Essential Report: Joining the 50/50 club

This week’s Essential Report comes in with the primaries running 42 (up 3) /37 (down 3) to the Coalition, washing out into a two party preferred of 50/50 – a 3 point gain to the Blue team. The Greens are steady on 11 while the broad “Others” are steady on 10. This comes from a rolling two week sample of 1762, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.

This makes the most recent polls coming in as 51, 50, 50, 50 for the Coalition from Newspoll, Morgan Phone Poll, Nielsen and Essential Report respectively. Spot the trend!

Essential also asked additional questions this week on taxation, the attributed of Kevin Rudd & Tony Abbott and the importance of issues on voting intention. These additional questions came from a sample of 989, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 3.1% mark.

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The Federal Government recently announced changes to our tax system as a result of the Henry Report, which was a review of Australia’s taxation. Do you approve or disapprove of the following Government proposals?

(click to expand)

On the cross-tabs, essential tells us:

78% of Labor voters approved higher taxes on mining company profits (11% disapprove) and 56% of Liberal/National voters disapproved (35% approve).

Increasing superannuation contributions received high support from both Labor (85%) and Liberal/National voters (72%). 61% of both Labor and Liberal/National voters supported cutting company tax rates.

63% of Labor voters and 69% of Liberal/National voters approved increasing taxes on cigarettes and alcohol.

Interesting too is that the cigarette tax had the highest level of strong disapproval, adding a little bit of evidence to our theory that smokers have clobbered the government over the last fortnight, assisting the sharpness of the fall this polling cycle.

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Overall, from what you have read and heard, do you think the Federal Government is heading in the right direction on taxation or the wrong direction on taxation?

On the cross-tabs, we have:

Opinions split very much along party lines – 65% of Labor voters said right direction (12% wrong direction) and 61% of Liberal/National voters said wrong direction (17% right direction).

People on higher incomes ($1,600+ pw) were more likely to think the Government was headed in the right direction (40%/36%).

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Which of the following describe your opinion of the Prime Minister/Leader of the Opposition?

First off Rudd:(click to expand these)

Next we have Abbott:

Now the head-to-head:

Notice where Rudd has had double digit movements in the wrong direction since December – capability, intelligence, out of touch, visionary, superficial, honesty and trustworthy. Compare that to Abbott who has increased an average of a point or two across the board.

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Which are the three most important issues in deciding how you would vote at a Federal election? (Number from 1 to 3 where 1 is the most important, 2 the second most important, etc)

There were no cross-tabs for the last two questions.