This week’s Essential Report (delayed on my end by a bit of Christmas travel – apols about that) has the primaries running 47 (up 2)/ 37 (up 2) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 57/43 the same way – a one point gain to the Coalition since the last Essential. The Greens are 8 (down 2), while the broad “Others” are on 8 (down 1). This comes from a two week rolling sample size of 1884, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.
Additional questions this week were on Better Prime Minister, the performance of the Rudd government in 2009, general perceptions of 2009, expectations of 2010 and plans for Christmas day. These additionals ran from a sample of 1033, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 3.0% mark.
Abbott continues to make no mark on the vote estimates – during his honeymoon.
Who do you think would be the better Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott?
On the cross-tabs we have:
Kevin Rudd is preferred by 91% of Labor voters and Tony Abbott by 63% of Coalition voters. 13% of Coalition voters prefer Kevin Rudd and 24% did not give an opinion.
Men preferred Kevin Rudd over Tony Abbott 52% to 28% and women 50% to 22%.
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Thinking about the performance of the Rudd Labor Government over 2009 has it been:
The cross-tabs have us:
43% of Labor voters said the Government’s performance was better than expected and 55% of Coalition voters said worse than expected.
44% of Greens voters thought the Government’s performance was worse than expected and 24% thought it was better than expected.
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Overall, for you personally, was 2009:
Essential tells us on the cross tabs:
31% of Labor voters rated 2009 a good year compared to 20% of Coalition voters. There were relatively small differences by age – 28% of under 35’s rated 2009 a good year and 19% bad compared to 23% good and 26% bad for over 55’s.
And compared to 2009, for you personally, do you think 2010 will be –
The cross-tabs have us:
Respondents were a little more optimistic about 2010 compared to 2009. 50% think it will be a better year and only 6% think it will be a worse year. There were no significant differences between the expectations of Labor and Coalition voters. Younger people were more optimistic ‐ 61% of under 35’s think 2010 will be better compared to 38% of over 55’s. 52% of over 55’s think it will be much the same.
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What do you plan to be doing on Christmas Day?
(Note: some respondents gave more than one answer)
On the cross-tabs, we have:
20% of under 25’s will be staying home for a meal with their partner or household. 16% of 25‐34’s will be going out to a restaurant or elsewhere with family or partner. 17% of over 65’s will be staying at home not doing anything special. 44% of 25‐44’s will be visiting friends or family for a special meal compared to 34% of over 65’s. Those most likely to be working were aged 45‐54 (6%).
16 Comments
“Abbott continues to make no mark on the vote estimates – during his honeymoon”
The interesting thing about this is that Labor hasn’t even begun to seriously attack him yet. Yesterday they sent out the lowly Senator Kate Lundy to test the waters. Kevin Rudd apart from his ‘magic pudding’ line about the coalitions climate policy and yesterdays ‘Abbott had five years to fix the health system’ he has hardly bothered even mentioning Abbott.
The ALP will be able to outspend the coalition ten to one in political advertising. Barnaby has scared off all the ususal Lib donors and the to-be-renamed ‘workchoices’ will bring back in the union $ for the ALP. The ALP can now poll, focus group and test their messages all summer.
I think this election will track very much like the 2007 NSW state election when Debnam’s undiciplined campaign went from bad to worse against the ALP electoral machine.
If I was a Liberal marginal seat holder I would be giving Joe Hockey a call and it wouldn’t be to say Merry Christmas. I think we are in for an interesting February.
Possum, how many newspolls are there between now and the resumption of Parliament in February?
It is interesting that the Greens have lost ground with the current political focus on climate change. It appears their unrealistic, immovable stand has backfired. What will be more interesting is whether it continues as a trend as the CPRS argument hots up again.
I expect one of the reasons Abbott’s honeymoon has not seen a big jump is that the electorate knows him and has made up their collective mind already.
I think that Labor will have some issues upcoming with the ETS. Come Feb they have to pick a number and run with it. Whatever that number is it is likely to polarize people for or against them, with some primary support going Green (which will all come back in prefs anyway).
