The economy and health remain the key issues that decide how people vote, according to the latest Essential Research poll. The least important? The treatment of asylum seekers.
Most respondents to the online poll nominated economic management (62%) and health (48%) as the biggest determining factors. The figures are similar to the same question asked in January and again in May. Other economic issues such as protecting local jobs (30%) and interest rates (17%) also rated highly, as did housing affordability (17%).
The least important issue of those mentioned to voters was treatment of asylum seekers, which was rated as most important by 1% of voters, and as important by 5% of voters (the Coalition has a seven-point lead on the issue). Managing population growth was important for 14% of voters, and most important for just 2%.
There’s also been an interesting turnaround in views on Afghanistan — support for increasing Australian forces in that country has nearly doubled from June, to 13%, almost back to the level of support for an increase in early 2009. There’s been a corresponding fall in support for withdrawing troops entirely, down from 61% to 49%, which is about where it was in early 2009. Nonetheless, full withdrawal remains the most popular option, even among Liberal voters.
Today’s report also has the major parties steady on 51:49 to Labor, preserving the deadlock since just before the election. The parties’ primary vote is about the same, with a small fall by Labor, while the Greens’ slow downward drift of recent weeks has stopped at 8%.
The Coalition still leads on perceptions of economic management, leading Labor by five points (and by 14 points on managing interest rates), and only trails Labor by one point on management of health, suggesting that Kevin Rudd’s work to make it a key Labor issue has been squandered. And Labor now trails the Coalition by one point over who would best manage climate change (the Greens have a big lead on both major parties).
The result disguise some important divisions between voters. Treatment of asylum seekers was an important issue for 10% of Greens voters, but only 3% of Labor voters and 5% of Liberal voters, giving weight to the theory that Labor’s ‘lurch to the right’ on the issue, as Rudd termed it, served more to drive Labor voters to the Greens than to keep Labor voters from straying to the Liberals.
A fair industrial relations system was only important to 6% of Liberal voters compared to 18% of Labor voters and 14% of Greens. Managing population growth was a lot more important to Liberal voters than to Labor voters (13% to 6%), while education was far more important to Labor voters (37%) than either Liberals or Greens (26% and 23% respectively).
Well well well, no mention of climate change. Of course it would have featured in the poll, but only to prove that the claim the population demand action on climate change is CRAP! As I’ve said before in this forum–much to the consternation of the climate change faithful–the people aren’t buying it anymore. So Crikey, if you are going to run poll reports such as this, tell Bernard Keane to read them, so he can stop insulting our intelligence with his incompetent political analysis.
The problem with these “issue” polls is that we only get one vote – we can’t vote for one party on one issue and another party on another issue. So whichever of the major parties gets to form government can claim a “mandate” for all of their policies even if they don’t rate well individually on popularity.
Robert Barwick overlooked a sentence in his rush to display his (erronious) position re climate change.
“Labor now trails the Coalition by one point over who would best manage climate change (the Greens have a big lead on both major parties).”
Climate Change as an issue is not going to disappear any time soon.
Despite having the best economic status of any country in the developed world, the morons out there prefer the Coalition wreckers to Labor. Just goes to prove that the average Oz resident doesn’t have a clue about the economic management of the nation. They have swallowed the Abbott and co. fairy stories, hook, line and sinker – and sink is what will happen if that lot ever get their bums on the treasury benches!
I think Labor’s great failure of recent months (pre and post election) was to sell its economic credentials.
I have relatives in England who could not believe that Labor nearly lost the election: over there Australia is credited with being one of the only modern democracies that survived the great global economic meltdown, almost untouched. Economicts and journalists around the western world all credit Labor’s bravery in big spending combined with a conservative repayments model…. as saving us.
But what did Labor do over here during the election? Hardly said a word about it. They let the economic argument be hi-jacked by those who wanted to talk about “labor’s debt” and “school building rip-offs”.
I cant believe Labor did not pour more advertising money into its economic credentials. Idiot campaign coordinators.
Can you imagine what the state of unemployment would be like had the Liberals been in power during that time? I can hear them now: “It’s a world recession; there is nothing we can do; it is bigger than we are able to control; we just have to ride it out and pick up again in a few years….”.