Federal election 2016: Poll shows Coalition has 50 per cent chance of hanging on to power

MALCOLM Turnbull is fighting for his political life, with the first post-Budget Galaxy poll revealing he has a 50-50 chance of losing the election to Bill Shorten.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and wife Lucy pictured at Rose Bay on Saturday. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

MALCOLM Turnbull is fighting for his political life, with the first post-Budget Galaxy poll revealing he has a 50-50 chance of losing the election to Bill Shorten.

The Prime Minister will visit the Governor-General Peter Cosgrove in Canberra today to officially call the first double dissolution election in Australia in 30 years.

Political mentor John Howard visited Mr Turnbull at his Point Piper home yesterday as he prepared to roll the dice on a July 2 election.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten Deputy Leader Tanya Plibersek at the launch of the Getting Results Report at NSW Teachers Federation House in Surry Hills.

Mr Turnbull said he accepted victory was not ­guaranteed.

“On July 2, the question will be ‘who do Australians trust to manage our economy during this transition?’ ’’ Mr Turnbull said.

“Our experienced government with a clear economic plan for jobs and growth or a Labor Opposition — all politics and no plan, repeating the same old tax-and-spend mistakes of the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years.

“Our national economic plan will deliver strong growth and more jobs. But success is not guaranteed and many areas are still ­recovering from the mining slowdown. We need to stick to our economic plan to ­secure our future of strong growth and more jobs.’’

An election this week would have returned Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister with a reduced minority, poll figures suggest.

The Galaxy poll commissioned by The Sunday Mail confirms Labor could win office after just one term in opposition. It finds a ­majority of voters, 62 per cent, believe it is unfair only workers earning more than $80,000 a year received a tax cut in the Budget.

Two-thirds of voters earning less than $80,000 believe the Budget is unfair. Surprisingly, 49 per cent of voters earning over $80,000 agree that it isn’t fair to lower income households.

Half of all voters polled, 50 per cent, also believed the government has made a mistake by delaying childcare fee relief until 2018. Only one in three voters backed that decision.

A majority of voters also support Labor’s plan to keep the Deficit Levy in place so that people earning over $180,000 continue to pay more tax, an effective 49 per cent tax rate when the Medicare Levy is included.

Graphic: Galaxy

Labor leader Bill Shorten claimed the Liberal Party would descend into civil war after  the  election  and  it was better they do that in opposition.

“You’ve got Mr Abbott popping up, you’ve got Mr Turnbull popping up. They just want to get the election out of the way so that they can get on with fighting each other,’’ he said.

According to the poll, the Coalition and Labor start the election campaign neck and neck with a 50-50 result.

The primary vote for the Coalition is 42 per cent. That is three points lower than the final vote recorded by Tony Abbott at the 2013 election when the Coalition won 45.5 per cent of voters’ first preferences.

Graphic: Galaxy

Support for Labor is still languishing with a 36 per cent primary vote.

However, that is an ­improvement from the 33.4 per cent at the 2013 election.

Support for the Greens has also risen to 11 per cent. Traditionally, this helps Labor but talk of a preference deal between the Greens and the Liberals in Victoria could put Labor seats at risk.

ALP strategists believe they need to secure a two-party preferred vote of 50.5 per cent to win the election. That would deliver the 21 seats needed to secure a majority of 76 MPs in the 150-seat parliament.

Had an election had been held this week, the poll suggests a 3 per cent swing to Labor, which would not be enough to win.

It would result in Mr Turnbull losing seats and being returned with a ­reduced majority.