This week’s Essential Report has the primaries running 42 (down 1)/ 40 (steady) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 53/47 the same way – a one point gain to the Coalition since last week’s poll. The Greens are on 9 (up 1), while the broad “Others” are steady on 9. This comes from a two week rolling sample of 1816, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.
This is the lowest ALP vote estimate that Essential has produced to date.
Additional questions this week are on attribute rating for Rudd and Abbott, population size and the private health insurance rebate means testing proposed by Labor. These additional questions run off a sample of 1009, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 3.1% mark.
Which of the following describe your opinion of the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd?
Which of the following describe your opinion of the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott?
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Do you agree or disagree with the following statements about Australia’s population growth?
On the cross-tabs, we get:
Labor voters were more likely to agree that having a larger population will help our economy (42%) and disagree that we just don’t have the infrastructure and services to manage more population growth (23%).
Coalition voters were more likely to agree that we just don’t have the infrastructure and services to manage more population growth (82%) and agree that immigration should be slowed as it causes too much change to our society (74%).
Greens voters were more likely to agree that Australia has a fragile environment that cannot cope with a much larger population (66%).
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The Government proposes to phase out the 30 per cent rebate on private health insurance for singles on incomes over $75,000 and couples on $150,000-plus. Do you support or oppose means testing the heath insurance rebate for people on higher incomes?
Other cross-tabs went:
People not working were more likely to support the means test (57%), while those in full-time work were more likely to oppose (37%).
5 Comments
Most of this is in no-brainer territory, I would have thought.
Still, it’s nice to point to something and say, “See? I was right!”
There is a much higher opposition to means testing private health insurance amongst Greens Party supporters compared to Labor (12% difference). Guess it shows the growing “base” of the Greens Party – middle class.
This should be ‘essential’ (pun intended) reading for the opposition and cross benchers re: health insurance rebate. The numbers don’t lie.
One thing that is certain, overall, the electorate ain’t as stupid as the media would like us to think. Especially interesting is the trustworthiness/intelligence/hard-working questions. If the msm was to believed, Abbott has Rudd’s measure, but out in elector land Rudd still holds the ascendancy.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely this poll is likely get get any mainstream airplay.
It will be interesting to watch what ‘spin’ the msm puts on upcoming polls.
Such good polls for the PM, in many positive qualities, which are also so far ahead of the Opposition Leader’s would be a surprise if one had to rely purely on the mainstream media for information.