Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is the voters’ choice to lead Australia in the event of another financial crisis or recession, according to today’s Essential Report.
Twenty four per cent of voters backed Rudd, ahead of 20% for Tony Abbott, and 13% for Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull. Gillard led among Labor voters, 42% to 34%, but Rudd was strongly supported among Greens voters, 37% to 18% for Gillard, and among Liberal voters, 13% to 1%. Tony Abbott was well ahead of Malcolm Turnbull, 44% to 17%, among Liberal voters.
There’s also greater support for an election being held now than for Parliament running its full term, 48% to 40%, but the result is strongly partisan, with 84% of Liberal voters wanting an election now and almost the same levels of Labor and Greens voters opposed to one.
There is also strong support for Labor’s mining tax, with 46% of voters approving of it and 34% not approving. And while that result, too, is partisan, it includes 27% of Liberal voters who approve of the mining tax. Support is particularly strong among Greens voters, 82% of whom back the tax, despite Bob Brown’s ongoing criticism that it is not high enough. Voters don’t agree that the tax will “ hurt business and undermine the country’s economic recovery” — 44% disagree with that and only 36% agree, but there is strong support for the idea that the tax will keep mining profits in Australia instead of losing them offshore (57% agreement), for the idea of companies paying a “fair share” of tax (62%) and that all Australians should benefit from resources that belong to all Australians (67%).
In contrast to the recent focus on the troubles of the manufacturing industry, other industries are viewed as more important to Australia’s economic future by voters. While 37% of voters rated manufacturing as one of the three most important industries, mining was nominated by 67% of voters, agriculture by 58% and tourism by 46%. Retail only rated with 17% of voters, behind construction (25%) and just ahead of telecommunications (14%). However, there’s strong support for an inquiry into the manufacturing industry, with 49% approving and only 19% not, with strong cross-partisan support.
On voting intention, things get worse for Labor: the Coalition has remained steady on 49% primary vote but Labor has slipped 2 points to 30%. The Greens are up one point to 11%, for a 2PP outcome of 57-43%

9 thoughts on “Essential: Rudd preferred as crisis leader; election now, say voters”
1934pc
September 5, 2011 at 1:32 pmStill only takes 7 people in one hundred to make it close!.
Peter Ormonde
September 5, 2011 at 2:17 pmBernard!!!
Percentages of what??? My memory of the Essential “methodology” is that it is a series of 7000 questionnaires is emailed out sent out to an internet connected pool of 120,000 market survey participants. They then self-select and Essential grabs 1,000 or so trying to get it 50-50 boys and girls. Nothing about spread and dispersion across age or electorate, they could all come from Melbourne for god’s sake!!!
If you – like the accursed Murdoch Press – keep spewing out these numbers as facts then at least stick in a footnote explaining how these facts were derived or a link to the methodology employed.
I have a dartboard out the back. It has a number of faces on it. I am quite happy to provide a statistical analysis of my accuracy each week if this would satisfy Crikey’s apparent addiction to polls. It would be equally reliable. There is of course always the chicken entrails… hard on the chooks though.
shepherdmarilyn
September 5, 2011 at 3:37 pmNO MORE OF THIS FRIGGING POLLING.
Jim Reiher
September 5, 2011 at 7:59 pmLike I said before, I dont trust Polls. Even when on the rare occasion, they agree with my opinion.
I love Poles. But I hate Polls.
Thanks Peter for some sober reminders of the shaky foundation these polls have!
zut alors
September 5, 2011 at 10:23 pm‘Essential’ polls? Sorry, but they’re NOT essential – especially not for publication in Crikey.
Please desist forthwith, Crikey, have mercy on your subscribers (while we’re still subscribing).
antena
September 6, 2011 at 1:39 amCRIKEY Crikey!
This article must have taken all of 5-minutrs to write. It adds no value to our country.
I bet if you did the same poll during the Howard years, you would have found around the same figures reverse visa-viz an election. But you even failed to analyse the data to add-value. In fact, there is not even a closing paragraph…. this is not even english let alone journalism. There’s nothing here I couldn’t have got from Essential’s website, so why didn’t you just publish that data instead of trying to turn a “pictorial graph” into “sentences of text”.
I am in such despair that I cant find any widley-read Australian website that talks policy, or even that talks about who we are becoming as a nation. All I can read is “this is what people answered when we asked them questions unknown to you”. Can you imagine watching “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire”, but only showing the bits where people give an answer and then told if it’s wrong or right, and not actually showing you the bit where they ask the question? It wouldn’t make sense! It would be BORING. This is exactly what this reporting on polling is: they don’t tell you really what the scenario / demographic / methodology / actual line of questioning (and whether it’s ‘push-polling’ or other method for bias) etc. etc. Therefore Journalists who like to write about polls are BORING.
Polls are for entertainment. They are not journalism. Especially when a journalists gives you the exact same output as the website of the pollster. Bernard Keane, prove to us you didn’t just twig the press-pack you received from Essential.
In the mean time, if anyone can point me to some good websites where people talk about our country in a way that adds-value, please let me know.
Jim Reiher
September 6, 2011 at 9:31 amStop listening to poles! lets hear what the Greeks and Rumanians have to say for a change. 🙂
BlackIvory
September 6, 2011 at 12:31 pmSo, the Coalition 2PP is at 57% and most of the issues outlined in the text follow partisan lines?
Wow, stop the press.
Filth Dimension
September 7, 2011 at 8:21 amJust when you thought the media in this country couldn’t get any worse Crikey jumps on the poll BS bandwagon.