An opinion poll ahead of next month's general election in Australia shows Prime Minister John Howard's conservatives are well placed to deny opposition leader Mark Latham and his Labor Party a go at government. An opinion poll published Sunday in Tasmania's Examiner newspaper and monitored by Australia's ABC Radio indicated that the ruling Liberal-Nationals coalition would have snatched two Tasmanian seats from Labor if the general election had been held last weekend. The latest opinion poll taken nationally gave the coalition 46 per cent of primary votes compared to 40 per cent for Labor. When preference votes were added in, the projected result of the October 9 general election was an even split of votes between the rivals. That poll, taken almost two weeks ago, showed Labor had lost the commanding lead it gained when Latham, 43, took charge in December. In November 2001, the coalition won the election with 51 per cent of the vote on a two-party preferred basis. Last week's bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, in which nine Indonesians lost their lives and 160 were injured, is assured of influencing voting. Most analysts predict 65-year-old Howard, with 30 years in parliament and eight years as prime minister, will benefit from incumbency and the notion that he is better placed to guard national security than his younger, less-experienced rival. It's an assessment reflected in a wild gambling spree on a fourth consecutive coalition victory next month. Gerard Daffy, an analyst with Internet betting agency Centrebet, said the odds of a Howard triumph had soared in the wake of the Jakarta bombing just as they had in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. "As soon as the news got out, we probably took 70,000 Australian dollars (50,000 U.S. dollars) to 80,000 Australian dollars (56,000 U.S. dollars) in bets for the coalition," Daffy said of the reaction to the terrorist attack in Jakarta. Centrebet has not been wrong on the outcome of a general election since it started taking bets on them in 1993. "It's not looking good for Labor," Daffy told Australia's AAP news agency. "It looks like the Labor Party has been hit by something that's out of their control with this bombing. It's obviously an unfortunate event but that's how the punting public are reading it." Analysts stressed that with a month to go before polling, the election was still evenly balanced. They said Latham could claw back ground if he performs well on Sunday in the sole televised debate between the two leaders in this election campaign.
