Less than a third of voters back increased public funding for political candidates to reduce reliance on donations, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll.
The poll of 1,150 respondents is a major warning to the Albanese government, which is considering increasing public funding as part of a significant suite of electoral reforms to be introduced by mid-year.
After the Coalition took the lead against Labor in February for the first time since the Albanese government’s election, the opposition appears to have retained an edge in two-party preferred terms with 50% of voters planning to vote for the Coalition versus 44% for Labor while 6% remain undecided.
Excluding undecided voters, the Coalition leads Labor 53% to 47%, up from 50-50 earlier in March, indicating the results are volatile but trending in the opposition’s direction.
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton’s approval ratings are largely unchanged. Both have a -3% net favourability rating, with 35% of people polled giving Albanese a negative rating of between 0 and 3 on a 10 point scale, and 32% a positive rating of 7 to 10. For Dutton, 34% rated him negatively and 31% positively.
The poll found people less satisfied with the performance of democracy in Australia. Only a third (32%) of respondents said they were very satisfied or satisfied with how democracy is working, down 14 points from May 2022 when the Albanese government was elected.
About the same proportion (31%) are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied, up 13 points, while a further third (32%) are undecided.
In the week that independents revealed a bill to ban mega-political donations totalling $1.5m, respondents were asked about a suite of electoral reforms. A majority supported:
Ensuring the content of political adverts is truthful (73%)
Real-time reporting of donations to political parties (64%)
Caps on the value of donations companies or individuals can give to political parties (61%).
All three elements are expected to be included in a government bill to be introduced by special minister of state, Don Farrell, who is still negotiating with the Coalition and crossbench about caps on donations and spending.
Respondents weren’t enthusiastic about increased public funding to reduce reliance on donations, with 29% in favour, 35% opposed and 36% neither supporting nor opposing. Increased public funding is expected to compensate for reduced donations, if restrictive caps are adopted.
The government also faces a potential backlash against the application of spending caps on a seat-by-seat basis, which could limit independents’ ability to finance expensive campaigns to raise their profile against incumbents but which would allow major parties to spend more on national advertising because they contest unwinnable seats.
GetUp chief executive, Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, said on paper, a cap on spending in seats and donations was a good thing because “it means no one … can spend hundreds of millions to buy a Senate seat, and inner-city seats don’t just fall to the highest bidder”.
“A one-size-fits-all spending cap could also significantly disenfranchise bush seats, like Lingiari, which is almost the size of the entire [Northern] Territory, where voters rely on civil society and community organisations to receive any notification about upcoming elections and candidates,” Baldwin-Roberts said.
The poll found respondents are happier with how Australia is doing on climate change, with the proportion of people who think it is not doing enough falling to 35%, down four points from October 2023. About 38% said the country is doing enough, up two points, while 18% said it is doing too much, up one percentage point.
A majority of respondents (58%) thought social media companies such as Meta and TikTok should be regulated more. About a third (34%) said the current regulation is about right, while 9% said they should be regulated less.
There are calls for the Australian government to ban TikTok unless its parent company sells the social media app to another company that is not based in China. About 45% of respondents supported a ban on TikTok, 25% were opposed, and 31% neither supported nor opposed such a ban.
Overall, people remained sitting on the fence about whether social media had a positive impact on their lives (27% said yes), or a negative affect (29%), with 44% saying it had a neutral affect.
In relation to Australia’s news media bargaining code, respondents were told that Meta (formerly known as Facebook) had announced it would “close its news tab and stop paying media companies to access their journalism”.
One-third (33%) of respondents sided with media companies who argue “their content benefits Meta, and this decision means journalism jobs will no longer be funded, undermining democracy”.
One in five backed Meta’s view that “its users don’t share news content and it shouldn’t have to pay media companies to access their journalism any more”. Almost half (47%) of respondents were unsure or supported neither side.
