This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Liberal party is in serious danger of losing the seat of Wentworth this weekend according to a new ReachTel poll that shows Liberal candidate Dave Sharma’s primary vote has slumped to 32.7%. The vote of high profile independent and local GP Kerryn Phelps has surged to 25.8%.

Labor’s Tim Murray has also increased his share of the primary vote to 21.6%, compared with 19.5% in a ReachTel poll two weeks ago. The Greens’ Dominic Wy Kanak has 9.1% while independent Licia Heath has 5.6%.

The poll commissioned by Greenpeace did not attempt to calculate the two-party preferred result but did ask about preferences. Ominously for the Liberals, the result is in line with their own internal polling reported in the Australian this morning.

It had Sharma’s vote “in the mid 30s” and Phelps “well into the 20s”.

Only 2% of voters said they were undecided, suggesting the majority have already made up their minds.

The Australian report on the Liberal’s internal polling showed Phelps would have a thumping victory of 55% to 45%, two-party preferred.

Most of the preferences from the smaller parties, the Greens and Heath were expected to flow either to Phelps or Murray. Phelps could then win with a significant margin, provided she keeps ahead of Murray on primaries. If she comes second, more than 90% of Labor voters will likely put her ahead of the Liberals.

The poll surveyed 661 voters in Wentworth on Monday night using an automated telephone survey, which randomly selects numbers and the person who will do the survey.

The Greenpeace ReachTel poll asked people how they voted at the last federal election, which is a way of verifying the sample.

The responses showed 61.2% of those sampled had voted Liberal at the last election, which is in line with the actual primary result in 2016 for the former member for Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull, who won 62.2% of the vote.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific also asked how much climate change policy would impact on a person’s vote – particularly in light of the recent IPCC global emissions report.

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It found that more than 40% of Wentworth voters list climate change as being the biggest issue for them in this election, eclipsing issues including immigration (15.3%), the economy (19%) and health and hospitals (8.4%).

A total of 64.8% of voters surveyed agreed or strongly agreed with the recent statement of John Hewson that: “A major party without a credible climate action plan should forfeit the right to govern.”

Greenpeace Australia Pacific campaigner Neneh Darwin said: “This polling shows clearly that the voters of Wentworth are planning on sending the climate wreckers in Canberra a message that there is huge electoral penalty to pay for abandoning action on climate change.”