Polls

As elections in two states loom it is becoming absolutely clear that voters are in the process of switching off the Labor Party.

What this means is that Australia will have a changed political landscape post March 20 - no matter what the outcome of the polls.

And the aftershocks from these elections could have profound implications for federal Labor, which will seek re-election with two crippled state divisions providing distractions and baggage.

Continue reading "The state elections could be an albatross for Rudd’s neck" »

The head of the UN’s climate change panel (the IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri has released a novel that combines lessons on climate change with sexy story lines.

The protagonist in Pachauri’s book is eerily similar to Pachauri himself: an environmentalist and former engineer who inexplicably has a lot of sex with women (I can’t say whether the last part as any basis in reality). According to The Times the book: “mingles lectures on climate change with descriptions of Sanjay’s sexual encounters, including frequent references to “voluptuous breasts”.

Following last week’s visit from the Skeptic Dark Lord Mockton (who looks and sounds like an evil mastermind from a new climate themed Bond film) I can’t help but wonder if some of the increasing confusion about climate change stems from the eccentric oddballs who we’re told to believe.

Continue reading "No wonder we’re confused about climate change . . ." »

If you are already sure who you are going to vote for at this year’s federal election then consider yourself a member of a minority group: the ‘rusted-on voter’.

As this week’s Essential Report illustrates, we have become a Nation of Softies, voters who can be wooed and repelled by our politicians all the way up to voting day.

It is a change in our political culture from previous generations who inherited a party from their parents and stuck with it through thick and thin.

Continue reading "Election 2010: It’s the year of the softie" »

Ordinarily the first parliamentary sitting week for a new opposition leader is a chance to redefine themselves, introduce new ideas to the public, perhaps break the shackles of received wisdom about their view of the world.

But like John Howard when took the Liberal leadership (again) in 1995, Tony Abbott makes his first parliamentary charge as Opposition Leader this week as a relatively well-known political quantity. So do the cliches about him match the perceptions of people in the street? Being the new leader, and seeing as we did the same number on the Prime Minister and Malcolm Turnbull last year, we decided to ask people some simple questions about what they thought of the Member for Warringah.

So was there a surprise, like in the Rudd survey when people said they perceived the Prime Minister as somehow physically small? Nup; respondents described Abbott almost as a caricature of how he’s caricatured: a straight-talking conservative bruiser, hated by some for his views on social issues, known for them by all.

Continue reading "The alternative" »

Here’s a heads up. If you really want to know what Aussies in 2010 think about our country becoming a republic just flip a coin.

According to the odds, there’s a 50-50 chance of turning up the head of Queen Elizabeth.

Eleven years since a referendum was held to settle the republic debate, Australians seem just as divided about cutting their ties to a monarch living on the other side of the world.

Continue reading "Well at least it’s clear we like talking about a republic" »

GetUp’s latest poll has found the public are hoping Tony Abbott will take the party down a progressive path.

It’s a big year for the Liberal Party of Australia. One hundred years ago, the Protectionist and Free Trade parties combined to offer voters an alternative to the Labor party.

Oppositions can be great force within our democracy. They can be the drivers of accountability and transparency, of new thinking and ambitious policy. And in a democracy where our major parties fight over just a small subset of the population (swinging voters), their power in influencing the Government of the day is certainly present.

Continue reading "Abbott’s challenge now is to renew the Liberal Party" »

After a week when the Liberals took decisive action to reduce their political footprint Joe Hockey is sitting snugly between ‘Someone Else’ and ‘Don’t Know’ as the preferred Liberal leader.

If politics really is Hollywood for ugly people, then this week’s Essential Report shows Joe is about to slip on the political swimsuit and start strutting his stuff by default.

The polling confirms what we all supected – the nation is over Malcolm Turnbull, it can’t abide Tony Abbott and it doesn’t really know who Julie Bishop or Andrew Robb are. As for Kevin Andrews, like his own party, we didn’t bother to ask. This leaves just three credible options for the Liberals: Don’t Know, Someone Else and Joe Hockey.

Continue reading "The only beauty contest that Joe Hockey will ever win" »

I am wiping the egg off my face this morning. Last week I happily wrote off Newspoll’s recent findings of a drop in support for Rudd as a blip and then along comes this week’s Essential Report showing there is, indeed, something going on.

The fall we have picked up may not be as spectacular as Newspoll’s but we are beginning to see movement away from Labor, especially among older Australians.

A four-point fall in two party preferred vote is beyond margin for error and could mean one of three things: (i) Newspoll was right all along (albeit a little over-cooked);  (ii) Newspoll was wrong but the world has caught up with their error; or (iii) we have a blip to match Newspoll’s.

Continue reading "I love the taste of egg in the morning" »

Evidence is now mounting that last week’s Newspoll poll showing a seven point drop in Labor support was a rogue result, with Essential Research’s weekly tracking showing no movement in the two-party preferred vote.

The Essential Report, that has Labor comfortably ahead 59-41, follows on the heels of Monday’s Herald/Nielson poll that was also steady.

Beneath the headline figures there are some intriguing sub-plots, with the public going close to welcoming the increase in interest rates, while continuing to rate the Prime Minister down on his handling of the asylum seeker issue.

