The polls on whether the financial crisis means that the ETS should be delayed constistently find a significant minority in favour. Two polls last month came up with 22% and 30% in favour of a delay. A Galaxy poll in today’s News Ltd tabloids puts the constituency for postponing at 25%.

However, the polls are contradicting each other on what the rest of the voters want. The first of the polls, from the Climate Institute, was too poorly presented to know what people thought. The Newspoll found 30% for a delay and 21% against an ETS at all, creating a slim majority of 51% opposed to a 2010 start date. But in the Galaxy poll there was no option given for rejecting an ETS, and instead 21% went for ‘introduce sooner’, which when combined with the 41% preferring the orignal timetable creates 62% support for 2010 or earlier implementation.

These results appear highly sensitive to the options being offered, so it’s not clear what the voters really want. Given their confessed ignorance on this issue, that’s perhaps not surprising.