CANBERRA, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Australia's governing Liberal National Party (LNP) has closed the gap on the Opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP), according to the latest Newspoll.
The latest version of Australia's most respected opinion poll, released on Monday, showed that the LNP reduced the ALP's lead in two party preferred voting from 55-45 to 53-47.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also increased his lead as preferred prime minister over ALP leader Bill Shorten to 6 percent, up from 2 percent a fortnight ago.
The LNP's primary vote also grew, up to 36 percent to trail Labor by only 1 percent.
Despite the poll being good news for the government, if an election were held and those numbers proved to be accurate, the ALP would still win in a landslide, winning as many as 82 seats in the lower house of parliament.
The Newspoll came after a week in which the stability of Turnbull's government came under threat with members of the Nationals threatening to vote with the ALP to establish a Royal Commission into the banking sector.
It ended on a positive note with the deputy prime minister winning a by-election in his New South Wales (NSW) seat of New England comfortably.
When asked about speculation that conservative members of the LNP were preparing to launch a leadership spill against him based on poor performance in polls, Turnbull said, "I don't run the government based on the Newspoll."
"I have every confidence, every confidence, that I will lead the coalition to the next election in 2019 and we will win it, because we are putting in place the policies that will deliver for the Australian people," he told reporters on Sunday.
"When you mark down what we have achieved, you can see that, step by step, we're getting barnacles off the boat, we're making real changes resulting in real jobs and real investment."
