This week’s Essential Report comes in with the primaries running Coalition down 1 to 40, ALP down 2 to 37, washing out into a two party preferred of 52/48 to Labor – a one point Labor gain since last week. The Greens are on 12 (up 3) while the broad Others are steady on 10. This comes from a two week rolling sample of 1872, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.

This makes three pollsters showing a substantial jump in the Greens vote over the last fortnight – putting them somewhere around the 15% mark at the moment.

Essential asked additional questions this week on which party has the best leadership team, awareness of actual asylum seeker numbers (the results… ugh!), advertising credibility on the RSPT and approval of John Howard as head of the International Cricket Council! (if you can’t wait for that last question, just skip to the end of the post 😛  )

Thinking about the Government Ministers and the Opposition Shadow Ministers in Federal Parliament, who has the best leadership team – Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party or Tony Abbott and the Coalition?

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On the cross-tabs, Essential tells us:

95% of Labor voters think the Labor team is better and 75% of Liberal/National voters prefer the Liberal team.

Greens voters prefer the Labor team over the Liberal team (by 55% to 13%), as do other party and independent voters (45% to 24%).

People aged under 35 prefer the Labor team 47% to 18%.

A rather chunky difference there between Labor and Liberal supporters and the perceptions of their respective teams leadership.


From what you have read and heard, what percentage of Australia’s annual immigration intake are asylum seekers arriving by boat?

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Looking at the reality – in 2008/9 there was a total of 1033 asylum seekers that arrived by boat (give or take a handful where definitions get tricky) and settler arrivals of 158,021. So in the 2008/9 year it came to around 0.7% as a percentage.

In the 2009/10 year there have been 4916 people arrive by boat as of the 26th of May. There’s still a month left, so let’s be generous on the upside and say that it might go up to 5500 if a small flotilla arrives this month.

The planned migration intake this year is 182,450 – the migration intake of 168,700 + the 13,750 in the humanitarian program.

This would make the proportion of boat people 3%.

So let us be generous (because we’re generous sorts around here) and say that those answering around 5% and those answering less than 1% are both in the ballpark – the former for what will probably be this year’s result and the latter for the last year the data has been completed.

Tabling up the results, we get:

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When 44% of Coalition voters are off with the fairies on asylum seeker numbers, is it any wonder that Abbott and Morrison deliberately exploit that ignorance at every opportunity for their own base political advantage?

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Thinking about the proposed resources super profits tax and the current advertising by the Government and the mining companies, who is more believable ‐ the Government or the mining companies?

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On the cross-tabs, Essential tells us something very consistent with the gender gap we saw on the RSPT in today’s Nieslen:

There is a significant difference in opinion by gender – men are more likely to believe the Government (Govt. 41%/Mining cos. 36%/Don’t know 24%) and women more likely to believe the mining companies or say they don’t know (26%/35%/38%).

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Do you approve or disapprove of the former Prime Minister John Howard becoming head of the International Cricket Council?

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On the cross-tabs we get:

57% of women and 60% of people aged under 35 have no opinion. Men approve 35% to 22%.