The latest Essential Report has been released (which we’ll get to in a minute) and allows us to update our Pollytrack series for where public opinion was last week.
Previously I had stated that Malcolm Turnbull would be Mark Latham in a Fioravanti suit.
I was wrong.
Mark Latham was far more popular 
Truffles is back to where Nelson was polling in July. 57/43 two party preferred with 45.5/36.6 primaries and staring down the barrel of handing 23 seats to Labor. The rest of the Pollytrack charts can be seen over on the dedicated Pollytrack page.
The latest Essential Report comes in on the two party preferred at 59/42 (ALP up 2) to Labor off the back of primaries running 47(up 3)/34(down 2) the same way. Along with voting intention, the Essential Report asked the following bag of questions:
Who do you think would be the better Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull?
How confident are you that the Australian economy can withstand the current global financial crisis?
How do you think the Rudd Government is addressing the global financial crisis?The Federal Government is planning to spend $10.4 billion to stimulate the economy by giving a lump sum payment to pensioners, payments to low income earners and families and increasing the first homebuyers grant. Do you support or oppose this plan?
The Federal Government is planning to spend billions of dollars to stimulate the economy. Do you support or oppose using that money in the following ways?
The Opposition has called on the government to defer the introduction of the Emission Trading Scheme to address climate change because of the financial crisis.
Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with the opposition’s view?Who do you trust more to handle the economy during the financial crisis?
The Rudd Government has guaranteed all financial deposits in banks and other institutions, rather than injecting funds directly into banks as the Bush Administration has done in the USA. Which approach to you support most?
The first three questions were also asked last week and show dramatic improvements over the last 7 days for the government. It’s worth downloading the paper and having a squiz at the figures. There’s 20 point movements in the results of some of those questions!
Rudd has had a very good week.
On the 10.4 billion pump-primer, there is no room for the Coalition to move there. The overall package has 82% support, 11% are against and 6% didn’t know. Breaking it down further, increased payments to pensioners is supported by 92%, investment in renewable energy supported by 87%, income tax cuts supported by 85%, building infrastructure supported by 82% and the First Home Buyers/Builders boost supported by a lowly 68%.
On deferring the ETS, 41% think it should be deferred, 39% think it shouldn’t be and a whopping 25% don’t know – so expect to see more of the Coalition talking about the need for an ETS deferment.
Labor leads 52% to 24% on the question of who do you trust to handle the economy during the financial crisis.
UPDATE:
This is the silliest thing I’ve seen for a while, but it just makes me laugh.
First Dog does Skynoooz Agenda.
9 Comments
Not just a pretty face is he? that nice Mr Rudd
Possum, I use Google Reader to manage my blogs. I keep getting random comments from any Crikey post coming up as new blog posts from you. Is this a problem at your end or mine? I don’t want to have to unsubscribe from your blog.
I was always a bit skeptical about the notion of a Turnbull bounce. In fact I doubt any Liberal could achieve a bounce in the current climate. Mr Rudd is making all the right moves, and the Liberals are left flip-flopping all over the place like a fish out of water.
In addition, people have long memories. They are not likely to soon forget what the Liberals tried to do to the pay and workplace conditions of our children and coming generations of Australian employees.
WorkChoices lost them the last election, and I can see it losing them another couple more yet.
Kymbos,
I’ve had the same thing happen – I thought it was just me!
I’ve turned on the bat-signal to our resident Batman and Robin dynamic tech duo, so hopefully they’ll be able to sort it out.
Give me a yell if it happens again if you could – it might help this end to get on top of it.
Thanks for the heads up about that.
Poss
when i sometimes refresh whilst in Pollbludger, I get thrown to your site or another crikey blog ie jonathan green.
hope this helps
Ta Gus, I’ve passed that on too. Anyone else finding Gremlins? The more we know about it, the more likely it is to be fixed.
Count me as one who had the same problem. It was also occurring on Pollbludger (Crikey Blog). I changed from “liferea” to “RSSOwl” and the problem went away.
I noticed that in “liferea” that the RSS URL was being changed and not by me.
I could find nothing in the actual data being sent that redirected the URL, but that
could be my lack of understanding of RSS.
I never thought David Speers was nice in the first place.