This week’s Essential Report comes in with the primaries running 42/39 to Labor (steady), washing out into a two party preferred of 54/46 the same way – unchanged since last week. The Greens are on 11 (up 2), while the broad Others are down 2 to come in on 8. This comes from a rolling two week sample of 1797, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.
Additional questions this week looked at which party is seen as the best to manage a variety of issues,approval ratings, attributes of Gillard and Abbott and a couple of questions on population size and growth. These additional questions run from a sample of 1015, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 3.1% mark.
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Do you approve or disapprove of the job Julia Gillard/Tony Abbott is doing as Prime Minister/Opposition Leader?
Comparing the results from Essential Report since Abbott became Opposition Leader and where results where taken for both leaders at the same poll we get for the PM:
And for Abbott we get:
On the cross-tabs for Gillard, Essential tells us:
After one week as Prime Minister, 48% approve of Julia Gillard’s performance and 27% disapprove. 26% could not give an opinion.
85% of Labor voters approved and 4% disapproved. Liberal/National voters split 19% approve and 54% disapprove.
Men split 46% approve/31% disapprove and women 50% approve/23% disapprove
The cross-tabs for Abbott tell us:
81% of Liberal/National voters approve and 12% disapprove. Labor voters split 15% approve/75% disapprove.
Men split 41% approve/45% disapprove and women 34% approve/48% disapprove.
The net approval head to head looks like this
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Who do you think would make the better Prime Minister out of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott?
The cross-tabs tell us:
Men prefer Julia Gillard over Tony Abbott 48% to 31% and women 57%/22%.
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Which of the following parties – Labor, Liberal or Greens ‐ do you think is the best party when it comes to:
Essential polled on this last month when Rudd was PM – if we look at how the results have changed over that period we get:
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Which of the following describe your opinion of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard/Tony Abbott?
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It has been estimated that Australia will have a population of 36 million by 2050. Do you think this will be good or bad for Australia?
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On average, Australia’s population increases by about 300,000 per year (less than 2%). Do you think this is too high, too low or about right?
23 Comments
Err Possum,I think you may be a bit premature there.:-)
Ooops! Good grief.
Yeah, poss, don’t wish Abbott on us.
He is a fruit loop, full stop.
There also appears to be 20% of Greens missing from that last poll on population growth.
So much for Greens Party voters supporting the policy of the Greens. Looks like Greens Party supporters are the least tolerant towards immigration.
The question about future population is always interesting … and irrelevant. What would people have said in 1970 if you asked them whether they approved of Australia having a population of 20-odd million in 2010? They probably would have been horrified, but we’re happy with it as it is now … as the people of 1970 were happy then, I imagine. Our median age is around 37, so somewhere close to half of us will be dead in 2050 anyway …
Abbott appears to be taking a hammering on most of the indicators at this stage …
Paddy went:
30% in fact. The cheeky buggers jumped right out of my spreadsheet.
With major primaries staying the same this week as last week[42:39] but Greens up 2% and ‘others’ down 2% the preference flow this week must have been higher to the ALP than last time and hence the current 2pp being the same as last time suggest s that the no’s have fluctuated around 54 by a bit of a percent.
Or to put it another way, with Greens rising and ‘others’ falling I would have expected an increase in the ALP 2PP.
Fredex – it would have been just rounding issues. A few points moving between Greens and Others with primary votes getting rounded to the nearest percent gives a fair bit of room for stuff like that to just “come out in the wash”
PADDY: “Err Possum,I think you may be a bit premature there.:-)”
Typical Paddy, of First Dog fame!
Ta Poss, I thought maybe last week 2PP may have been just under 54% and this week just over 54%.
Its interesting that some of the Greens that went back from whence they came previously pre Gillard appeared to have returned to the Green fold, to the tune of plus 2%.
Possum, in the ‘Which party is best when it comes to:’ table, the ‘Don’t Knows’ are incorrect for Handling Australia’s Economy (1% instead of 19%) and Being Honest and Ethical (4% instead of 44%).
Thanks Ghost – talk about a bad case of sticky keys today.
Possum:
“Do you approve or disapprove of the job Julia Gillard/Tony Abbott is doing as Prime Minister?”
Kevin Rudd is already gone from your memory, huh?
Completely OT here; Possum do you know much about the broad ‘Others’ primary vote in terms of the preference flows? You’ve looked at in the past issues around using the last election preference compared with the stated preference for the Greens vote, is there something similar with Others, or is it a too motley crew to make much of? The vote is almost as high as the Greens, so in a tight contest these preferences could be important.
At first glance I’d guess much of these preference would flow to the coalition, simply because most of the micro parties I can think of are loopy right wingers like FF, shooters party, One Nation and similar, CEC etc. I guess there’s still a percent or so of Democrats vote as well.
Alexander White:
“So much for Greens Party voters supporting the policy of the Greens. Looks like Greens Party supporters are the least tolerant towards immigration.”
I would imagine that many Greens believe:
1. Humanitarian immigration shoudl be maintained, or increased.
2. Ordinary immigration should be reduced
3. Measures should be taken to encourage Australians to have fewer children.
We still have a ridiculously high birth rate for a developed country.
Bogdan – they are a pretty motley bunch and the pref flows at the respondent allocated level are highly volatile. However, if you average those pref flows out over any arbitrary time they nearly always come in around the 55/45 to 60/40 favouring the Coalition – which also happened to be around the flow rate of the last few elections.
Calypto – m views exactly
Julia lost any respect with the MRRT/RSPT cave-in, and now the reverse dog-whistle on “border security”. Talk about the the tail wagging the dog!
Also, it seems that there are whingers and there are whingers. In her induction speech. Julia professed a dislike for whingers, then caves in to a bunch of whinging carpetbagger conmen with deep pockets, and now a bunch of whinging xenophobic paranoiac bogans.
No wonder this country’s median IQ is below normal.
Thanks Possum!
Given the current poll positions, the interesting question is not ‘who forms the next government?’ but ‘what will be the make up of the senate ?’.
This of course depends on not only who gets elected but also who is going out.
Any thoughts pos ?!
Ta very much, you gorgeous marsupial. This is exactly the sort of thing I saw searching for when I asked about it last week.
The practical upshot of Julia taking over the reins is that 1) (with a couple of notable and understandable exceptions), all of Labor’s performance metrics have improved and 2) the Libs under Abbott have either stayed the same or gone backwards since then.
Looking more and more like a masterstroke from the ALP …