This week’s Essential Report has the primaries running 47 (down 2) / 37 (up 2) to Labor, washing out for a two party preferred of 57/43 – a two point gain to the Coalition since last week. This comes from a two week rolling sample of 1885, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.
It’s a good start to the polling cycle for Turnbull.
Essential Report also asked additional questions this week on best perceived achievement of the Rudd government, school performance, tax cuts and Liberal Party leadership. These additional questions ran from a sample of 1086, giving us an MoE maxing out around the 3% mark.
Which of the following do you think was the most important action taken by the Rudd Labor Government since their election in 2007?
Essential says on the cross-tabs:
Labor voters were more likely to think that taking action to address the global financial crisis was the most important action taken (29%), followed by getting rid of WorkChoices (27%).
Coalition voters were more likely to think that more funding for schools was the most important action taken (26%), followed by delivering tax cuts (22%).
Green voters were more likely to think that the getting rid of WorkChoices was the most important action taken (29%), followed by taking steps to address climate change (22%).
Respondents in full time work were more likely than those in other employment situations to think that getting rid of WorkChoices was the most important action taken by the Rudd Labor Government (21%).
From July, the Government has introduced income tax cuts which they promised during the 2007 election campaign. These tax cuts are $5.77 a week for those earning between $35,000 and $64,000 while workers on incomes between $80,000 and $180,000 will get between $2.88 a week and $41.35 a week. Do you approve or disapprove of these tax cuts?
The cross-tabs have us:
Both Labor (66%) and Coalition (65%) voters support the tax cuts recently introduced by the Federal Government.
Respondents on higher incomes were more likely to strongly support/support the tax cuts recently introduced by the Federal Government (70% earning $1600+ per week), while respondents on lower incomes were more likely to disapprove of the tax cuts (26% earning $600 or less per week).
Thinking about education – one way to measure a school’s performance is to base it on the percentage of students passing standard tests during or at the end of the school year. Another way is to measure the improvement students in the school made during the year. In your opinion, which is the best way to measure the school’s performance — the percentage passing the tests or the improvement shown by the students?
On the cross-tabs, Essential says:
Labor and Green voters were more likely to think that the best way to measure a schools performance is by the improvement shown by the students during the year (61% Labor, 70% Green); while Coalition voters were more likely to think that the best way to measure a schools performance is by the percentage passing tests (38%).
Females were more likely than males to think that the best way to measure a schools performance is by the improvement shown by the students during the year (65% v 53%).
Do you think the federal Liberal Party should elect a new leader or should Malcolm Turnbull remain leader at least until the next election?
The cross-tabs state:
65% of Labor voters think that the federal Liberal party should elect a new leader, while 52% of Coalition voters think that Malcolm Turnbull should remain leader.
Older voters were more likely to think that Malcolm Turnbull should remain leader (45% of 65+ year olds), while respondents aged 45 – 54 were more likely to think the federal Liberal Party should elect a new leader (57%).
14 Comments
That 52% of Coalition voters who support Malcolm to continue as leader is baffling.
Are they saying Malcolm’s an idiot, but he’s our idiot?
Unless essential has balls up its comments – it looks like 55% of 65+ want to dump Malcolm and 57% of 45-54 want to do the same.
Rua,
One would imagine that the don’t knows would be running substantially in the 65+ since they’re running 24% through the whole sample. So it might be 45% thinking Truffles should stay vs 100-45-X amount of don’t knows thinking he should go.
It’s probably around the 30-40% mark of the over 65’s that want Truffles to go (mind you, that’s just a pure guess on the Dont Knows for that age cohort!)
Greeny,
It might be just base tribalism! It’s not like we havent seen that before with some of these things.
I’d like to know where the absolutely die hard Costello-ites went on this. They were about 15-20% of the population in some surveys. I wonder how many of them were in the “Malcolm isnt a real Liberal” camp?
And it’s not like he’s their only idiot…
Consider the status of the Alternate Libs,thay are stuck with Turnbull maybe Barnaby could do a Mcguaran then move to the reps
I think the Libs are saying “Turnbull is the best we’ve got currently”; considering the alternatives, that’s about right.
Somewhat off topic question, I had a read of the methodology (page
of the Essential Report and it mentioned in passing that the results were ‘weighted using ABS statistics’. I assume this is a standard practice for pollsters, but do you have a detailed explanation of how this works (an older post maybe?).
My concern is that presumably the results get scaled based on some arbitrary demographic cut, e.g. our survey had X% males between the age of 18-25 but the polulation has Y% of this group so the responses for this group are weighted by Y/X. Wouldn’t this introduce additional sampling error, since the number of responses for each group would presumably be quite small, and then the error gets multiplied…
As I say, an explanation of how this works would be handy.
Out of interest how would people here answer the question
“Which of the following do you think was the most important action taken by the Rudd Labor Government since their election in 2007?”
I would find that difficult if I was polled.
I would prefer some sort of ranking system for a start but even then it would be difficult.
I would probably go for the GFC answer, but would be left with the feeling that it was an incomplete answer to a question that needed more scope in answering.
BTW Poss frequently when I arrive here the comments box obscures the last response, so currently I can’t read what OzPol has written.
I presume this is a Crikey site whatever ‘feature’ unless its a feature of my computer set up, do other people get it?
Ooh, that’s weird Fred.
The site content is 600 pixels wide, the sidebar is 300 pixels wide, so a person really needs a minimum 900 pixel wide resolution for everything to work properly.
That seems to be the most common issue here, the width, but I’ve never heard of the comment box obscuring stuff upwards.
What’s your browser and screen resolution?
It happens to me also. I just refresh the page and it fixes.
Pixels? Browser/screen resolution?
I’m old and its a major triumph for me to use a keyboard at all, I’m far more comfy with pencil and paper.
Anyhow it seems ok now, even before I try GG’s trick, and by luck my bro in law, who is a computer pro, is visiting and I’ll get him onto it tomorrow.
Bogdanovist,
I’ve been hunting around for a good, brief explanation for you, but can’t find one.
Generally, explaining how population weighting works with a decent level of detail takes up about a whole textbook (I’ve got three textbooks on this, and they’re all about 300-400 pages long). There’s an enormous amount of detail involved since it’s one of the most important things a pollster does.
At it’s most basic, the raw respondent results are collated and compared to known levels of the population for certain attributes like age, sex, geography etc- so we know that the whole voting population has so many people between the ages of X and Y, and another proportion of people between Y and Z. The individual responses in the sample are then weighted by those known proportions so that the sample itself more closely approximates the true voting population.
The complexity comes in the numerous ways that this can be achieved – because effectively there’s more than one way to skin this particular statistical cat.
In theory it does blow out the sampling error, but the gains in accuracy achieved by this sort of post-stratification weighting are greater than the losses due to the increase in theoretical sampling error. It’s actually possible to test the cost/benefit of a post-stratification weighting system when it comes to accuracy after every election result. (assuming that the population didnt change their mind on who to vote for between the time of the final poll of the election campaign and election day itself).
I’ll keep an eye out if I can find a relatively brief but still detailed methodology for how this works, and I’ll let you know if I come across one.