ALP maintains lead in Australian polls campaign

CANBERRA, May 13 (Xinhua): The opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) maintained lead, according to local opinion polls before Saturday's general election.

According to the latest Newspoll, which was published on Sunday night, the ALP has maintained its 51-49 lead over the incumbent Liberal-National Party coalition (LNP) on a two-party preferred basis.

If replicated nationwide at the election, that narrow lead, according to the Newspoll, would result in Labor winning power after six years in opposition.

While the two-party result was unchanged, Newspoll found that ALP leader Bill Shorten has closed the gap on Prime Minister (PM) Scott Morrison as Australia's preferred leader.

Of the respondents to the poll, 38 per cent identified Shorten as their preferred PM, up from 35 per cent earlier in May while Morrison's support fell from 46 to 45 per cent.

Morrison's net satisfaction rating, measured by subtracting the number of voters who disapprove of his performance from those who approve of it, was 0 while Shorten's was -10.

Newspoll found that Labor will receive 37 per cent of primary votes in the general election compared to 39 per cent for the LNP.

By comparison the LNP received about 42 per cent of first preference votes in the 2016 election, which it won by the slimmest possible margin, while Labor received only 34 per cent.