Oz Politics Blog

James from Reuters sent me the latest Reuters Poll Trend (dated 20 June 2007).

It said …

Australian Prime Minister John Howard clawed back some voter support in June but his conservative government would still comprehensively lose an election held now, the latest Reuters Poll Trend has found.

After 11 years in power, and with an election due within six months, Howard’s government trails Labor by 15 points on a two-party basis, where minority votes are distributed to the two main parties to decide an election.

Liberal/National Party coalition government support was 42.5 percent compared to 57.5 percent for Labor, representing a two-point improvement for Howard since May and his best result since February.

But the government has trailed by more than 10 points in every Poll Trend since Labor elected Kevin Rudd as its new leader in December last year.

The results came after a week when Howard attacked Rudd’s understanding of the economy and Labor’s links to the union movement, and when Labor attacked Howard for using his official Sydney residence as a venue for a cocktail party for business delegates to a Liberal Party conference.

Australia’s parliament goes into a six-week winter recess from Thursday, but an upbeat Howard told a meeting of government lawmakers on Tuesday that the next election would be a big challenge, but was winnable for the coalition.

Howard has won four consecutive elections since 1996. The next election is due in the second half of 2007 and is widely expected to be called for October or November.

The Reuters Poll Trend is an analysis of the three main polls - Newspoll, published in The Australian newspaper, ACNielsen, published in the Sydney Morning Herald and Age newspapers, and the Morgan Poll, published on line.

The Reuters report also included an interesting update from the betting market.