FILE PHOTO: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leaves the 19th EAST ASEAN Summit (EAS) at the National Convention Centre, in Vientiane, Laos, October 11, 2024. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha/File Photo
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The state of Western Australia has called an election, setting the stage for a final test for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's centre-left Labor party ahead of a national vote due by May.
An improved performance by the conservative opposition Liberal party in Western Australia will put pressure on Albanese, who faces a close contest in the upcoming federal election.
Western Australia Premier Roger Cook, who belongs to the same party as Albanese, late on Wednesday set the election for March 8 and will seek to maintain Labor's stronghold in the state, aiming for a third consecutive term for the party.
Labor won an unprecedented 53 out of 59 seats in the state parliament's lower house in the previous election held in March 2021, riding high on its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the national election a year later, Labor increased its tally in the state to 9 out of a total of 15 federal electorates.
Analyst John Phillimore, who leads the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy at Curtin University, said a Labor win was a "foregone conclusion" given the state's strong economy.
"It just seems almost impossible for (the opposition) Liberal party to fight back and win the election this time around, especially as the government hasn't really done anything too wrong," Phillimore said.
But the Albanese-led Labor is struggling to lift support nationally despite a slew of measures aimed to please families grappling with high living costs.
A Newspoll survey conducted for The Australian newspaper last week showed the Liberal-National coalition ahead of Labor 51-49 on a two-party preferred basis under Australia's preferential voting system, where votes from minor parties are redistributed until a winner is elected.
The poll showed Albanese's approval had fallen to its lowest level since the 2022 election, while 53% of voters predicted the opposition to win the election in its own right or in a minority government compared with 47% for Labor.
(Reporting by Christine Chen and Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Alasdair Pal and Stephen Coates)
