Newspoll: Labor holds lead, but hung parliament calls
Labor has maintained its campaign lead over the Coalition in Newspoll, as the election enters the final, frantic stretch as both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton scramble to win voters.
Holding a two party preferred lead of 52 per cent over the Coalition’s 48 per cent, Labor’s primary vote remained unchanged at 34 per cent — an increase on its 2022 support which saw it narrowly elected to government.
The Coalition’s primary remained steady at 35 per cent — a fall of five points since its peak in November last year after a campaign polling slump.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.While almost half of voters believed the Anthony Albanese-led Government needed to be tossed out (48 per cent), more were unconvinced Peter Dutton and the Coalition were ready to govern (62 per cent).
The poll has projected a likely hung parliament, where Labor will be forced to negotiate with the Greens and crossbenchers to form government.
With Mr Dutton also in the midst of attempting to highlight his “softer” side in media interviews on Sunday, the Opposition Leader was also slapped with a sharp change in his net approval — falling to negative 24 points, the lowest for a leader during a campaign.
Mr Albanese’s net approval remains unchanged at minus nine, and he has maintained a 16 point lead over Mr Dutton as Australia’s preferred Prime Minister.
The poll comes after a stop-start week of campaign, with politics put on hold over the Easter long weekend, the death of Pope Francis and Anzac Day on Friday.
Despite the campaign tone down, one in six Australians have already voted ahead of the manic last week of campaigning with both Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton set to criss-cross the nation in a final bid to voters.
Mr Dutton has vowed to visit 28 seats in the next six days, most held by Labor, including Hawke, Aston, Gorton and Dunkley in Victoria.
So far, 2.39 million Aussies have voted at a prepoll centre, while almost 500,000 have returned a postal vote, out of more than 2.4 million applications to vote by mail.
