Abbott is lying on Work Choices

Yesterday’s Essential Report comes in with the primaries running 43 (down 1) / 40 (up 2) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 55/45 54/46 the same way (sorry, minor bout of innumeracy) – a one point gain to the Coalition since last week. The Greens are on 8 (down 2) while the broad “Others” are 9 (up 1). This comes from a rolling two week sample 1834, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.

Additional question this week gave a rather mixed bag for both sides of politics, looking at approval ratings and the spectre of Workchoices. These additional questions come off a sample of 1019, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 3.1% mark.

Do you strongly approve, approve, disapprove or strongly disapprove of the job Kevin Rudd is doing as Prime Minister?

On the cross-tabs we have:

Results followed party lines – Labor voters were more likely to approve of the job Rudd is doing (92%), while Coalition voters were more likely to disapprove (78%). 17% of Coalition voters approve of the job Rudd is doing as Prime Minister.

59% of Green voters approve of the job Rudd is doing, while 30% of these same voters disapprove.

People aged 18 – 24 were more likely to approve of the job Rudd is doing (59%), while people aged 65 years and over were more likely to disapprove (59%).

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Do you strongly approve, approve, disapprove or strongly disapprove of the job Tony Abbott is doing as Opposition Leader?

On the cross-tabs, Essential tells us:

Results followed party lines – Coalition voters were more likely to approve of the job Abbott is doing (79%), while Labor voters were more likely to disapprove (58%).

28% of Labor voters approve of the job Abbott is doing as Opposition Leader.

68% of Green voters disapprove of the job Abbott is doing as Opposition Leader and 19% of these same voters approve.

People aged 65 years and over were more likely to approve of the job Abbott is doing (68%), while younger voters were more likely to indicate they don’t know (37%).

Males were more likely than females to approve of the job Abbott is doing as Opposition Leader (47% v 43%).

Also worth looking at is the undecideds for each:

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Do you approve or disapprove of the job Peter Garrett is doing as Environment Minister?

On the cross-tabs we have:

Results followed party lines – Labor voters were more likely to approve (47%), while Coalition voters were more likely to disapprove (84%). 37% of Labor voters disapprove of the job Garrett is doing as Environment Minister.

Green voters were reasonably split in terms of their level of approval of the Environment Minister – 42% approve and 46% disapprove of the job Garrett is doing.

People aged 65 years and over were more likely to disapprove (82%) while those aged 35 – 44 were more likely to approve (35%).

We asked a similar question in June 2008 asking people to rate the performance of Peter Garrett – 32% rated his performance as very good/good and 47% rated it as very poor/poor.

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How likely do you think it is that Tony Abbott and the Liberals will reintroduce at least some parts of WorkChoices if they win the next election?

On the cross-tabs, we get:

People aged 45 – 55 were more likely to think that if the Liberal party wins the next election, at least some parts of WorkChoices will be introduced (68%), while people aged 65 years and over were more inclined to think it is unlikely some parts of WorkChoices will be introduced if the Liberals win the next election (32%).

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Do you believe Tony Abbott when he says that WorkChoices is dead and would not be reintroduced by a future Liberal Government?

The final cross-tabs tell us:

Results followed party lines – Labor (75%) and Green (80%) voters were more likely to not believe Abbott, while Coalition voters were more likely to believe Abbott when he says WorkChoices is dead and won’t be reintroduced (50%).

People aged 65 years and over were more likely to believe Abbott (39%) while those aged 18 – 24 were more likely to indicate they don’t know (36%).