Polls and surveys
Essential – we're not happy with the Coalition
Essential has produced another large set of results, with three themes – Morrison’s and Shorten’s approval, climate change and vaccination.
The results from its long-running survey on approval and preferred Prime Minister are shown below.
Morrison’s net approval continues to slide, but not necessarily to Albanese’s advantage. Strangely Morrison’s approval seems to have taken its strongest hit in Queensland according to the Essential tables, the state where he has been trying so hard to shore up support.
But not too much should be read into approval ratings. Many people may express disapproval of Albanese because he is being too low key, and some may approve of Morrison because his egregiously bad behaviour is contributing to his departure from public life.
On preferred prime minister the gap is closing ever-so-slowly: Albanese may overtake Morrison by 2050.
On another question, more relevant to the election, only 34 percent of respondents believe the Coalition “deserves to be re-elected”, while 45 percent believe it’s “time to give someone else a go”.
On another set of questions – “Which party would you trust most to handle the following issues?” the Coalition, in spite of its demonstrated security gaffes and bad economic decisions, still comes out ahead of Labor on “national security” and “management of the economy”. But on specific economic questions, such as “fair wages and workplace conditions”, “addressing climate change” and “housing affordability”, Labor comes out well ahead of the Coalition, even though these are basic economic issues. (It would be informative if Essential could try to find out what people mean by “management of the economy”.)
Morrison gets a poor score on his impact on international relations: 47 percent of respondents believe he has undermined Australia’s international reputation, while only 27 percent believe he has enhanced it.
Many political pundits seem to believe that Morrison’s damage to the trust other nations show in us (the French as the most recent example), and his damage to our international reputation, don’t matter much on the local political scene, but a series of questions on trust and reputation do not support that view. There are partisan differences, but even so, only 38 percent of Coalition supporters agree that “Australia’s international reputation doesn’t matter, as long as we’re doing what’s right for our economy”, while Labor and Greens supporters show even lower levels of agreement.
On the Joyce-Morrison 2050 zero emissions target, people are not very impressed. Only 37 percent of respondents believe “Net zero by 2050 is enough action on climate change for Australia”, and only 21 percent believe “It sets a clear target and provides a credible plan for how to get there”. In fact on that latter question, only 32 percent of Coalition supporters agree.
On governments’ response to Covid-19 there isn’t much shift in public opinion: 48 percent of people give the federal government a “good” rating while 29 percent give it a “poor” rating. State governments, particular Western Australia, get higher ratings than the Commonwealth, and strangely, even though Victoria’s experience in this outbreak has been bad, people’s approval of the Victorian government seems to be improving.
The proportion of people who say they would “never” get vaccinated remains at 6 percent, but among “other” voters (other than Coalition, Labor or Greens), 16 percent say they would never get vaccinated. On getting children vaccinated – a new question – a similar proportion (6 percent) say they would never get their children vaccinated, but that rises to 20 percent among “other” voters.