Essential Report came in this week on a Tuesday afternoon rather than the usual Monday with primaries running to the ALP 50 (down 2)/ 35 (up 3) for a two party preferred of 60/40 – the ALP down 2 from the last week. This was from a sample size of 1980 and a theoretical MoE of around the 2.2% mark.
This week’s additional Essential Report questions used a sample size of 1072 for an MoE around 3%.
The responses to this simple little question explain nearly everything about the current reality of Federal politics. The ALP are perceived to occupy the political centre , are more professional, look after working families (the FTB Part A set), understand the problems the nation faces, has good leadership and keeps its promises.
On the other hand the Coalition are seen as none of those, but instead are perceived as opportunists that will say anything to win votes, are out of touch, are divided, have poor leadership, care not for working families, don’t understand the national issues of the day, have poor leadership and are dishonest (don’t keep their promises).
Good grief!
This would have to be the most damning opinion poll on a political party’s behaviour that I’ve ever seen in Australia.
Next up we have a question that’s a good example of just how far out on the fringe of public opinion some columnists are.
On the cross-tabs Essential says:
74% of respondents aged over 50 years and 64% of respondents aged 35 – 49 strongly agree that businesses that receive Government support during the economic downturn should be required to meet obligations in return, including limits on the pay and bonuses for executives.
There were no real differences in terms of voting intention.
Two percent disagree with corporate mutual obligation – I guess that’s settled in the mind of the public then.
Moving right along to climate change:
On the cross-tabs we have:
Females were more likely than males to indicate that the recent Victorian bushfires and Queensland floods have caused them to be much more concerned/somewhat more concerned in their overall view about the impact of climate change (58% v 43%). Males were most likely to indicate that the recent Victorian bushfires and Queensland floods have made no difference to their overall view of the impact of climate change (50%).
72% of Green voters and 56% of Labor voters indicated that the recent Victorian bushfires and Queensland floods have caused them to be much more concerned/somewhat more concerned in their overall view about the impact of climate change. Coalition voters were most likely to indicate that the recent Victorian bushfires and Queensland floods have made no difference to their overall view of the impact of climate change (55%).
Respondents in Victoria were most likely to think that the recent Victorian bushfires and Queensland floods have caused them to be much more concerned in their overall view about the impact of climate change (25%) while respondents based in Queensland were more likely to think that the recent events have made no difference to their overall view about climate change (52%).
On the issue of paid maternity leave we have the question:
The cross-tabs say:
Females were most likely to support the introduction of the taxpayer-funded maternity leave scheme where women would be paid $540 a week for 18 weeks’ leave as soon as possible (32%) as were people between the ages of 25 – 34 (46%).
Green voters were most likely to support the introduction of the taxpayer-funded maternity leave scheme where women would be paid $540 a week for 18 weeks’ leave as soon as possible (45%), Labor voters were most likely so support the introduction of the scheme in stages (38%), while Coalition voters were most likely to not support the introduction of a taxpayer-funded maternity leave scheme (51%).
The final question for the week is the ongoing running Essential Report series measuring economic confidence.
14 Comments
They’re perceived as such cos they bloody well are all these things . Jebus even the true believers must be shaking their heads at the mess that is laughingly called the opposition
The Liberal Party has such poor leadership that you felt compelled to mention it twice, Scott?
Any comment on the sample sizes of polls since November 2007? They all seem to be 1000+ these days, whereas in the last term of the Howard Government, I seem to remember them rarely using more than 700 respondents (I could be misremembering this, though).
They have offended me once too often. I wish the Liberals a long, agonising, irreversible decline.
The Crisis of identity and purpose in the Liberal party evident in the late 80s/early 90s which was masked by the Howard ascendency is now out there for all to see.
Howard’s comment that the Liberal party’s problems could all be fixed by an election win can now be seen for the hollow claim that it was. His absolute selfishness in remoulding the party in his image has made a dire situation worse. There appears to be no way back.
I agree that this Essential Report is a fair reflection of the political landscape in Australia as of March 2009, and also that the answers to Essential’s questions warrant a harsh indictment of the Opposition’s wilderness-breaking prospects in the short to medium term. Yet rather than dwell on the ‘ Labor rocks’/ ‘Liberal sucks’ perspective of others (which I suppose is understandable as far as it goes), I prefer to think about the “final question…measuring economic confidence” (by far the most important question, in my opinion). The confidence indicators have not moved in the last six months. That is interesting and a real credit to the Federal Government’s management of perceptions in the community to date. Given deteriorating conditions in the global economy, and a worsening local jobs environment, I don’t expect the confidence indicators to be so positive in another six months.
DC – it is a certainty that the figures on confidence will invert if the economic situation gets too bad… but will that necessarily be translated into blaming the government?
If all other countries were steaming along merrilly, and Oz was going down the gurgler, then the government would be rightly condemned. If, on the other hand, the world economy is dying on the vine, and Oz managed to keep at least a few bunches of grapes alive, then they would not necessarily suffer any adverse opinion.
Andos, Newspoll has been around 1100 for years and years, Nielsen around 1400 for years as well. Morgan is all over the place with sample size, Galaxy is generally in the ballpark of 800-1000 and Essential hasn’t been doing it for that long.
David C, I’m similarly surprised that the Essential economic confidence responses has held up so well. Especially when you look at the amount of “end of the world is nigh” stuff in the media, where every bad piece of news is sensationalised, where every neutral piece of data is interpreted or spun by the press as being bad news and where every good piece of economic data gets hidden away on page upteen with barely a mention.
David Richards- you have asked the correct question and had a good go at answering it. I really don’t know whether your analysis is sound but I know many would agree with you. As I said in my prior post, the Government at least to date, has managed perceptions well. It must continue to do so.
What I find sad though is the knowledge that, however bad the polling for the Liberals is now, at some stage they are going to climb back and win government again. And no party which plumbed the depths of Howardise as this lot did deserves to govern ever again.
Or to take another example the British Tories were complete cr@p in government from 1979 to 1997, now, after the dreadful Blair Nu-Labour government they look set to romp back home with everyone forgetting how mind-numbingly awful they were when last in government.
Why don’t we have a voting system that allows people to choose factions within parties, so parties are constantly churned and reformed, being forced to become reacquainted with reality as a precondition of doing well. Why do with have to have this ridiculous swinging backwards and forwards between centre-awful and centre-dreadful, instead of continually choosing the best personalities and policies of all parties on the political landscape.
31% saying the Libs are ‘too dominated’ by their leader is a strange one in the light of their current staus as a multi-ruddered rabble.
In regards to economic confidence, I wonder if the media doom and gloom is tempered by direct experience where most people keep their job and benefit from lower interest rates, cash handouts and falling prices in some retail sectors.
Here’s a little bon mot: there was a 2-3% rise in the monthly spending on lottery tickets/scratchies after the December handout. That’s not really a sign of perceived doom and gloom…
Fredex – I suppose its easy to imagine someone who was sick of all the leadership *discussion* instinctively answering in the affirmative for that question, even though that isn’t what the question is about at all.
Hmmm, they might be thinking, Were All Rooned!!!
If the questions on characteristics of political parties are repeated over a political cycle we’ll be able to get a better idea of how interesting these results really are. I’ve done some work on Newspoll’s issue questions, which go back many years, which suggest that particularly for the Coalition movements from survey to survey of seemingly unrelated issues and of leadership satisfaction have fairly high correlations. The theory explaining this would be that for the average inattentive voter there is general impression of party performance that infects every answer, and is not actually a judgment on the detail.