After a week in federal politics spent focusing on the so-called “gender wars”,* the Prime Minister has received a substantial boost, today’s Essential Report has found — but Tony Abbott has also made up lost ground.
In the first polling since that speech ignited a row over not merely the role of gender in federal politics but the media’s ability to report it accurately, Gillard’s leadership approval rating has increased six points to 41%, her highest rating since May 2011. Her disapproval rating has also fallen three points to 51%.
The Prime Minister’s net disapproval rating of -10 points is also her best result since early 2011. Her net disapproval rating with women (-4%) is considerably stronger than with men (-14%), though that’s not too much different to the usual gender split over Gillard.
However, Abbott has also picked up ground with voters, enjoying a five point bounce in approval to 37% and a one point fall in disapproval to 54%, improving a disastrous worst-ever September net disapproval rating of -23% to -17%.
The PM was the winner in the head-to-head preferred PM indicator, however, extending her lead to 43-36%. Abbott and Gillard have been locked in a sort of deathly embrace over preferred PM for most of this year and much of last year, with the two leaders trading the lead but never opening up a sizeable gap. This is easily the biggest gap for 2012. The PM’s lead is entirely built on female voters — they prefer her 47-33%, while men are evenly split. But compared to Essential’s previous leadership approval poll, Gillard actually picked up support among men, not women: in September she trailed Abbott 36-44% among men as preferred Prime Minister; now it’s 40-40%
This poll was taken in the field after Gillard’s Tuesday speech, from Wednesday through until the weekend. So the first blush response has to be that the speech has done the PM some good, but the data doesn’t strongly support that, unless male voters were as delighted to see the PM hitting back on misogyny as many female voters plainly were (which is possible). And further confusing the picture is that Abbott seems to have improved more with women (net disapproval from -26 to -19) than men (net disapproval from -19 to -16).
This illustrates the dangers of attributing too much significance to one moment in politics. Gillard has been improving her ratings with voters for two months now and is within sight of something that, a year ago, looked impossible: a net zero approval rating. But Abbott clearly hasn’t been damaged. And it’s still not enough for Labor. On voting intention, Labor edged down to 36%, the Coalition was steady on 47% and the Greens remained on 9%. The 2PP result remains 53-47% to the Coalition.
Essential also asked about voter views on climate change. Since June 2011, belief that climate change is caused by humans has fallen from 50% to 48%. Belief that it is merely a normal fluctuation of the climate remains steady at 39%.
*There’s a whole essay to be written on why this lazy appellation is profoundly offensive, not least because if several millennia of patriarchy in most human societies haven’t amounted to one long “gender war” then the term has no meaning.
You seem surprised that Ms Gillard has gained support from men…… Not all males are so insecure in there masculinity that they can’t support a female PM.
These results seem to amke perfect sense to me, voter intention is unchanged because the argy bargy of politics does directly impact anyone’s life, both leaders get a bounce in apporval because it does draw a passionate response about how you feel about each leader (and men don’t like Abbott’s abuse of Gillard any more than women) and Gillard extends slightly her lead over Abbott as preferred PM because her resilience was highlighted as was Abbott’s abusive nature.
The other thing this highlights is that while the press gallery defended it’s reporting of the speech thus “Its focus is on political tactics — what works politically, what doesn’t, what impact political performances will have on the functionality of the government in the short term and, over the longer term, its prospects for re-election” they didn’t even get that remotely right.
Also these result don’t bode well for Geewizz’s 44-56 newspoll prediction.
Hey Jimmy, this is heartening news. I was feeling depressed, given the events of last week and, more particularly, how the male MSM commentariat have covered the story. My view is, as I’ve been saying in a couple of more recent posts, that it will be absolutely crucial for JG to get more seepage of the male vote from the coalition back to her, if she has a real chance of victory at the next election. As important as the female vote was, the vote from the ‘working man’ male cohort, which shifted massively in 2007, was absolutely crucial for Rudd’s victory. JG has to continue to hold her own, bed down and tweak, if required, the govt’s policies, as well as announce, time and money permitting, another big social/infrastructure policy of some kind to go into the next election with. The 44-56 split may well start to change for the better for Labor, hopefully.
“Belief that it is merely a normal fluctuation of the climate remains steady at 39%.”
Sure there’s been a full on attempt by right wingers and vested interests to mislead the public, but 39%? That’s both sad and concerning.
Karen – I think you are pretty right in your thinking and I too was a little worried to see which version of events would play out, the social media v the traditional media.
I think in the end last weeks event have to be viewed as a win for the ALP on these figures (until we get the other polls it will still be a little cloudy) because Gillard’s personal stakes have gone up and the 2pp hasn’t reversed any of the recent gains.
This secures Gillard against a challenge from Rudd (which puts more pressure on Abbott from the media who want a leadership spill) and means any future policy announcements (like Gonski etc) should be received better.
As I have said before if the ALP can turn that 47-53 to 48-52 by years end they would be very happy and the libs very nervous.