Continue reading "It’s a blip – Rudd maintains lead with interest" »

Whatever the reason, Kevin Rudd can take no comfort from today’s Newspoll showing a seven-point turnaround in the standing of Labor and the Coalition in the past fortnight. The poll comes as political strategist and Punch regular Peter Lewis writes today that a majority of Australians thinks Rudd is weak on border protection, according to the latest Essential Media findings.

The PM’s nightmare scenario is that there are three factors at play - disapproval at his “tough but fair” line on asylum seekers, disquiet over his economic management ahead of today’s dead-cert interest rate hike, and a sign that some voters are growing tired of the hitherto unassailable Teflon Kevin.

Unless the Newspoll is a blip, Labor is facing the almost unbelievable prospect of a nail-biter election with a two-party preferred lead of 52 to 48 over the Coalition. We’ll throw the commentary to you - what’s your take on it?

Anyone wondering why Kevin Rudd continues to defy political gravity could do well to consider the latest Essential Report that drills down into the issues of importance to Australian voters.

Like a human pogo stick, Rudd just keeps bouncing back: it doesn’t seem to matter what he’s hit with – global financial meltdown, environmental destruction, even an influx of asylum seekers.

No matter the political issue – and we have tested 13 of them – Rudd has the Opposition covered – even the traditional Liberal strong points of economic management and interest rates can not deliver Turnbull a win.

Continue reading "Our beloved Kevin Rudd is a human pogo stick" »

It was refreshing to hear something new in the public debate on climate change today. Liberal frontbencher Chris Pyne told Sky News: “If a modern political party wants to be taken seriously it cannot be a climate change sceptic party”.

Is there any issue which draws more predictable responses from people than climate change? The mere mention of it sparks a round of boring twaddle as folks argue from fixed positions over whether the latest news shows climate change is caused by people or even real - or, most hilariously, a massive conspiracy cooked up by an evil network of thousands of scientists with a twisted sense of humour.

But there’s one thing surely everyone agrees on. If sea levels rise and rain stops falling, we are all totally and utterly screwed. So we should probably deal with it.

Continue reading "People haven’t stopped caring about climate change" »

I’ve never been one for obsessing about The Australian. They have an editorial slant to the right, but they also have some very high quality journos who I like to read. As a result I buy and read their paper every day and filter out their leanings. I’m sure plenty of others do the same.

Yesterday, their front page (“Rudd loses ground in his homeland state and the bush”) blew up the filter.  It’s one thing to take a news angle on one part of a poll at the expense of a more complex message.  It’s another to ignore what should be, for one side of politics, an enormous, wailing emergency siren with big flashing red lights on top in order to substantiate a headline like that.

In their article, Matthew Franklin and Samantha Maiden claim “public support for Labor has plunged in regional Australia and fallen in Kevin Rudd’s home state of Queensland” as well as “a big jump in support for the Coalition among voters living outside the capital cities.” While no questions on the ETS were in the poll, the ETS was inserted as a possible cause.

Continue reading "The one conclusion from Newspoll: Turnbull is cactus" »

The polls on climate change are in and Australia is speaking as one, in a consistent and unwavering voice, sending the government a clear message it ignores at its own peril. That message? “We don’t know”.

Over the past few months ‘Don’t Know’ has emerged from the pack to be the most popular answer to a series of questions around climate change posed in the weekly Essential Report. Where once we were clear on the need for decisive action to stop global warming, now we are all at (rising?) sea. And the source of our confusion can be summed up in the ugly little acronym, ETS. Here’s a snapshot from recent polls:

June 29: Should the Opposition vote in favour or against the Government’s ETS legislation? - 40 per cent Don’t Know
June 22: Is the Government’s ETS strong enough? – 47 per cent Don’t Know
June 15: Should the Greens support the ETS in the Senate? – 37 per cent Don’t Know

This collective confusion represents a victory for the climate change deniers, notably the industry groups who have created their own doomsday scenarios around job losses in carbon-reliant industries.

Continue reading "“Don’t knows” rising faster than the polar ice caps" »

There is a national consensus that Malcolm Turnbull had a shocker last week, but dig below the surface and the story is even grimmer.

While a string of opinion polls have chronicled the fall in support for the Opposition leader, Essential Research has conducted detailed character research into the two leaders to find his leadership entering the terminal phase.

In 14 out of 15 categories, we find Kevin Rudd enjoying advantages on the positives and disadvantages on the negatives. And the one category where Turnbull has a better rating - ‘demanding’ - may well be the one that bought him undone last week.

Continue reading "15 Reasons Why Malcolm Turnbull Will Never Be PM" »

Forget Malcolm Turnbull. The biggest casualty of the Utegate debacle might not be the individual but the organisation, with the federal Liberals now looking like the hapless state oppositions in NSW, SA, Victoria and Queensland which dutifully turn up every few years on polling day for some ritualised humiliation.

Turnbull has pulled off an unprecedented and unenviable hat-trick in the polls this morning. He’s copped it in the neck in Newspoll, his approval rating falling an unprecedented 19 per cent, the biggest single drop in Newspoll’s 25-year history, with the party vote dropping three points to give Labor a thumping 56 to 44 lead, two-party preferred. He’s been flogged by Nielsen, his disapproval rocketing up 13 points to a whopping 60 per cent. And he’s been caned by Galaxy, with more than half the voters saying he was at best deceitful over the Utegate affair.

Whether Turnbull is safe or not may no longer be the question. The bigger questions is whether the party itself can survive the horrors of the past seven days.

Continue reading "Liberals teetering on the brink of irrelevance" »