Category: Public opinion

Support for ETS slips below 50%

~ Andrew Norton ~ 4 Comments

The latest climate change Morgan Poll finds that support for the government’s ETS has fallen below 50% for the first time, and is now at 46%, compared to 50% last November and 55% last August.

This seems to be due to low support (34%) among voters aged 50 or more, as all the other age groups are still at 50% or more.

Though there is no detail on Morgan’s website, a story about the poll in Crikey suggests that the shift is due to the growing partisanship of this issue that I blogged about last month. They don’t give a number for Coalition supporters, but if as Crikey says Labor and Green voters have become more likely to support the ETS, the overall decline must be due to weaker support from Coalition voters.

One curious thing: On the question about whether concerns about global warming are exaggerated the comparisons are all with November poll, omitting any mention of a December poll that asked the same question.

Update: Pollytics has the full results.

The public’s view of religion and politics

~ Andrew Norton ~ 13 Comments

Today the Fairfax broadsheets turn from the religious beliefs of Australians to how they see the relationship between religion and politics.

Their Nielsen poll had however been scooped by Pollytics blog, which reported during the week that most Australians think that religion and politics should be separate

religandpolit1

Even among religious believers, 80% agree with the proposition that religion and politics should be separate. But religion appeared more popular when the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes asked about whether politicians should follow Christian values in making decisions. Even among those with no religion, 10% thought politicians should follow Christian values, along with nearly 40% of people with a religion. Continue reading “The public’s view of religion and politics” →

Australia’s statist right-wingers

~ Andrew Norton ~ 24 Comments

This morning The Australian published my contribution to their What’s Right series, based on the political identity survey many of you contributed to earlier in the year.

Perhaps my main achievement is getting a newspaper to print the terms ‘classical liberal’ and ‘libertarian’ rather than blurring them with ‘the conservatives’. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to electoral politics ‘conservative’ is not such a bad catch-all term.

Various surveys over the years have asked voters to rate themselves on a 0 (left) to 10 (right) political scale. In the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2007 I classed the right as people putting themselves 7-10 on the scale and looked at their opinions on various issues. They were about 20% of the sample.

Social issues Continue reading “Australia’s statist right-wingers” →

Party polarisation on global warming

~ Andrew Norton ~ 6 Comments

The latest Morgan Poll on global warming, taken in early December, shows very similar results to the 11-12 November poll. 31% (up 1%) say that concerns about global warming are exaggerated, 50% (down 2%) say that if we don’t act now it will be too late, and 14% (unchanged) say it is already too late.

Though a month is a short time period for public opinion to change, three things have happened that might have affected the results. The first is that the local debate about the ETS and the run-up to the Copenhagen conference have raised the issue’s profile, so more voters may have engaged with the debate and formed or changed their opinion. The second is that ‘Climategate’ has given the sceptics momentum. And the third is that with the Opposition moving to a clear rejection of the ETS, the issue may have picked up more partisanship than before (ie, partisans will go with their party).

Of these possibilities, the Morgan Poll provides most support for the last. Since the November poll, the proportion of Liberals saying that concerns are exaggerated has gone up 5 percentage points to 51%. However, the proportion of Labor respondents saying that concerns are exaggerated went down 4 percentage points to 14%. Though we can’t rule out some issue salience or Climategate effects, these changes look most like the issue becoming even more polarised on party lines.

Abbott and women #2

~ Andrew Norton ~ 13 Comments

There is no sign in today’s Newspoll (it will be on the Newspoll website later) of Tony Abbott’s forecast problems with women voters.

On a question asking whether Abbott would be a better leader, worse leader, or about the same as leader compared to Malcolm Turnbull women were less likely than men (26%-29%) to rate Abbott as better, but much more likely to rate him about the same (46%-36%). It was men (25%) rather than women (18%) who were much more likely to rate Abbott as worse than Turnbull. Overall, 72% of women and 65% of men rate Abbott as the same as or better than Turnbull. And this is the whole Newspoll sample, so includes left-wing women.

My main test of the women-don’t-like-Abbott theory is in the 2PP voting intention, which is essentially the same as last time with no gender breakdown. But for the theory to be correct, the swing by men towards the Coalition must have been big enough to counter-act any swing against by women.

It’s too early to say for sure, but it is looking more likely that the women-don’t-like-Abbott theory was a product of a massive over-sampling of women pundits know.

Abbott and women

~ Andrew Norton ~ 41 Comments

According to this week’s Nielsen poll, women (38%) were slightly more likely to support than Coalition than men (36%). Newspoll doesn’t routinely report by gender, but a pooling of polls between April and September this year found identical rates of male and female Coalition support.

