainder particularly rated it as bad. Four options for action on power prices all received strong support: 79% for price caps, 59% for taxpayer subsidies for those on low incomes, 64% for heavily subsidising home solar power and 67% for reserving gas for the local market, with 3%, 14%, 11% and 4% respectively opposed. Thirty-six per cent considered Labor had broken promises to “cut power bills and get wages moving”, with 12% disagreeing and 53% either undecided or considering it too early to say.

UPDATE (Newspoll budget response): For the questions Newspoll asks after every budget, an even 29% rated it both good and bad for the economy, but 47% rated it negative for personal impact compared with only 12% for positive. Thirty-four per cent felt the opposition would have done a better job, with 48% disagreeing. Another question gauged the extent to which respondents felt the budget properly balanced the cost of living and the budget deficit: 6% felt it put too much emphasis on the former, 25% too much emphasis on the latter, 23% felt it struck the right balance and 31% felt it didn’t do enough for either.

This marks the thirty-sixth budget of which Newspoll has asked essentially the same set of questions going back to 1988. The results are the sixth worst for personal impact and the ninth worst for economic impact, although it rates in the middle of the pack on the question of whether the opposition would have done better. The latter point is illustrated by the first of the charts below, which records Labor budgets in red and Coalition budgets in blue. The second chart illustrates the correlation between positive results on personal and economic impact. In landing right on the trendline, this shows no particular sense that the budget favoured either economic concerns or personal finances relative to its somewhat negative reception overall.

Miscellany: SEC Newgate and electoral law reform (open thread)

A fall in the federal government’s performance meeting, plus three recent arguments for electoral reform of one kind or another.

We’re now in week seven of the Newspoll drought, but that does not come as a surprise this week as the budget will be brought down tomorrow, and a poll will assuredly follow in its wake. We did have from The Australian on Friday results from an SEC Newgate Research on Friday which found the federal government’s overall performance rated as excellent by 3%, very good by 9%, good by 26%, fair by 35%, poor by 16% and very poor by 10%. This marked a nine-point drop in the combined excellent, very good and good result since the question was last asked in August. However, the party’s lead over the Coalition as best to manage cost-of-living was little changed over the same period, from 38-24 to 40-24. Ratings for state governments were down across the board, which likely reflects an unwinding of strong results for governments across the board during the pandemic. Some of the results from the poll, but not those above, can be found on the organisation’s website. It was conducted from October 5 to 10 from a sample of 1200.

Food for thought:

• Constitutional law expert George Williams calls for the voting age to be lowered to 16 in a column for The Australian.

• Joo-Cheong Tham of the University of Melbourne law school argues for the franchise to be extended to permanent residents and long-term visa holders.

• Digital Rights Watch calls for the removal of exemptions for political party voter databases from privacy laws in light of the recent Optus hack.

• The Centre for Public Integrity calls for campaign spending caps, after its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the federal election analysed the increase in spending over the past decade.

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