Essential Research and Resolve Strategic offer further numbers on budget polling, both tending to support Newspoll’s impression of a lukewarm response to the budget, and one — or possibly two, with Resolve Strategic to be confirmed — also supporting its finding of no discernible impact on voting intention. For primary votes will have to wait for the pollster’s publication of its full results later today. Respondents were most likely to rate that the budget would be good for people receiving government payments and least likely to younger Australians and “average working people”. UPDATE (Essential Research): Essential Research voting intention numbers are here and the full report here. Further, the report allows comparison of the budget response with five budgets going back to 2020, which makes the numbers look better than at first blush.

Source: The Guardian May 16, 2023 00:17 UTC