Category: Public opinion

Sorting out asylum seeker opinion

~ Andrew Norton ~ 14 Comments

Opinion polls haven’t always been helpful in sorting out three distinct issues

1) whether we should take asylum seekers at all (and if so, how many);
2) whether or not asylum seekers who arrive by boat without prior approval should be accepted;
3) whether there are groups we should not take at all, regardless of how or why they come.

Refugee advocates have tended to think that opposition to refugees is motivated by 3, (‘xenophobia’), or to be more precise opposition to Muslim migration and perhaps other groups with a history of political violence (such as Tamils, though I doubt knowledge of the Sri Lankan civil war is widespread in Australia). As refugees tend to be disproportionately from supposedly disfavoured groups, opposing asylum seeker arrivals is a way of keeping them out.

The recent Morgan poll confirms an Essential Research finding last November that there is plurality support for taking asylum seekers. Morgan found 50% support, 41% opposition, and 9% ‘can’t say’. Essential’s figures were 45%/25%/30%, suggesting a lot of ‘soft’ opposition. The differences can probably be explained by polling methods. Essential’s surveys are online, so there is an explicit ‘no answer’ option. Morgan used a telephone poll where only support or oppose were directly offered, with ‘can’t say’ recorded where the respondent couldn’t or wouldn’t choose. If pressed, people with weak opinions tend to go negative. Continue reading “Sorting out asylum seeker opinion” →

The complexities of migration politics

~ Andrew Norton ~ 3 Comments

Over the last couple of months, several polls have identified opinion that seems to be inconsistent with migration at recent levels. An Essential Research poll last month found concern about migration on infrastructure, environmental and ‘change to society’ grounds. A Lowy Poll conducted in March found 69% opposition to the 2050 population size that continued recent levels of migration and fertility would according to the Intergenerational Report produce. A Morgan Poll also during March found that 60% wanted a population of 30 million or less by 2040, against projections of 32.6 million at current rates of population growth.

From all this I would have predicted that the Howard-era majority support for the migration program would be disappearing. But the Morgan Poll finds otherwise. 57% of those surveyed think that migration should remain about the same (46%) or increase (11%). Morgan surveys those aged 14 and over; narrowing the sample to voters 54% think migration should be the same (45%) or higher (9%). That’s almost the same as the 52% support last November. Continue reading “The complexities of migration politics” →

Abbott and women 4 – some real results

~ Andrew Norton ~ 8 Comments

A few days after I complained that none of the major pollsters had published their party and leader preference results by sex, The Australian has remedied the situation and published Newspoll’s demographic summary.

Though there is no evidence that the budgie smugglers are disproportionately attracting women, who remain slightly less likely than men to support the Coalition, over the January to March period women were more likely to support the Coalition than at any time since it went into opposition.


Continue reading “Abbott and women 4 – some real results” →

Abbott and women 3

~ Andrew Norton ~ 12 Comments

After Tony Abbott became opposition leader, I think I was among the first, if not the first, to question the political class conventional wisdom that Abbott had ‘trouble’ with women. To me, it looked the like the sociological insularity of the political class, with its n= a-few-of-my-feminist-friends level analysis, could be leading it astray.

Unfortunately – and surprisingly, given the interest in the issue – none of the major pollsters have yet provided results from their routine party and leader preference questions by gender.

But some analysis of the ‘worm’ reactions by gender reported at Pollytics blog today, along with a Turnbull vs Abbott Newspoll in December, both question the political class conventional wisdom.

My hunch remains that female voters who would consider voting Liberal are not going to neurotically fret over federal non-issues like abortion, and will instead like other voters consider a bundle of the most salient issues relevant to them and the campaign. It’s quite possible that women and men will make different judgments on these, but Abbott’s Catholicism and the opinions that flow from that are unlikely to major factors in explaining any gender difference.

What’s happening to Liberal economic credibility?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 26 Comments

The part of this morning’s Newspoll that stood out for me wasn’t the down in the usual ups and downs of party support and leadership satisfaction, it was the results of the question on which party the respondent thought would ‘best handle the issue of the economy’.

Labor was five points in front (44/39), the first time it has been in front under Rudd, and indeed the first time it has been in front since March 1990. Admittedly Newspoll didn’t again ask this precise question between 1990 and 2005, but chances are that if they had Labor would not have been in the lead. The ‘recession we had to have’ took hold shortly afterward, and on more precise economic questions on inflation, interest rates and unemployment Labor was behind.

