Continuing on from Part 1 where we had a look at the vote estimates and win expectations, we now move on to the additional questions that were asked on greater federal government involvement in the hospital system and a question on which party is best to handle a number of issues.
The hospital question and its results – including cross-tabs – came in like this:
The results here could become a little problematic for the Coalition when it comes to them adopting a political position on Rudd’s health plan. With large, almost super majorities, supporting greater Federal involvement in funding the nation’s hospital system, any opposition to the plan will have to walk the tightrope between arguing that, yes, the Coalition wants greater Fed involvement too – but just not Rudd’s particular flavour of Federal involvement.
Lines like “they can’t manage insulation, how can they manage health” are effectively an argument against greater Federal funding – especially without any alternative Coalition funding plan – carrying with it what looks like a pretty significant political risk.
What’s interesting here is not only the broad bipartisan support for greater Federal funding, but also the large size of the “strongly support” responses across all demographics. Greater federal funding of the hospital system seems to something held with a large dose of conviction.
Next up, Nielsen asked the following question:
I am going to read out a number of issues. For each one please tell me which of the major parties, the Labor Party or the Liberal-National Coalition, you think would best handle that issue.
Which of the major parties, the Labor Party or the Liberal-National Coalition, do you think would be best for handling…
The issues were rotated in their asking order. At this stage, it might be worth revisiting some analysis we did on the dynamics of these sorts of “better party to handle” questions since we have to be careful not to read too much into them.
So saying, with the results of this poll, we’ll look at the total headline figure, then the results by party vote:
For instance, with Health and Hospitals, 53% of the population believe Labor is the better party to handle the issue while 37% believe the Coalition is the better party to handle the issue. 19% of Coalition voters believe that the ALP is the better party to manage health and hospitals while 10% of Labor voters believe that the Coalition is the best party to handle this issue. Greens voters split 76/18 towards the ALP on the issue while the broad “Others” split 54/32 to Labor on the issue.
Another thing that we can do is chart – for each issue – the proportion of major party voters that believe the other major party, the party they don’t vote for, is best party to manage each issue. It might tell us something about the relative weakness each party has on any given issue.(click to expand)
Education and Industrial Relations are the two issues with the largest numbers of Coalition voters believing that Labor is the better party to manage, while the Economy and Interest Rates are Labor’s relatively weakest issues, having the largest numbers of Labor voters believing the Coalition is the best to manage.
Like all these better party to handle questions, I suppose, does it actually matter? If we had an election campaign with a focus on industrial relations and education, would this be more likely to help the ALP gain swinging Coalition voters than, say, a campaign with a heavy focus on the economy and interest rates? Interested in your thoughts as I’m dubious about what this sort of “better party to manage” data can actually tell us without getting down to respondent level data.
Finally, there’s something worth looking at with the net approval ratings. Since October, every pollster has picked up on Rudd’s approval ratings having steadily declined. Similarly, Abbott has lifted the approval ratings for the Opposition leader over the last few months – but what is interesting is looking at the age breakdowns on the approval ratings themselves, particularly the net approval ratings. Nielsen didn’t run a poll in December, they ran two in November – one in the first week and another in the final week of that month. The other thing worth mentioning is that all states have pretty much moved together – so the disparity in demographic movements on net approvals has really only happened in the age-breakdowns.
One of these things is not like the others – as they say. The 18-24 year demographic has barely changed their net approval ratings for either Rudd or the Opposition Leader over the last 6 months, bucking a trend that we see in every other age block. In fact, if we look at the change in net approvals over this period:
We find that the older voters are, not only are they more likely to have given Rudd declining approval ratings, but are also more likely to have given Abbott greater approval ratings.
Abbott is getting strongest results with the 55+, then declining down in strength until the youngest demographic, where Abbott hasn’t moved them at all. Similarly with Rudd, his weakest result is among the 55+, getting less weak results through the age groups until the 18-24’s, where his approval ratings are about the same where they were back in September.
The 18-24’s seem to be completely locked up for Rudd and locked out for Abbott. It’s pretty unusual that you get such large disparities like this in approval rating changes across time.
18 Comments
In a strange way, this is good for the ALP because it shows young voters – those who will be voting for years to come – are getting more and more rusted onto the left of politics, whilst those who are more rusted on to the right of politics are the ones who won’t be voting for much longer.
I think the best issues ones have bugger all to do with reality. They’re just locked in; interest rates – liberal. Why? err cos you know err.. umm cos they just are you know!!
Health – ALP Why? Well because they do the ummm… oh look just they just are you know!!