It will be fun watching Tony Abbot get ground up by the ALP machine next year though. BG above is right, they havent even started on him as yet.
Interesting that the “worse than expected” numbers increased 12% from 08 to 09 which i personally dont think is fair given there was the GFC to geal with. So dissatisfaction is increasing, but pretty much no-one is shifting their primary vote, or if they are the traffic is both ways. That cant be good news for the the Libs.
Any projections on movements in the Greens votes has to grapple with the fact that the movement is within the MOE for the poll.
Drawing conclusions about the movement in the Green vote and their current policy stance is perilous if not down right silly.
The only way to draw anymeaningful conclusions is to watch their trend vote from a number of polls over the long term not just bet
between the two Essential polls.
I agree jenauthor- I expect one of the reasons Abbott’s honeymoon has not seen a big jump is that the electorate knows him and has made up their collective mind already.
The thing about Tony Abbott is that he is Tony Abbott. He hasn’t really tried to reach out from his conservative base “climate change is crap, kids should read the bible” etc. But when he has it comes across as really insincere “we will have a climate action policy” or “i’m an environmentalist”.
He hasn’t really done one believeable thing to change the current status quo.
His other blanket statement “our job is to oppose the govt” is also rather silly. Being an alternative government doesn’t mean they have to oppose every policy simply for opposing’s sake.
Rudd proved at the last election that having similar policies (when sensible and in the country’s interest) and agreeing with the govt. (again, when sensible etc.) wasn’t detrimental to their cause.
At the moment, I think if Rudd said white, Abbott would say black ‘just because’. A simplistic reaction that at times comes across as petulant. Unfortunately for Abbott, the electorate is a heck of a lot more clued in than that and see it for what it is.
Doug said: Drawing conclusions about the movement in the Green vote and their current policy stance is perilous if not down right silly.
I just said it was interesting and I’d like to see how things progress in the coming months. I quite understand that all polls generally have a few percent error rate but 2 points out of 10 is a 20% change, which, if it continued would be significant.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the Greens targets in principle … but in the current political climate (no pun intended) those targets are unrealistic in terms of getting any climate change legislation through the parliament, especially given the recalcitrance of the coalition wowsers.
Jenauthor, it’s a pity that you’re going to be majorly inconvenienced by the “unrealistic, immovable” temperature rise of the planet.
Jenauthor (@9): A movement of 2 points out of 10 is still only a 2% movement, as the MOE is for the whole dataset, not the specific and small value of Greens voters. As the MOE for the whole dataset is so large compared to the total Green support, tracking any movement in their numbers should be left to serious statistical analysis.
Point of information Carnivean -
The MOE quoted by Possum is for percentages around the 50% mark. MOE is less for percentages approaching 0% and 100%. MOE for 10% based on sample of 1884 is actually 1.35%.
Here’s a good explanation and a nifty calculator so you can work it out yourself.
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm
However, these calculations assume perfect random sampling – which the polls never are. Which is why it’s best to look for trends rather than jump to conclusions on the basis of one poll.
So apart from some minor statistical bickering we are all in agreement.
1. Rudd remains electorally dominant
2. Tony Abbott is a dud
3. The Greens remain a minor party
The Greens have been consistently averaging 8%. The MOE for this is 1.2% for a sample of 1,884. It was the 10% poll that was a bit of an outlier.
Abbott is simply unelectable (but Teh Australian can use him as a sock puppet for a few months to channel their anti-labor drivel).
It’s the economy stupid. In response to ANYTHING Abbott says all the Government has to say would be ‘What credibility does Tony Abbott have on economic matters?”
The utter stupidity of Teh Liberals, the self-anointed ‘Party of Business’, electing as leader someone with zero economic experience and zero economic experience shows just how vicious the hard right is – never mind losing an election as long as the wets are slapped down. I personally hope that malcopops gets his revenge – It will have to be malcopops because Hockey has shown himself to be utterly spineless and without principal.
What credibility does Monkey Man have on anything?
Hockey is the Libs Beazley – the avuncular, warm and fuzzy, jolly facade hiding, in Hockey’s case, a lot of straw.