Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard could be heading for a shock defeat at elections on Aug. 21, a new opinion poll showed yesterday, as government infighting and damaging Cabinet leaks threatened to derail her campaign.
However, Gillard, who is still expected to win by most other opinion polls and political experts, vowed to keep on battling to keep the top job.
“Let's be very clear about this, we’re in a fight,” she told reporters while campaigning in Perth. “I am going to keep fighting every day of this election campaign.”
The latest Nielsen poll reversed a solid lead Gillard's Labor party held in the same poll a week ago. Australia's first female prime minister took over barely five weeks ago from unpopular predecessor Kevin Rudd, who was dumped by his own lawmakers.
Support for Labor had dived 6 percentage points to 48 percent, said the poll, published yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age newspapers.
It gave the conservative opposition an election-winning 52 percent, after minor parties are eliminated under Australia’s system of transferable voting.
Opinion polls have been erratic but, on balance, they have favored Gillard. The Reuters Poll Trend, a statistical analysis that aims to smooth out the volatility of differing poll results, shows Gillard winning a slightly increased majority.
The new Nielsen poll shows two-thirds of voters still expect Gillard to win, despite many shifting to opposition leader Tony Abbott, but it will still come as a shock for Labor, which is struggling to heal the wounds of Rudd's dumping.
Abbott yesterday dismissed the latest poll results and said he remained “very much the underdog” in the election.
The new poll followed leaks of Cabinet discussions to newspapers which said they showed Gillard, the then-deputy prime minister, had opposed decisions to boost the state pension and paid paternity leave.
“It encompassed the darkest two days of the campaign for the government, which were dominated by damaging Cabinet leaks against Ms Gillard, for which Mr Rudd was blamed,” the Sydney Morning Herald said under a front-page headline “Abbott seizes the lead.”
If the Aug. 21 election were to mirror the latest poll results, the opposition would win an additional 28 seats in the lower house of parliament, 11 more than it needs to form a government, the Sydney Morning Herald said.
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