Polls back Australian PM Gillard's rival Rudd

SYDNEY: Kevin Rudd's bid to lead Australia again won a boost Saturday when opinion polls showed he remains more popular with the public than his rival in next week's ballot, Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Rudd will face off against Gillard on Monday in a ballot taken by the 103 members of the Labor Party caucus after a divisive battle that has seen the ruling party engage in unprecedented infighting.

Gillard has said she is confident she will win the vote but Rudd has called on his party to accept the "cold, hard, stark reality" and reinstate him as leader to prevent Labor from being dumped by voters at next year's election.

A Nielsen poll of 1,200 voters published in the Sydney Morning Herald found that Rudd was overwhelmingly the preferred party leader, garnering 58 percent of the vote compared with Gillard's 34 percent.

The poll also found that Labor's overall support remained below the opposition's, with only 47 percent of votes likely to go to the government compared to 53 percent heading to the opposition if an election were held now.

It showed that 60 percent of voters disapproved of Gillard's performance.

But they were divided on who was the preferred prime minister if asked to choose between Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott, giving them 46 and 47 percent respectively. (AFP)