Essential: Australia is neatly divided
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Today’s Essential Report poll — the most accurate pre-election poll — has the parties level pegging with a 2PP outcome of 50:50. The Coalition is on 44% — down a tad — Labor is on 38% and unchanged, as are the Greens on 11%. There’s also been little change in the preferred Prime Minister rating, with Julia Gillard leading Tony Abbott 46-36%, down 1 point from a fortnight ago. Gillard still has a much bigger lead among women as preferred Prime Minister — 16 points compared to 3% among men. Essential also asked when voters made up their minds about whom to vote for. The majority of major party voters — more than 60% — had already made up their minds by the first week of the campaign. But about 17% didn’t make up their minds until the day before, or on polling day itself, including 9% who didn’t know how they were going to vote until they reached their polling place. Greens voters, in particular, left things until the last minute — more than a quarter of Greens voters only made up their minds in the 48 hours before the election. And 25% of voters who opted for independents did so right at the death, when they arrived to vote. As suggested by the Greens figures, younger people tended to decide later than older voters. This give us some insight into two things. First, the traditional fall-off in Greens support during election campaigns, when the Greens have to compete with massive major party advertising campaigns and drop from the media cycle, didn’t happen — the Greens truly came home with a wet sail in picking up undecided voters at the last minute. Second, it demonstrates just how poor Labor’s campaign was. At the start of the campaign, with 55% of voters having made up their minds, Labor led the Coalition 54-46%, suggesting it lost heavily among voters who made up their minds during the campaign itself. |
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8 Comments
Can’t help wondering what Sir Humphrey Applebee would be saying to the Prime Minister if he were here - something like “You keep negotiating Prime Minister. We will keep running the country.”
Am the only one focused on that dirty big elephant in the corner?
LABOR 38%
For every 3 Labor voters there is now 1 Green voter.
The ALP trademark has been irretrievably destroyed and will over the next 10 years mutate into a rabid congregation of marxists, Leninists, trade unionist & North Shore doctors wives.
Please desist from overclaiming the value of the poll in terms of sample size.
I understand Mr Essential has a list of perhaps 100,000 potential respondents BUT any single poll generally questions but a minute fraction (1,000, 1.500 or so) of them.
Bernard, re Labor’s poor campaign.
When a PM who has achieved significant benefits is removed, then his successor,in justification having declared the Govt had lost its way, can hardly run on the Governement’s achievements. So, having done nothing what so ever in the new regime, there was nothing for the new PM to sell to the voters.
If only the Coalition weren’t so ghastly.
Another poll!! Piss off!
Mr Keane,
A boat with a wet sail moves slower, not faster, so your reference means that Greens were lagging. Get your metaphors sorted.
@Alan Phillips:
I am sure that the “wet sail” metaphor refers to a boat which has found the wind travelling much faster, thus heeling over and wetting its sail. The comparison is with a becalmed boat which, with dry sail, has missed the wind.
The metaphor is now sorted. There never was a metaphor “coming home with a dry sail” to my knowledge.
@ Alan Phillips:
Alternatively, as an idiom, as found on the Net:
It used to be, “Come with a wet sail”, but has changed to “coming home with a wet sail” over the years. It means, to make swift progress to victory, like a ship with sails wetted in order to keep close to the wind. It is most often heard in sporting events, like rugby, cricket and, in Britain, in racing and means a team or a horse stormed home to victory.
Speaking as an engineer, I expect that wet sails are less permeable than dry ones. If so, then they would spill less wind and thus, at least in theory, be able keep closer to the wind.