Peter Dutton started the year with the wind at his back, driven by the cost-of-living crisis amid a worldwide turn against incumbent governments.
But since the May 3 election was announced, the coalition has only bled support.
Fresh YouGov polling released to AAP reveals Labor has gained ground, forging ahead 52.5 per cent to 47.5 over the coalition in the two-party preferred vote.
The result is Labor's best in months and slightly higher than its polling of 52.1 per cent at the 2022 election, putting the party in pole position for a majority government rather than a widely forecast minority.
By contrast, the coalition's primary vote is now down to 33.5 per cent - lower than at the 2022 election.
Mr Dutton's work-from-home policy had sparked the fall and taken his party from "being in the box seat to win the federal election in February to struggling to hold onto the seats they won in 2022", YouGov director of public data Paul Smith said.
"The coalition's support has fallen so far that they now risk losing seats," he said.
"Peter Dutton's work-from-home blunder has taken him from a winning position to a losing one in a dramatic way we rarely see."
While Mr Dutton moved to stem the fall by backflipping on his work-from-home policy, Mr Smith said it had done "enormous damage" because voters now believed the coalition failed to understand their working lives or support people's workplace rights.
"There have been only two prime ministers who have lost their seats - John Howard and Stanley Melbourne Bruce - and that was because they went against Australians' rights at work," he said.
The hit is also personal, with Anthony Albanese increasing his lead as preferred prime minister by four points to 48 per cent compared to Mr Dutton's 37 per cent.
The 11 percentage-point difference is the largest since June 2024 when Mr Albanese was struggling to win over voters.
The prime minister has experienced a boost to his net satisfaction score to minus 2, while the opposition leader records his equal-lowest rating at minus 15.
Since the previous Friday, Labor's primary vote is up by two points to 32 per cent, while the coalition is down one-and-a-half to 33.5 per cent.
The YouGov poll of 1515 people was carried out between April 4 to 10, with a 3.3 per cent margin of error.
Falling support for the opposition leader has been mirrored in other recent polling as Labor and Mr Albanese appear to win over Australians.
The prime minister leaned further into Labor's perceived strengths on Friday when he visited a Northern Territory urgent care clinic to reveal $60 million for an aged care program and $10 million for CareFlight.
Mr Albanese maintained Labor was still eyeing a majority government.
"I want people to get that pencil and the ballot paper and put a 'one' next to their Labor candidate," he told reporters in Darwin.
"That is the way you elect a majority Labor government, that's my objective, that's what we're aiming for."
Mr Dutton attended a business breakfast in Perth hosted by The West Australian newspaper, where he committed to abolishing penalties for automakers under a government scheme aimed at incentivising the uptake of fuel-efficient vehicles.
Parliamentarians and aspiring parliamentarians will find out the order their names will appear on the ballot paper, when the Australian Electoral Commission conducts the ballot draw for candidates at midday.
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