This week’s Essential Report comes in with the primaries running 40 (down 1)/ 39 (steady) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 54/46 the same way – a 1 point gain to the Coalition since last week. The Greens are steady on 13 while the broad “Others” are up a point to 8. This comes from a rolling two week sample of 2418, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2% mark. The Better PM question had Gillard leading Abbott 48/30 – a 3 point decline for Gillard and a 4 point increase for Tony since last week, with men preferring Gillard 46/34 and women 50/26.
Additional questions asked this week were approval ratings, better PM, main reason for voting for a party, preferred Senate results and two questions on immigration policy.
Do you approve or disapprove of the job Julia Gillard is doing as Prime Minister?
On the crosstabs, Essential tells us:
87% of Labor voters approve and only 5% disapprove. Among Liberal/National voters, 11% approve and 77% disapprove.
By gender ‐ men 44% approve/44% disapprove and women 48% approve/33% disapprove.
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Do you approve or disapprove of the job Tony Abbott is doing as Opposition Leader?
On the crosstabs, we have:
82% of Liberal/National voters approve and 11% disapprove. Among Labor voters, 14% approve and 78% disapprove.
By gender ‐ men 41% approve/48% disapprove and women 35% approve/48% disapprove.
So we’re still getting a big gender gap on the approvals, even if the voting intentions aren’t reflecting that – which is an interesting little bit of public behaviour.
Meanwhile, the net approvals look like this:
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What is the main reason you intend to vote for the Labor Party/Liberal or National Party/Greens?
Sad indictment on our major parties that they only derive between 15 and 25% of their support on the basis of having better perceived policies!
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Regardless of which party is elected to Government (i.e. has a majority in the House of Representatives), which of the following Senate options do you think would be best for Australia?
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Tony Abbott has proposed to cut immigration from around 300,000 a year to 170,000? Do you approve or disapprove of this cut to immigration?
The results among Greens voters raises the interesting paradox in the party between the small immigration environment wing and the big immigration progressive wing again. Finally, on our last question we have:
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Which leader and party do you trust most to handle immigration issues?
21 Comments
How overcooked do you think this is, Poss?
Could be Jen – it’s harder to tell with two week rolling samples because we don’t know the exact result of each week. Its likely though that they had a bigger drop over the last week for Labor than the 1 point change the rolling average suggests.
What the hell were the 91% of LNP voters supporting lower immigration doing in the Howard years when we saw record increases in immigration numbers???
Tony doesn’t have the guild of Howard who managed to perfectly execute the shell game of quietly increasing immigration to keep the support of business while beating up on tiny numbers of boat arriving asylum seekers to give the ‘battlers’ the impression that this was keeping immigration levels low.
I’m also surprised that a fifth of Coalition voters want Labor to have the Senate majority? I can’t even have the vaguest stab at explaining that one??
And the 50% of Greens voters who don’t want them to have the BOP???? These cross-tabs have some mystifying results sometimes…
Possum,
What do you think the numbers are in reality? About 50/50 TPP?
Do you think Labor is in trouble at the moment? All the polls are quite out of whack with each other at the moment.
Vogon – if an election were held tomorrow, the current Phone Pollster Trend in the sidebar is the best estimate I can give.
Hi Possum,
Small point that I made in a previous thread when you were off getting a coffee recovering from a headache. Anthony Green highlights that there are apporximately 200 less candidates in this election, more with only 3, more with only 4 etc. This must have an impact on the vote on the day. Ie if there are less ‘others’ to vote for then the proportion of the vote on the 21st should be down. Tiny minor point, but when I see the others up to 8% in the essential and look at those seats with only ALp, Libs and Greens or at best a fourth, ie FF. Well you get my point.
Pos, if one of the pollsters were to poll the SAME people week-in week-out, would this matter to the numbers? So let’s say I was starting out as a pollster, randomly called people (and kept calling until I got a reasonable cross section of age group, social/economic standings, etc) then asked these people if we could call them regularly to see if their opinion/voting changed, would the fact that we were polling the same people be a good thing or a bad thing, statistically speaking?
Or would this be the same as online polls were one actively registers to participate?
Barking,
It might a little Barking – it’s not something I’ve ever thought to look at before, but now you mention it, I certainly will!
