Add Category
Labor remains poised to win government next weekend with Bill Shorten receiving a boost to his personal ratings despite a further lift in popular support for the Coalition.
An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian shows the race to next Saturday’s poll remains tightly contested with the Coalition lifting its primary vote a point to 39 per cent going into the final week of the campaign.
But it has not been enough to shift the two party preferred vote with Labor still leading on 51/49 per cent after also lifting its core support a point to 37 per cent.
Read Next
The results follow the release of Labor’s policy costings last Friday which the Coalition believed would be the weak link in Mr Shorten’s campaign.
They also are likely to reflect the impassioned public response from the Opposition leader to newspaper reports last week suggesting he had been selective when citing his late mother’s career achievements.
While the headline numbers are largely unchanged from last week’s poll, Mr Shorten’s personal ratings received a boost.
He has now closed the gap on Scott Morrison to seven points in the contest over who would make the better prime minister lifting three points to 38 per cent while Mr Morrison dropped back a point to 45 per cent.
The number of undecided voters was 17 per cent.
The Labor leader’s net approval ratings have also improved, delivering him the best result in four years.
The number of voters disapproving of Mr Shorten dropped four points to 49 per cent which is the first time this number has dropped below 50 per cent since 2016.
His approval ratings also jumped three points to 39 per cent producing a net negative approval rating of minus 10 which is the best result for the Opposition leader since March 2015.
Mr Morrison’s approval ratings remained largely unchanged with an equal number of people satisfied and dissatisfied with his performance.
The Newspoll survey of 1644 voters nationally across capital cities and the regions was conducted between May 9 and May 11.
The maximum sampling error is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
Coming up: Exclusive Newspoll results in four marginal seats
National Affairs Editor
Sydney
More stories on this topic
