Labor is not securing enough votes in key marginal seats in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania to win the election but is set to make gains in Western Australia, the latest Newspoll shows.
It also shows that Nick Xenophon's new party is poised to beat former Liberal minister Jamie Briggs in the Adelaide seat of Mayo and has emerged as a potential kingmaker in western Sydney, where its preferences may decide the winner in at least two marginal seats.
The Newspoll was taken this week for The Weekend Australian in 10 government-held marginal seats, plus Mayo.
The results across the 10 marginals suggest Labor will win only between one and three seats, with two others in reach.
Labor would win the new Perth electorate of Burt with a swing of 8 per cent.
In the government's second-most marginal seat of Capricornia, in central Queensland, which it holds by 0.77 per cent, Labor's primary vote has gone backwards, leaving the parties deadlocked at 50-50.
Labor and the Liberals are also tied in Macarthur, on Sydney's southwestern fringe, where the Nick Xenophon Team has captured 7 per cent of the vote.
In seven other seats where the opposition needs a swing of between 3 and 6 per cent to win the Queensland electorates of Herbert and Brisbane, Victorian marginals Dunkley and Corangamite, the NSW seats of Robertson and Lindsay, and Bass in northern Tasmania the government is holding its lead after 42 days of campaigning.
In Mayo, Newspoll reveals a 14.5 per cent two-candidate-preferred swing against the government, putting the Nick Xenophon Team ahead by 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
