National Essential poll: 52-48 to Labor

In last week’s Essential poll, conducted from a sample of 1,085 on March 21-25 — the weekend of the NSW election — Labor led by 52-48, a one-point gain for the Coalition since three weeks ago. Primary votes were 39% Coalition (up two), 36% Labor (down two), 10% Greens (up two) and 7% One Nation (steady).

58% thought the budget would be good for people who are well-off, and just 9% bad. For Australian business, this split was 50-13, and for the economy overall 35-24. Average working people had a 33-27 bad split, older Australians 38-25 bad, people on lower incomes 42-24 and you personally 34-19.

All spending priorities surveyed had far more saying the government should increase rather than reduce spending, except providing tax reductions for corporations (46-12 reduce) and foreign aid (49-11 reduce).

Essential asked for opinions on various world leaders. New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern was easily the best perceived with a 71-11 favourable rating (54-11 in July 2018). Scott Morrison had a 41-40 favourable rating, German Chancellor Angela Merkel a 36-22 favourable rating (43-18 previously), United Kingdom PM Theresa May was tied at 31-31 (42-19 favourable in July 2018), and US President Donald Trump had a 68-19 unfavourable rating (64-22 previously).

3 Replies to “National Essential poll: 52-48 to Labor”

  1. Just finished reading your post on The Conversation about “Newspoll probably wrong since Morrison became PM…” and not wanting to register to comment on Conversation, I thought I’d comment here – so I hope you read comments to your old posts.

    I was reading a post on the ClubTroppo blog by Nicholas Gruen which was in praise of Bob Hawke, however it included a comment on John Howard to the effect that he had come from behind in most, if not all, of his election wins. As Gruen put it: “each election saw Howard come from well behind, needing to pull ‘a rabbit from his hat’ to use the expression that became a cliché by the time Howard’s time drew to a close.”

    So I was kind of wondering if, in fact, the polls haven’t been wrong from long before ScoMo’s ascension, and indeed wrong all the way back to Howard. Unless it’s really Howard who benefits from “miracles” that is.

    1. In 2001, Howard benefited from the Tampa and then Sept 11. Polls picked up the movement, and the final polls were about right. I had an article on The Conversation about this.

      https://theconversation.com/2001-polls-in-review-september-11-influenced-election-outcome-far-more-than-tampa-incident-112139

      In 2004, Mark Latham was the Labor leader. Newspoll mucked up its final poll by using respondent preferences, getting 50-50 when it should have been 52-48 to L/NP. I think Nielsen was 54-46 to L/NP; they won by 52.7-47.3.

      In 2007, there was a final week comeback that had the L/NP trailing by 52-48 in the final Newspoll and Galaxy; they lost by 52.7-47.3.

      So basically the final polls had the L/NP vote under Howard right. This time the final polls were way off.

      1. Thanks for the response. I guess there’s still the 1998 election to complete the list, in which my recall was that Beazley was leading in the polls and did gain a lot of seats, but didn’t come anywhere close to winning.

        But otherwise, I guess Gruen might have been working from a ‘partial’ recall rather than actual fact checking.

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