As the Prime Minister’s campaign rolls into western Sydney, polling from Essential Research shows Labor’s primary vote collapsing to the lows of mid-2012.
The Gillard government’s primary vote has dropped to just 32%, down two points in a week and bringing Essential into line with the dire primary vote levels for Labor in last week’s Newspoll (which had Labor at 31%) and Fairfax’s Nielsen poll the week before (30%). The Coalition’s primary vote remains unchanged at 49%. With the Greens picking up a point to 10%, the two-party preferred vote remains steady on 56-44 for the Coalition.
Last week’s announcement by Greens leader Christine Milne that her party was abandoning its agreement with Labor due to (amongst other things) the mining tax has been seen by respondents as a decent move by the Greens but one that reflects badly on the government. Essential polling shows a third of respondents saw it as good news for the Greens, with 26% viewing it negatively. In comparison, 40% saw it as a bad decision for the Labor Party — despite reassurances from the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese and others that cutting ties with the Greens was no big deal.
Partisans tended to see the decision differently: Labor voters thought it was better for the government than the Greens; Greens voters thought it better for the Greens than the government. Liberal voters tended to agree with the Greens voters.
Essential Research focuses on the Greens this week, noting that 67% of Greens voters approve of Christine Milne as leader, although only 20% of all respondents think she’s doing a good job as Bob Brown’s replacement. More than half (52%) of voters think the Greens’ policies are “too extreme”, a rise of 5% since this question was last asked in November 2012.
Regarding the Mineral Resources Rent Tax, 50% of respondents believe it should be either maintained in its current form or amended to raise more money, while only 28% want it dumped altogether. Nearly half of all Coalition voters want the tax scrapped, although only 9% of Labor voters did. Voters in Queensland (35%) were more likely to want it abandoned, while Victorian voters (35%) were more likely to want it amended.
Forty-five percent of Greens voters say they are leaning in on direction come September’s election, but that they haven’t made up their minds yet. More importantly, 30% of Liberal/National voters haven’t yet firmly decided on who they’ll be supporting.
Just 35% of voters under 35 say they have chosen who’ll they vote for this federal election.
Are those polled also asked whether they find the Liberal Party too extreme or is this a loaded question aimed at marginalizing the Greens? I don’t think I’m alone in finding recent comments by Scott Morrison and Eric Abetz way too extreme….
Agreed citizen k.
Deeply troubling that a government which has made good inroads to placing Australia in position to take advantage of the Asian century (education for a high skilled workforce, infrastructure NBN, reform to financial industry for a more secure super regime, health reform, mining tax to share the wealth of the mining boom, etc etc) will be replaced by a bunch of clowns ready to take us back to the Howard years of no investment, no equality so we become the white trash of Asia, if global warming doesn’t get us first.
I agree Citizen K Zenophobia reigns and the column of the week was from the Queen of Zenophobia ( Judith Sloane) who claims Gillards Welsh Heritage as suggestion that she like the 487 visa takers were economic migrants.
What about Abbott – Abetz but of course they were male.
A viewing of She Wolves – English queens- shows that Middle Age prejudices against women rulers are alive and well in Australia 500 years later.
In Wales ( Wales on Line) equal rights for women have not improved since Dafydd Lloyd George’s times at the turn of the 20th Century and Wales’ only Welsh born politician is Gillard.
Whereas England is about to have another Queen (if the press are to be believed as the Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a daughter) before the end of this century.
After Gillard it will take another 200 years before the next Australian Female PM.