The Prime Minister and Opposition leader have begun their election campaigns in Queensland this morning after federal elections were announced for July the 2nd by Malcolm Turnbull yesterday.
The prime minister has been visiting Brisbane's marginal Labor seat of Moreton and will be later headed to the Liberal marginal seats of Petrie and Bonner.
The opposition leader will talk about education at a Cairns school in the Liberal seat of Leichhardt before heading to Townsville later in the day.
New polls out on Monday morning show the battle for the July 2 election will be extremely tight.
The latest Newspoll shows Labor sits ahead of the government with 51 per cent to 49 per cent in two-party preferred terms.
The post-budget poll of 1739 people taken from Thursday to Saturday for The Australian sees the coalition's primary vote still at 41 per cent for the third consecutive survey, while Labor gained one point to 37 per cent.
It's a similar story in the latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll, which has both level pegging 50-50 if voter preferences are taken into account.
With a lead of 51 per cent to 49 per cent the election result cannot be predicted, it reports on Monday.
But 53 per cent of voters still expect the Turnbull government to survive, the poll shows and the coalition increased its primary vote lead (44 per cent) to sit 10 points ahead of Labor.
Mr Turnbull remains strongly favoured by voters in the head-to-head contest, leading Bill Shorten as preferred prime minister 51-29.
The Newspoll has him leading Mr Shorten 49 per cent to 27 per cent.
The results follow the pre-election budget, released last Tuesday.
Two out of five voters would be prepared to see a reduction in taxpayer-funded entitlements, such as family payments, as a means to repair the budget, the Newspoll shows.
It found 39 per cent of voters said they would be worse off as a result of the budget while just 18 per cent believe they will be better off, with 43 per cent uncommitted.
Only 37 per cent of those surveyed in the Fairfax-Ipsos poll believe last week's budget was fair.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said he had expected the opinion polls to tighten.
"The election was always going to be close. It means that every vote matters and it means that people will have to weigh up very carefully the choice they make," he told ABC radio on Monday.
The Fairfax-Ipsos poll has Labor's primary vote at 33 per cent, seven points lower than its peak in January 2015.
"If our primary vote is 33, not only will we not win, we'll have a very bad outcome," senior Labor MP Anthony Albanese told ABC radio.
