Australian PM says election 'up for grabs' as polls show growing support for govt

Canberra, April 21 (IANS) Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that the country's upcoming general election is still "up for grabs" despite polls showing his Labor Party is on track to win a second term in government.

Following a three-day break over the Easter holiday period, both PM candidates -- the incumbent Albanese and opposition Coalition leader Peter Dutton -- returned to the campaign trail on Monday ahead of the May 3 election.

The campaign restart came one day before early voting opens across the country on Tuesday -- offering millions of Australians the opportunity to avoid long queues to cast their mandatory votes -- and after several new opinion polls showed that Labor has increased its lead over the Coalition among voters.

The latest edition of Newspoll published by News Corp Australia on Sunday reported a 52-48 lead for Labor over the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis.

A separate poll published by the Australian branch of UK firm YouGov on Friday put Labor ahead 53-47, marking the government's strongest two-party result in the firm's poll in 18 months, Xinhua news agency reported.

Labor won the 2022 general election 52.13-47.87 over the Coalition on a two-party basis.

Asked on Monday if Labor is in pole position to win the election, Albanese pointed to lessons the party learned from 2019 when polls widely forecast a Labor victory only for the Coalition to win a third term in power in a result hailed by then-PM Scott Morrison on election night as a "miracle."

"There's no complacency from my camp," Albanese told reporters in the state of New South Wales.

"This election is certainly up for grabs."

Dutton, who on Monday announced that a Coalition government would spend 750 million Australian dollars ($482 million) on a crime crackdown, including a national register of sex offenders, also pointed to the 2019 election when asked about the polls.

"Not too many people were predicting a Coalition victory in 2019. A lot of people are busy with work, busy in their lives. Many Australians don't know there's an election coming up," he said in Melbourne.

"We can well and truly win the election from here."

When Australians visit polling places across the country to vote, they will do so on a preferential basis -- assigning their first preference to the candidate in their local electorate who they would most want to represent them in the lower house of the federal parliament.

If no candidate in an electorate receives a majority of first preference votes, candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated and their votes distributed based on the preferences marked by individual voters.

Australia is divided geographically into 150 electorates, with each having approximately the same number of voters. Labor enters the election holding 77 seats in the lower house compared to 53 for the Coalition. Some electorates have as many as 13 candidates running in the election.

The Newspoll published on Sunday found that 34 per cent of respondents intend to vote for their Labor candidate as their first preference -- the highest since January 2024 -- and 35 per cent for the Coalition while the YouGov poll had both major parties tied at 33 per cent.

Labor traditionally receives fewer first preference votes than the Coalition but performs better on preferences. Labor received 32.5 per cent of first preference votes in 2022, compared to 35.7 per cent for the Coalition, but benefited from over 85 per cent of votes for the Greens, Australia's third-largest party, flowing its way.

--IANS

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