The conventional wisdom is that this is set to change:

He [Abbott] has a serious problem with women voters

– Paul Kelly in The Australian

Abbott, who is deeply unpopular with female voters due to his hardline and aggressive Catholicism…

– Bernard Keane in Crikey

…his conservative social views make him divisive among voters, particularly women.

– Katharine Murphy in The Age

He’s taken a stand on a number of issues that would certainly alienate, has the potential to alienate, especially female voters.

– Nick Economou on The 7.30 Report Continue reading “Abbott and women” →

And yet more ETS polling

~ Andrew Norton ~ 4 Comments

As reported in most detail at Pollytics blog, Nielsen asked a series of climate change questions in its survey over the weekend.

As in a June Nielsen poll and September Newspoll, about two-thirds of November Nielsen respondents supported the general idea of an ETS. However, when asked about the ‘specific Emissions Trading Scheme agreed between the Government and the Opposition Leadership’ a ‘don’t know enough’ option scored a massive 72%.

Only 51% of respondents think that the ETS will have a positive effect on the environment, suggesting that at least 15% support the ETS despite it having no positive effects on the environment (a not ridiculous position, if their logic is that while the Australian ETS will have negligible positive effects it will contribute to a global effort that may be effective). 45% think that the ETS will have a negative effect on the economy, while 22% think that it will have a positive effect.

On tactics, 44% of those favouring an ETS and 61% of those opposing it think Australia should wait until after the Copenhagen conference before settling on an ETS. Continue reading “And yet more ETS polling” →

Reasons for opposing the ETS

~ Andrew Norton ~ 23 Comments

Roy Morgan Research has asked its global warming question again, and found that the proportion of the electorate Australians believing that climate change concerns are exaggerated is up again, from 27% to 30%. Disapproval of the ETS is up from 24% to 31%.

The Pollytics blog analysis of these results shows that it seems to be largely driven by partisan effects, with Labor voters becoming less likely to believe that concerns are exaggerated and Coalition voters more likely to believe that concerns are exaggerated (surprisingly, Green voters are also showing increased scepticism; if this is real it is perhaps a reminder that about a third of Green voters appear to be low-ideology, not-rusted-on, supporters).

Roy Morgan also asked an open question about why voters disapproved of the legislation. I’ve tried to organise them into categories, and find that those giving sceptical reasons are 9% of the sample (or just under a third of ETS opponents), those thinking the ETS is futile are 8.5% of the sample, those thinking it costs to much are 8% of the sample, those offering tactical reasons are 6.5% of the sample, those offering cynical reasons (eg distribution of credits is unfair) are 1.5% of the sample, as are those saying the public doesn’t know enough.

So there are several broad reasons for opposing the ETS, with none dominant.

A manipulated Green climate change poll

~ Andrew Norton ~ 47 Comments

According to a Galaxy Poll released by the Greens today, the Australian public wants a more ambitious ETS than the one proposed by the government. It asked

The government has proposed a minimum emissions reduction target of 5% by the year 2020. Scientists and environmentalists have suggested a more ambitious target if we are to properly address the issue of climate change. In your personal view, should the aim of the legislation be a minimum reduction of 5% as suggested by the government, or a reduction of at least 25% as argued by scientists and environmentalists?

35% of respondents wanted the 5% target, 54% wanted the 25% target, and 12% gave neither or don’t know responses.

This is a classic case of the party financing the poll getting the result it wants, constructing a question and possible answers around the known contours of public opinion to get a fundamentally misleading result. Continue reading “A manipulated Green climate change poll” →

Migration attitudes surprisingly stable

~ Andrew Norton ~ 2 Comments

There hasn’t been much comment on yesterday’s Nielsen poll on migration. It doesn’t give comparative reuslts, but by doing so we can see that the proportion of Australians thinking that that immigration is too high is stable compared to 2007. On slightly different questions Nielsen finds 43% of respondents saying that the immigration level is too high, compared to 46% of respondents to the Australian Election Survey in 2007 saying that migrant numbers should be reduced.

This is a little surprising. As shown in a chapter on public opinion in a new book, Australia’s Immigration Revolution, historically unemployment and negative migration opinion trend together. While Australia’s economic downturn has been very mild by global standards, I would have expected rising unemployment and lower subjective job security (the number of people worried about losing their jobs always vastly exceeds the number who actually do) to have reduced support for migration.

I thought in 2008 that the trend against migration observed in 2007 might be due to housing issues. While housing inflation did cool a little during the GFC, I’ve heard several recent media mentions of the effect high migration is having on housing availability and cost, and thought this might start to bite in public opinion. But there is no evidence of it in these figures.