Continuing on from Part 1 of the Nielsen where we looked at the vote estimates, we’ll now take a bit of a squiz at the additional questions in the poll. There we three questions on the ETS/climate change and one on means testing the private health insurance rebate – so we’ll deal with the latter, isolated question, first. There’s plenty of data here to chew through so you might want to go and make yourself a cuppa first.

Nielsen asked:

And finally, families and individuals that pay private health insurance premiums are currently eligible for the Federal Government 30% Rebate on private health insurance. This means they get a 30% reduction on the cost of their private health insurance. The Government has introduced legislation to means-test the rebate for singles on incomes over $75,000 and couples over $150,000. Do you support or oppose a means test on the private health insurance rebate or is this something you don’t really have an opinion about?

The usual partisan polarity turns up here that we seem to be increasingly seeing of late on any given issue, and the large numbers of “no opinion” washes out a lot of the political certainty. Yet the big standouts here are the male/female and Capital/Non capital city splits.

On the capital city/non capital city difference, it’s probably explained by basic income issues, which we also see coming out in the age cross-tabs. The wealthier cohorts of 25-39, 40-45 and Capital City all have higher levels of opposition to any means testing of the private health insurance rebate, probably reflecting basic self-interest where larger proportions of people in those cohorts would be affected negatively by any means test. In the poorer cohorts of 18-24, 55+ and non-capital city – we see higher levels of support for the means test.

The odd one out though is the gender divide. Be interested in your thoughts to try and explain that.

Moving on to the ETS, Nielsen asked three questions:

1. Do you support or oppose an Emissions Trading Scheme for Australia?

2. Thinking about climate change policies generally, which do you prefer –
Kevin Rudd’s broad approach to climate change or Tony Abbott’s broad
approach to climate change?

3. Both the Government and the Opposition have climate change policies that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent by 2020. The Government’s policy is to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme. The Opposition’s policy is to set up a fund that would be used to purchase initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Which policy do you prefer – an Emissions Trading Scheme or an Emissions Reduction Fund?

The first question measures generic support in the community for any given ETS rather than any specific ETS regime – so keeping that in your thought orbit, this is what the responses were, including demographic cross-tabs.

An ETS as a generic proposition still has majority support in Australia for every cohort except among Coalition voters, where generic opposition to an ETS has a small plurality.

We continue to see the same old patters emerge that we’ve witnessed in previous Morgan and Nielsen polls on this issue, where women and capital city residents have much higher levels of generic support for an ETS than men and non-capital city residents.

More interesting however, is what happens when we look at how responses have changed over time. Nielsen has asked this question on two previous occasions – July 2008 and November 2009. If we track the changes between the 2008 and the 2010 results, this is what we end up with:

Across all cohorts there has been an increase in generic opposition, a reduction in generic support and a resultant decrease in net support levels. Males, non-capital cities and the two oldest cohorts (40-54 and 55+) have been the groups that have moved against an ETS the strongest – confirming our earlier suspicions of the major demographics of scepticism.

The next question Nielsen asked was:

Thinking about climate change policies generally, which do you prefer – Kevin Rudd’s broad approach to climate change or Tony Abbott’s broad approach to climate change?

The interesting bit here is how the older one gets, support for Abbott’s approach grows while Rudd’s approach reduces. Again, more women support Rudd than men, more capital city residents support Rudd than non-capital residents and Rudd holds a plurality across every cohort apart from Coalition voters, and ties with the 55+.

The final question asked went like this:

Both the Government and the Opposition have climate change policies that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent by 2020. The Government’s policy is to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme. The Opposition’s policy is to set up a fund that would be used to purchase initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Which policy do you prefer – an Emissions Trading Scheme or an Emissions Reduction Fund?

Some of the results to the questions might seem a little incompatible – for instance, while a majority of people support a generic ETS and a plurality of people support Rudd’s approach (that contains an ETS) compared to Abbott’s approach (that contains a fund) , a plurality of people actually prefer a fund rather than an ETS!

Got that?

No…?

Well then

The best way to get your head around it is firstly to acknowledge support for a generic ETS is always going to be higher for the support related to any specific ETS, simply because any given ETS will never have high enough targets for some and the targets will be too high for others.

The other point to keep in mind is that the “Rudd vs. Abbott approach” question will contain a lot of brand baggage in the responses, where people that haven’t been following the debate closely (a lot) will use their generic view of the two leaders as a proxy. So there would have been some Coalition voters answering Abbott and some Labor voters answering Rudd not on the basis of them knowing and understanding each leaders specific approach, but simply on the basis of who they are.

Finally, to help get our heads around it all, here are the complete cross-tabs by question response.

Question 1 (generic support/oppose an ETS) vs. responses from other questions

Question 2 (Preferred approach of Rudd vs Abbott) vs responses from other questions.

Question 3 (Preference for an ETS or Fund) vs. responses from other questions.

I’ve added in the totals to help understand the way to read them. For instance, in that last table, 57% of those that support (both support and strongly support) a generic ETS gave the response of an “ETS” as an answer to question 3.

There’s plenty of fat to chew.