There has been an enormous amount of coverage on vaccination rates and vaccination intention/hesitancy over the last few weeks. And justifiably so. Our own latest national poll figures (TEG Insights omnibus, July) are consistent with the broader coverage; people being vaccinated and those intending to be vaccinated are going up significantly in all States, especially in NSW this month. Vaccination hesitancy is also going down significantly.  

No surprise as to why! Thank you Delta. ☹

Rather than add more data to this over-populated subject, we wanted to shed some light on how each State is perceived to be handling the COVID situation by its own citizens.

Why?

Well, because the daily ‘Presser’ has become unmissable viewing for so many people across Australia, and if you listen to what each Premier is saying, you would be confused.  

Gladys Berejiklian frames the Sydney figures as “would be so much worse if we weren’t in Lockdown” whereas, on the same day in Victoria, Dan Andrews is saying “Sydney is out of control. Sydney is on fire!”.  

They are talking about the same numbers.  

How is the public supposed to interpret all this and make sense of it? How do people feel about how their State Government is handling the crisis? COVID is the main topic of conversation for so many people at the moment, we wondered where they net out on how their leaders are dealing with it.

The numbers are quite revealing.

A low of 37% (Sydney) and a high of 47% (Brisbane) of people in metro capitals on the Eastern seaboard are non-plussed with how both their State and Federal government are handling COVID. That’s an alarmingly high number of disappointed people, if you think politicians should be showing leadership in a crisis like this. Between 4 and 5 people in 10 think the politicians aren’t doing a decent job.

Interestingly, the number of disappointed people is significantly lower in Perth, where only 2 in 10 are unhappy with the work at both State and Federal level. A further 31% feel Mark McGowan is doing a good job, even if Scott Morrison isn’t.  

McGowan seems to be doing something right with his ‘great wall of the West’ strategy, as far as WA is concerned

On the subject of ScoMo, the label of “The Prime Minister of Sydney” that Dan gave him seems to be a fair call, with 33% of Sydneysiders thinking both their State and Federal Governments are doing a good job. That is significantly higher than anywhere else in Australia by some margin. Melbourne is only 5% by comparison!

In terms of the State of Origin, support for the Premier seems to be highest amongst the Blues/NSW/Sydney, with almost 1 in 2 people thinking Gladys is doing well, either on her own or in conjunction with ScoMo. This  is much higher than any other State (Maroons/Qld/Brisbane – only 3 in 10 people rate Annastacia Palaszczuk the same; whilst in Vic/Melb, Dan is also lower, with only 3 in 10 rating his performance the same as Gladys’s).

Overall then, Dan seems to be right on one thing at least, “Sydney is on fire!”, just not in the way he intended. Gladys (and Kerry Chant) seem to have won The Presser State of Origin, at least for now.  

It will be interesting to see how things change if the current Delta lockdown drags on and the numbers refuse to shift in the right direction. People’s confidence, and support, could well change if that happens. I guess we will see in a month’s time.  

Will August 28 be D-day, or Freedom Day in Sydney?

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Press Contact

For further information, please contact Jodie Roberts at jodie.roberts@potentiate.com or +61 422 185 097