This week’s Essential Report comes in with the primaries running 42/39 to Labor (steady), washing out into a two party preferred of 54/46 the same way – unchanged since last week. The Greens are on 11 (up 2), while the broad Others are down 2 to come in on 8. This comes from a rolling two week sample of 1797, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.

Additional questions this week looked at which party is seen as the best to manage a variety of issues,approval ratings,  attributes of Gillard and Abbott and a couple of questions on population size and growth. These additional questions run from a sample of 1015, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 3.1% mark.

.

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Julia Gillard/Tony Abbott is doing as Prime Minister/Opposition Leader?

Comparing the results from Essential Report since Abbott became Opposition Leader and where results where taken for both leaders at the same poll we get for the PM:

pmtotalappsjul5

pmappstrengthjul5 pmdisappstrengthjul5

And for Abbott we get:

optotalappsjuly5

opappstrengthjul5 opdisappstrengthjul5

On the cross-tabs for Gillard, Essential tells us:

After one week as Prime Minister, 48% approve of Julia Gillard’s performance and 27% disapprove. 26% could not give an opinion.

85% of Labor voters approved and 4% disapproved. Liberal/National voters split 19% approve and 54% disapprove.

Men split 46% approve/31% disapprove and women 50% approve/23% disapprove

The cross-tabs for Abbott tell us:

81% of Liberal/National voters approve and 12% disapprove. Labor voters split 15% approve/75% disapprove.

Men split 41% approve/45% disapprove and women 34% approve/48% disapprove.

The net approval head to head looks like this

netappsjul5

.

Who do you think would make the better Prime Minister out of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott?

betterpmjul5

The cross-tabs tell us:

Men prefer Julia Gillard over Tony Abbott 48% to 31% and women 57%/22%.

.

Which of the following parties – Labor, Liberal or Greens ‐ do you think is the best party when it comes to:


betterparty1july5

Essential polled on this last month when Rudd was PM – if we look at how the results have changed over that period we get:

betterpartychangejul5

.

Which of the following describe your opinion of the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard/Tony Abbott?

leaderattributesjuly5

.

It has been estimated that Australia will have a population of 36 million by 2050. Do you think this will be good or bad for Australia?

population2050july5

.

On average, Australia’s population increases by about 300,000 per year (less than 2%). Do you think this is too high, too low or about right?populationgrowthjul5