Anthony Albanese has extended his campaign lead over Peter Dutton after the Coalition’s popularity with voters dropped again in the latest Newspoll.
The polling, published by The Australian on Sunday, had Labor holding steady on a primary vote of 33 per cent, while the Liberals lost a point to drop to 36 per cent.
The Coalition’s primary vote has slipped since last year, from a pre-campaign high point of 40 per cent in November, and is now at its lowest point since the middle of last year.
The change meant the Government improved on two-party preferred status, leading the Opposition 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
The results, which came at the end of the first week of the election campaign, closely mirrored the result which elected Mr Albanese in 2022, with a narrow one-seat majority.
Despite the Liberal losing ground, Mr Dutton narrowed the gap on Mr Albanese as preferred Prime Minister to eight points.
He also enjoyed a slight improvement in voters’ assessment of his performance, rising to a net approval of -17 per cent, compared to the Prime Minister’s -11 per cent.
However, the Opposition Leader lost ground on the key attributes of leadership in voters’ considerations.
While leading the Prime Minister 62 per cent to 48 per cent on whether voters saw him as “decisive and strong”, they also dubbed Mr Dutton arrogant, and he trailed for the first time on the key metric of “understands the key issues”.
Mr Albanese led Mr Dutton as the more likeable, trustworthy, experienced candidates, as well as being considered the leader who cared more for people and was more in touch with voters.
The Opposition Leader led on having a vision for Australia.
It mirrors other polls from across the campaign, including Redbridge’s latest data released over the weekend, which showed the same primary votes and two-party preferred split between the major parties.
It comes after the first week of the campaign, which was largely dominated by US president Donald Trump’s tariff decisions and a debate over who was better placed to push back against the flat 10 per cent trade cost levelled at Australia.
Liberals have raised concerns over Mr Dutton’s performance over a poor start to the campaign, losing momentum and struggling to land a blow on the Prime Minister across the first week.
An energised Mr Albanese took on a stronger persona to kick off his first campaign as Prime Minister, but dealt himself a self-inflicted political loss when he fell of a stage in NSW on Thursday.
He then tried to tell media he had not fallen off a stage, before joking about it the following day.
Both leaders spent Sunday rallying the party faithful, with Mr Albanese speaking in Brisbane, while Mr Dutton launched his party’s bid to win more seats in Tasmania.
The polling come ahead of the first head-to-head debate between Mr Albanese and Mr Dutton on Tuesday night, in Sydney.
