PUBLIC support for Labor has plunged in regional Australia and fallen in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's home state of Queensland.
But the Prime Minister's personal popularity continues to dwarf that of Malcolm Turnbull.
A Newspoll quarterly analysis of data, published exclusively in The Australian today, reveals a big jump in support for the Coalition among voters living outside the capital cities.
While Labor retains a clear election-winning lead across Australia, support for the Nationals is also on the rise in the wake of what Labor figures described yesterday as a "big scare campaign" in the bush over an emissions trading scheme.
The two major political parties are neck and neck in Queensland, prompting Labor strategists to complain yesterday that "brand damage" by the Bligh government and anger over state asset sales could hurt the Rudd government at the next election.
But Labor has opened up a strong lead in Western Australia, where the Coalition outpolled Labor in the 2007 election.
Mr Rudd sees the state as critical to his fortunes in the next election, due late next year.
On a two-party-preferred basis, Labor held a comfortable lead of 56 per cent to 44 per cent - the same as in the previous quarter but well ahead of its 2007 election result, when it won 52.7 per cent of the vote to the Coalition's 47.3per cent.
While a similar result in an election would produce a thumping Labor victory, there was some good news for the Coalition, with its primary vote in Queensland up four percentage points to 42per cent, just one point behind Labor.
Read more at The Australian