Perhaps this bad result for the Liberals on the economy is a residual Barnaby effect – a finance spokesman vague on the difference between a million and a billion is not exactly confidence inspiring – plus a downward general ‘Liberal performance’ perception that seems to infect all their issue ratings, regardless of whether or not anything relevant to that issue has occurred. Continue reading “What’s happening to Liberal economic credibility?” →

Are overlapping state and federal responsibilities a good thing?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 7 Comments

An Essential Research poll published today on Pollytics blog is one of the most interesting I have seen on federalism:


Question: Do you think the following services should be mainly the responsibility of the Federal Government or State Governments?

I suggests that the Australian public is not quite as centralist as other polling can lead us to believe. The federal government does not have majority support for exclusively taking over any of the areas of traditional state responsibility – though they are ahead of the states on all but water supply. The interesting point in this poll is the significant support for joint state and federal responsibility. Continue reading “Are overlapping state and federal responsibilities a good thing?” →

Is migration opinion turning?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 16 Comments

In November last year, most people (52%) thought that the scale of the migration program was ‘about right’ or ‘too low’. But an Essential Research poll reported by Pollytics blog today suggest that opinion may have turned.

At very least it suggests that by raising the salience of three distinct issues relating to migration – infrastructure overload, change to society, and the environment – public opinion can switch sides on the basic too many/about right or too few question.

If cost was no obstacle, most students would attend private schools

~ Andrew Norton ~ 51 Comments

The independent schools don’t have the Australian Education Union’s propaganda talents, and so their interesting survey on attitudes towards private schools received very little coverage. There was a story in the print version of The Australian, but nothing online that I can find.

The UMR Research poll shows just how successful the AEU’s funding disinformation has been. A majority of respondents believe that private schools get the same public funding as government schools (25%) or more funding than government schools (33%). In reality, private schools get about half the public funding per student that government schools receive.

This error contributed to muddled responses on policy issues. Two differently-worded questions on whether private school students should receive the same funding as government school students received different levels of majority support (66%/58%). However, after being told the correct funding levels only 21% of respondents thought that the federal government should give private schools more funding, with 45% opting for current levels. Due to ignorance about the status quo, some respondents who supported same levels of funding in the earlier questions presumably thought that their reply meant no change or a cut in spending on private schools, rather than an increase.

Of those respondents with kids at a government school (an unspecified number, unfortunately) 42% said that if fees were not an issue they would prefer to send their kids to a private school. Continue reading “If cost was no obstacle, most students would attend private schools” →

What a difference a word makes

~ Andrew Norton ~ 11 Comments

A CBS poll on gays in the US military finds that the American public is much happier with the idea of ‘gay men and lesbians’ serving in the military than ‘homosexuals’ serving in the military. For the ‘strongly favour’, ‘gay men and lesbians’ adds 17 percentage points to the total.

‘Gay’ is a word with more positive connotations than ‘homosexual’ – a legacy of its old meaning and not prompting respondents to think about sex acts that they don’t want to think about, even while liking some gay people and enjoying aspects of gay culture.

But this theory of connotations is better at explaining why people go from ‘somewhat’ to ‘strongly’ than to explaining the shift from oppose to favour (homosexual – 59%, gay – 70%). It’s surprising that near-synonyms can lead to a non-trivial minority offering different views on the substantive issue.

HT: Marginal Revolution.

Income and tax illusions

~ Andrew Norton ~ 11 Comments

The Per Capita think-tank today released a survey of attitudes on tax and spend. The number one point they extracted from the survey results was that ‘Australians want a more progressive tax system’:

95% of respondents believe that low income earners and middle income earners are taxed too much, while only 16% believe that high income earners pay too much tax. However, only 3% of those surveyed feel low and middle-income earners pay too little tax, whereas 53 per cent believe that high income earners do not pay enough.

But as Per Capita itself notes, almost nobody believes that they personally pay too much tax. One reason for this is that many higher-income earners have an erroneous view of how well off they are relative to the community as a whole. In a 2004 paper I reported survey research asking people to place themselves in income deciles. Only 2% of people thought they were in the top two deciles. Continue reading “Income and tax illusions” →