This week’s Essential Report comes in with the primaries running 40 (down 2)/ 39 (steady) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 53/47 the same way – a one point gain to the Coalition since last week. The Greens on 11 (up 2), while the broad “Others” are steady on 10. This comes from a rolling two week sample of 1772, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.

This is Essential’s lowest ever primary vote estimate for Labor and their equal lowest two party preferred result since the Rudd government.

Additional questions this week looked at approval ratings, perceptions on broken promises, interest in the budget and the postponement of the ETS.

These additional questions ran from a sample of 965, giving is an MoE that maxes out around the 3.2% mark.

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

First off for Rudd:

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Now for Abbott and before him Turnbull:

abbotttotalappsabbottappstrength abbottdisappstrength

The net approval head to head gives us:

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On the cross-tabs for Rudd we get:

90% of Labor voters approve and 5% disapprove. 12% of Liberal/National voters approve and 81% disapprove.
Those aged over 55 are more likely to disapprove – 38% approve and 57% disapprove.

While the cross-tabs for Abbott tell us:

74% of Liberal/National voters approve and 18% disapprove. 23% of Labor voters approve and 66% disapprove.
Those aged over 55 are more likely to approve – 49% approve and 41% disapprove.

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Thinking about the Federal Budget – how interested are you in reading and hearing about the Federal Budget?

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On the cross-tabs we have:

74% of both Labor and Liberal/National voters say they are interested.

73% of men and 60% of women are interested. Younger people are less interested – only 46% of those under 35 are interested compared to 81% of those aged 55+.

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Compared to previous Federal Governments, do you think the Rudd Labor Government has been better or worse at keeping their promises?

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The cross tabs tell us:

Opinions split strongly according to voting intention. 62% of Labor voters think they are better, 14% worse. 77% of Liberal/National voters think they are worse and 8% better.

Older respondents were more likely to think the Rudd Government has been worse at keeping its promises – those aged 55+ split 27%
better/58% worse while the under 35’s recorded 39% better/ 30% worse.

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The Federal Government has announced that it has postponed introducing an emissions trading scheme (ETS) to address climate change for 3 years. Do you approve or disapprove of the Government’s decision not to introduce an ETS for 3 years?

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On the cross-tabs, Essential tells us that “46% of men approve (39% disapprove) compared to 31% of women (43% disapprove).”

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