Environment the key poll issue?

Climate change was the dominant issue for vote-changers at last year\u27s election according to two surveys, writes PETER BROWNE SINCE the release of Ross Garnaut’s first report two months ago the debate about climate change has intensified, with contending interest groups pressing their claims for influence or special treatment. In the midst of this clamour is a federal government that has promised strong action to reduce greenhouse emissions, but might be wondering whether the electoral cost will be too great. A new analysis of the attitudes of people who swung to Labor at last year’s election suggests that acting to reduce climate change can be a vote winner - in fact, according to the data, it might be the vote winner. In two quite different surveys, the single most important issue nominated by vote-changers was global warming. In both cases, it rated ahead of the other issue generally regarded as a vote-changer, industrial relations. The findings are in accord with remarks made by pollster Mark Textor at an Australian Industry Group conference at Parliament House this week. Summarising surveys conducted by his company, Crosby Textor, in recent months, he told the conference that voters generally feel the government and business have not lived up to their promises to deal with climate change. Crosby Textor has been the federal Liberal Party’s principal campaign pollster and consultant since 1996. The two surveys in the new analysis used completely different techniques to gauge the importance of issues for voters. The first, a phone poll of 700 people conducted at Swinburne University on polling day last year, asked respondents to reveal the importance of the thirteen main election issues in influencing their voting decision. Among Labor voters (including minor party voters who preferenced Labor), education, industrial relations and health were the key issues, with global warming not far behind. This group included everyone who voted Labor, from rusted-on supporters to swingers. Among Coalition voters as a whole (and those who preferenced the Coalition), the strength of feeling about most issues was more subdued. Leadership was the most important issue, followed by health and water. Interestingly, in both cases interest rates were some way behind. But the election turned on the views of people who changed their vote, and in the two surveys, three-quarters of these people shifted to Labor. It’s among this group that global warming came into its own as an issue, according to an analysis of the data by Ian Watson. Significantly, it was important across all ages among this group of 161 phone respondents, despite the widely held perception that climate change was primarily a concern of younger, left-leaning voters. The second survey we looked at was the recently released Australian Election Study, which collected the views of 1873 people via a detailed printed survey they were sent for completion after the election. In one question, respondents were asked to look at a list of thirteen issues (education, health, taxation and so on) and nominate which of them “has been most important to you and your family during the election campaign?” Global warming was the foremost issue for those who changed their vote, with industrial relations coming a closer second than in the phone poll. All other issues rated much lower. Like all attempts to uncover political attitudes, both surveys have shortcomings. The phone poll attempted to interview people soon after they had voted on election day last year but, importantly, before they knew the result - otherwise, we knew from the experience of other polls, their answers might be “tainted” by the result itself. With 28 telephone interviewers and limited time, it was impossible to contact a fully representative group of voters. Young people, in particular, were under-represented in our sample. The Australian Election Study’s method couldn’t be more different. A random sample of voters were sent a booklet with around 150 questions, which they could take up to eight weeks answering. The biggest advantages of this approach is the level of detail collected about the respondent and his or her attitudes, beliefs and sources of information; the drawback is that certain groups of voters might simply find the bulk of the questionnaire too daunting. Nevertheless, the study achieved an effective response rate of 40.2 per cent, better than the phone poll’s 37 per cent. Whatever the limitations of the two surveys, the fact that both rated global warming so highly as a concern for voter-changers is significant, not only as an indicator of where the Howard government went wrong, but as a sign to government that strong action will be seen positively by key voters - and as a warning to the Coalition, which needs to win back many of these voters to have any chance of returning to government. • Peter Browne is editor of APO. The Swinburne election study report is available here (PDF). A shorter version of this article appeared in the Canberra Times. Photo: Andrew Jeffre