One thing i for sure though, with 200 less candidates, we should see the informal vote be less than it ordinary would.
George,
Theoretically it wouldn’t make any difference as long as the first sample was very very well balanced. The benefit is that you could really see how voting intentions move between parties, the cost is that any bias or random skew you had in the first poll would be carried through every poll thereafter.
George, should add:
With those online panels, when you join the panel you are put into a large pool (in excess of 100,000 people) that then get randomly sampled everytime a poll is undertaken using the panel.
Somewhat related to George’s query ….. but not really:
I think Essential polls are from a bank of 100,000 previously screened people.
If the screeners or screener questions to ascertain political views prior to be placed on the bank were biased then would the screened bank from which the roughly 1% sample is taken each week also not likely be biased?
How does Essentials bank system compare to Nielsen, Gallaxy and Newspoll supposedly random sampling?
@JamesK – wouldn’t we then expect the result to be overcooked regularly? Essential doesn’t regularly show a large discrepancy with the other pollsters as far as I’ve seen.
Methinks you may be hoping to put your own bias on the numbers…
Now that it’s considered just short of completely Barking I’ll go on.
If we therefore have less ‘other’ and less informals, the old three should get slightly more of the primary which could push the pollsters into slightly lower numbers than actually happens. I won’t go on to much longer,. Phone rings Oh I’m voting others this election. Turns up to polling booth, (this happened to me today nontheless,) ‘ Fing Greens I’m voting for the shooters party. He goes in to the prepoll, only three choices, and you guessed it no shooters, only the Libs who took his grandads old bazooka, the pinko ALP and the fing Greens, . He leaves polling booth and I have to keep a straight face while he exits in car. Fark…
I actually wasn’t suggestibg that Essential is ‘wrong’ or unreliable Suzuzzie.
I was just genuinely interested in Poss’ thjoughts on relative differnces between pollsters.
I suspect the two week rolling sample average means its a little slower to respond.
There are are problems with random samples as well. For example, relying on landlines to cantact people would exclude those who couldnt be bothered to own a landline or those that are not at home in the hours pollsters call.
As an addendum: If honesty is assumed then the only biases are unconscious.
To minimise these an active program has to be constantly adhered to, maintained and a willingness to recognise that are many more potential pitfalls not yet recognised and therefor not yet addressed.
his mindset is the mark of the true researcher.
POSSUM CAN YOU HELP WITH THIS?
OH recieved a call from automated polling company. Three questions plus personal data.
Q1 who would you vote foe in 1 month
Q2 who would you vote for today
Q3 Did the Kevin Rudd sacking affect your vote
Then personals on gender and age group.
In the happy seat of Dickson.
Does any PBer know who this mob might be? OH didnt catch company name
Poss: Am I right in reading the figures that the Gillard Experiment has pretty much backfired, based on polls alone? (I’m not trying to bait, I’m genuinely curious.)
Paddy2 (and by extension, Poss): surely the question ‘who would you vote for in 1 month?’ is somewhat redundant? After all, you mightn’t know who you’d vote for today, but once you’d made your mind up, surely you wouldn’t deliberatley say: ‘During the campaign, I’m in hte Abbott armada, but come election day, I’m Gillard’s Gladiator’?
Or do voters do this?
To all the Lib Luvvers whingeing about the economy: Which economy would you rather have, ours or the US’s?
Poss
A question regarding you Pollytics Projections.
I note that it is ALP / Coaltion/ Ind. Do you think that the Greens will not win Melb. or is that your methodology does not allow them to be counted as such. Or is the ALP more like 74 ALP, 1 Green
Australia today posted a record trade surplus.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/04/2973103.htm
The Coalition under Costello and Howard presided over record current account deficits.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/current-account-deficit-at-record-15bn/story-e6frg6nf-1111113087373
Blackburn – without Melbourne specific polling I can’t put a figure on it (I think it’s an even bet myself).
It poses a bit of a problem. I’m thinking of changing Indies to Others and building the betting market info into those projections for the seats where non-major parties are likely or possibly likely to win -that way I could include the Greens contest in Melbourne into what would become the Others column.
I’ll have a think about over the next few days.
Cuppa
It helps if you understand the difference between the balance of trade and the current account.