Turnbull sinks to new lows

Fairfax bring us today’s Nielsen poll showing the primaries running 46 (steady) / 38 (up 1) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 56/44 (down 2) the same way. This came from a sample of 1400, giving is an MoE that maxes out around the 2.6% mark. The Greens come in on 8 (down 2), while the broad “Others” are sitting on 7 (up 1). The previous  Nielsen poll was taken over the period 25-27 June.

There were some additional questions asked today, but first up we’ll run through the usual charts with a special mention of Turnbull’s disapproval ratings.

That net approval chart is the shocker here and shows exactly how Turnbull’s relationship with the wider public has played out. When he first gained the Opposition leadership, the public gave him the benefit of the doubt and treated him with an open mind – his approval ratings were in the mid 50’s, his net approval around 30.  That honeymoon lasted about a month before it started a decline that looks pretty terminal. The more the public have seen of Turnbull, the less they’ve approved of his behaviour to the point where his disapproval this poll comes in a whopping 60% and his net approval rating is bottoming out around a stable minus 30. You can’t win a chook raffle from that position, let alone an election.

Interesting too was how the politics of the time that Turnbull gained the leadership also benefited Rudd as you can see in the same net approval chart. But whereas Turnbull started strong and then went quickly downhill, Rudd achieve a boost and kept it stable until the debt and deficit argument run by the Coalition started to eat away at his ratings. Yet, not only did that Coalition line of attack not benefit the Coalition leadership, it didnt manage to pull Rudd’s approval ratings down below what he was achieving before the Turnbull era started.

Rudd appears to have a highly stable, almost rusted on approval rating in the mid-60’s, with another 10-15% of the population that shift on net terms between agreeing and disagreeing with his behaviour, depending on the issues of the day.

Two other questions were asked this poll. The first was on public opinion on what the government should do with it’s CPRS legislation – unfortunately I don’t have the exact wording of the question, so we’ll go with what has been published by Fairfax. We now have the full wording and results, plus the question on China

Turnbull again finds himself in a position with minority public support over emissions trading. With Essential, Newspoll and Morgan also showing that the current Coalition position isn’t a particularly popular one, it makes you wonder what those nutters that believe a DD fought over the CPRS would be good for the Libs are smoking.

Finally, a good old fashioned leadership question.

Turnbull’s saving grace here is that the only people he’s preferred over are those that actually want or could otherwise be convinced to replace him.

Oh dear.

Hopefully, later today we’ll have the demographic and state breakdowns for the poll.

UPDATE:

Here’s the table data with breakdowns by state, age, gender and geography – just be careful with the small sample sizes with some of the cohorts.

UPDATE 2:

Here’s the additional question on China – after a lot of faffing about by Turnbull over Hu, the juice wasnt worth the squeeze.

Interesting is the relatively low “Neither approve nor disapprove” response, which, when combined with the 10% in the “Don’t Know” category means that 84% of the population actually has a fairly solid opinion of the Prime Minister’s handling of the China relationship. That stat alone is pretty remarkable.