Labor ends the year well behind the Coalition, but slightly more voters think Julia Gillard will be leading her party at the next election than Tony Abbott, according to polling from Essential Research.
The parties’ primary votes — Coalition 48, Labor 36, Greens 8 — remain frozen, with the two-party preferred outcome shifting a point in favour of the Coalition to reflect rounding, at 55-45.
Comparing the start of the year and the finish, there hasn’t been a substantial shift in the polls: the Coalition is almost exactly where it started; Labor has picked up some votes, apparently, at the expense of the Greens.
Almost 40% of voters think Gillard will lead Labor to the next election, compared to 40% who believe she won’t; 38% of voters think Abbott will lead the Coalition, with 35% saying he won’t. Around one-fifth of Liberal and Labor voters think their respective leaders won’t be in their current position come next year’s election.
Some 20% of voters think the Prime Minister has had a good year, and 57% say she’s had a bad year; 15% of voters think the Leader of the Opposition has had a good year and 52% say he’s had a bad one.
Only 9% of voters think it’s been a good year overall for Australian politics. Those who are perceived to have had a good year include the banks (68%), mining companies (62%) and large companies (31%); 29% believe the Australian economy has had a good year and 37% think it has had a poor one, compared to 33-31% last year. Almost 30% say it’s been a good year for them and their families; 37% say a poor one, 34% say neither good nor bad.
Essential now takes a break and resumes polling in mid-January.
This country is not run on the basis of these stupid, mindless little polls.
Why don’t you all piss off to Nauru to see the damage you have helped to create.
Great news. The Nielsen poll looks like an outlier, looking at this, last week’s Newspoll and Essential, and the Galaxy from a few weeks ago.
I would accept the Neilsen poll against all others as they have the experience well beyond the other pollsters. They and Roy Morgan are the benchmark, it is likey the others are the outliers.
But Polls are dangerous, they are not reliable.
A Doctoral Study showed that if the same respondents were asked the same question a week later, the level of answer consistency fell darmatically to around 20% of repsondents.
Opinions can change dramatically in a short period of time as individual perceptions change and as new information is digested.
The continuous portrial of Gillard and Abbott negatively will become the norm and I still contend if you adopt the ” Weakest Link” (UK TV program)logic either or both will not lead their respective party to the next election.
The likely weakest link is Abbott.
BUT…. Ruddy’s new Tee Shirt slogan may just be the beginning.
To save everyone the bother of thinking too much about the results of the next election, I’ll publish them now:
The election will be held in Sept or Oct.Labor will lose the seats of:
Greenway, Roberston, Lindsay, Banks and Reid (NSW)
Moreton (Qld), Braddon, Bass (Tas)
Corangamite,La Trobe,Deakin, (Vic)
Labor loses 11 seats Libs lose nil seat
Libs will pick up Oakeshott’s seat of Lyne
National win: Tony Windsor will not contest the seat of New England
Wilkie will retain Tas. seat. Brandt will retain Melb
Net result: Libs win 13 seats-taking them to 85 seat in new parliament
Labor loses 13-taking them to 60.
Gillard will step down from politics on the night of election. Bill Shorten will take over as Labor leader.
Tony Abbott will be in for 1 full term. 2016 will be a win to LNP but with reduced majority. Abbott then will hand over to Christian Porter as leader 6 months from end of 2nd term. Porter will go on to win the 2019 election.
Now there’s no need to woory about the coming 9 months!!