Julia Gillard's image has taken a battering in the eyes of voters since the early days of her Prime Ministership, while Tony Abbott's is slowly improving.

We haven’t changed our minds on the parties. But we may just be warming to the opposition leader.

New polling from Essential Research shows no change between the major parties on a two-party preferred basis, with Labor leading 51-49. The Coalition is up a point on its primary vote and the Greens are down 1 point to 8%, their lowest level in eight months.

But Essential asked its online panel about the attributes of Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, and how voters felt about the two issues to emerge as MPs returned for the first hung parliament in generations: Tony Abbott’s wrecking strategy, and whether each side should compromise on positions they took to the election. The results are telling.

I suggested last week that voters wouldn’t look askance at Abbott’s strategy to disrupt parliament as much as possible in order to undermine the government’s hold on power, and this appears, at least initially to have been borne out. More than half (54%) of voters agree Abbott is “performing the appropriate role for the leader of the opposition”, compared to 46% who thought he was “unfairly placing roadblocks” in the way of the government.

A narrower majority thought both sides should be willing to compromise on the positions they took to the election, with 52% agreeing and 48% believing both sides should stick to the positions they were elected on. For both questions there was a party split — Liberal voters were much more likely to endorse Abbott’s wrecking strategy, and believe that Abbott and Gillard should stick to the positions they took to the election.

On leader attributes, Gillard has suffered considerable damage in the eyes of voters since Essential last asked this question in the early days of her leadership in July, when the newly-minted prime minister was very popular with voters. She’s suffered double-digit falls on attributes like “a capable leader” (72% down to 59%), “understands the problems facing Australia” (68% to 55%) and “good in a crisis” (61% to 46%) and big rises on negative attributes like “out of touch” (up 9 points to 44%) and “inflexible” (up 10%).

The prime minister still benefits from a (small) gender gap, with female voters consistently rating her more positively than male voters, particularly on stylistic traits like inflexibility and demanding. But curiously men regard her as more honest than women do. The only area where Gillard’s perceptions didn’t change were arrogance (whatever other problems she has, arrogance isn’t seen as one of them) and being “demanding”.

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Abbott, however, has improved his image with voters since July, albeit not by big margins. He’s now regarded as more capable than he was previously (up 5 points), less narrow-minded (down 3 points), better in a crisis (up 2 points) and less out of touch (down 4 points), although he’s also seen as a lot more demanding (up 8 points) and slightly more arrogant.

There’s no consistent gender gap for Abbott, however, with female voters rating him more highly in some areas (they’re much less likely to think he’s out of touch) and poorer in others — “good in a crisis” or “capable”.

Abbott still has a very strong perception of arrogance, however, and he is coming off a low base. Even after big falls in voter perceptions of her, Gillard still has leads on a number of characteristics: double-digit leads on intelligence and being down to earth; she trails by double digits on arrogance (21 points — 39% to 60%) and narrow-mindedness (18 points), and strong leads on trustworthiness, being out of touch and being capable.