Especially when you look at the correlation between total and “others”
I agree with Grog. The way they’re asked, one after the other, after the how-would-you-vote questions suggests people just snap out answers based on knee-jerk reactions. I doubt if most people give any serious thought to them when they are just add-ons. And I doubt if the whole concept of ‘better to manage X and Y’ has much to do with the way people actually cast a vote at elections. Might be a tad more interesting if they were asked quite separately. That might mean a bit more. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
For sure! I’d love for these polls to collect a one to two sentence ‘why’ textual follow up on these answers and provide this, unedited, as part of the poll.
I think the question is a bit like “Do you approve of motherhood?” Of course people want the fairy godmother to give the hospitals more money. If the question was slanted more to the strings that are attached the percentages would change. For instance, ask a West Australian “Do you want our hospitals run from Canberra?”, you would probably get a massive negative.
Poss, love your work as always.
Regarding your question on the relative value of the ‘better party to handle…”
To my mind, they only take on significance when cross referenced to some questions on how these issues influence a pollee’s voting.
For example, I tend to vote Liberal and I am one of the 26% who think the ALP do Education better.
Will I ever vote for the ALP federally based on their management of education? Nope…., never, it just won’t change my vote. Same for industrial relations, hospitals
I think you’ve made this point before, but a cross-reference of these issues to the order of importance would be really useful
@ Mr Squiggle.
Your above question of order of importance is valid only up to a point. Importance changes with what questions are dominating the collective electoral thinking.
For example, prior to Copenhagen, many would have stated the environment as a major issue, however since the disappointment of Copenhagen, that issue has gone off the boil and interest fades for somewhat.
Right now, health would appear to be high on the list. The economy, which would have been dominant last year, has receded now the economic climate seems more settled.
One thing this highlights is the fickleness of the electorate. An example would be the over 55s. When the govt gave the pension a lift, you would probably have found the approval for the goct from this agegroup much higher. But that has faded from the consciousness, so the older group goes back to its more conservative viewpoint.
It would be interesting to see what the 18-25s would be most interested in after Abbott’s absurdly unrealistic ‘carrot’ of today’s paid leave announcement.
Why is that? I could understand they loved Howard – he’s one of them. But Abbott is younger and such a populist showman, what is there that attracts the 55+ers?
Is it the issues that the Libs represent that are attractive to the older age group: climate denial,
fear mongering on asylum seekersborder security, a front bench comprising a similar demographic, and that Abbott as a former Howard minister represents the possibility of continuing the Howard hand outs to that voter bloc?Grumpy old men. When you get to old age people tend to become less tolerant, more racist, xenophobic bigoted, support harsh measures, like black and white and not grey. They are less likely to be caring of others not them and have a stuff them attitude.
No data for that though. But I can see a higher % than the norm of grumpy old men being keen Liberal supporters as harshness, selfishness, racism, bigotry, xenophobia tend to be the characteristics associated with them both.
But then again that may be entirely wrong and I have been hanging with the unrepresentative bunch of grumpy old men.
The negative nationalism crew, replete with utes bearing the ‘love it or leave it’ flag stickers are almost all young blue-collar blokes, as far as I can see. The great reasoner Thomas Paine wouldn’t have thought much of this sort of ‘mere assertion as analysis’, mate.
Good work Phil, one mere assertion countered by another!
Chinda [1]: I’m not sure that holds. The correlation between age and support for conservative policies is pretty well established. Todays young ALP voters may well be tomorrows retirees voting for whatever conservative party is around.
I wonder if there are any measurements of education level vs. the likelihood of ending up a grumpy old man/woman
This government has done a lot for pensioners recently, and yet the support by the over 55′s has dropped dramatically, are they becoming senile!.
It will be interesting to ee what pensioners and carers think of Abbott’s latest middle-class welfare handout proposal. I’m sure they’ll love the idea of a ‘young 20/30 something’ getting up to four times their pension to have a child while hubby is still earning $150,000 a year.
The over 55s might be getting senile but they are not senile enough to miss the implications of this. Abbott saying that big business can afford to pay and should be civic minded enough to pay for this, is completely disingenuous. They would not levy business to help house thre homeless or to increase pensions, for instance.
The next few polls will be very interesting indeed.
As you get older you do get grumpier and less tolerant.
But you get less tolerant on whichever side of politics you favour. I know lots of grumpy old socialists and I’m turning into a grumpy old green myself.
I’m getting more radical as I get older, and I was pretty radical to begin with
Black cockatoo and Chinda: I know what you say is often true as well, yet I know several people who are now quite conservative and were once enthusiastic young socialists. It so happens most were not educated much beyond high school, but my sample size is in no way representative (5)…
Hence my interest in education level vs. older life political leaning. Do educated people stay with their beliefs longer because they arrived at them in a more logical, deductive manner? Or the opposite?
Thomas and calypto – I’m a grumpy green too