The latest Nielsen polls seem to show an electorate that’s not quite sure who’s offering what on climate change:
Crucially in this election year, support for [the Rudd government's] emissions trading scheme (ETS) proposal is down 10 points [since last November] to 56 per cent.
When voters were offered a choice between Labor’s ETS and Mr Abbott’s alternative fund to finance emissions reductions, 45 per cent of those polled preferred the fund and 39 per cent backed the trading scheme.
But when voters were asked to choose between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s broad approaches to climate change, 43 per cent supported Mr Rudd’s approach and 30 per cent backed Mr Abbott.
That looks like an electorate which has absorbed negative messages from all sides about the ETS being environmentally inadequate (true) and financially threatening (arguable), yet who still don’t trust Abbott to take climate change as seriously as they do themselves.
The Poll Bludger sums up the Neilsen poll results:
The latest Nielsen poll has Labor’s two-party lead at 54-46, down from 56-44 in November. The Coalition is up four points on the primary vote to 41 per cent, with Labor steady on 42 per cent (no figure is provided for the Greens as far as I can see). The Prime Minister’s personal ratings have taken a hit, his approval rating down six to 60 per cent and disapproval up four to 33 per cent. The poll is the first since Tony Abbott became Liberal leader, and finds him with 44 per cent approval and 41 per cent disapproval. Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister is 58-31, compared with 67-21 in the twilight of Turnbull’s leadership. The sample size was 1400.
No doubt Possum Comitatus at Pollytics will have some more analysis (and graphs!) later this morning.
That’s still a solid lead for Labor and for Rudd as preferred PM. The best that can be said for Abbott is that he has lifted the figures from Turnbull’s nadir, but I’m sure the Libs were hoping for a bigger bump from the change in leadership than this. The comfortable figures for Labor/Rudd also indicate that climate change rhetoric alone will not be a big enough pull for voters to tick the Libs box on a ballot form.
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