Australian election will be no popularity race

One thing is already clear about Australia's unprecedented eight-month election campaign: it won't be a popularity contest.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, regularly described on talkback radio and in conservative media as untrustworthy and desperately clinging to power, is set to fall in the September election if opinion polls are to be believed.

Yet her conservative rival, opposition leader Tony Abbott, is even more unpopular on a personal level with voters, even if they rate his opposition coalition 12 points higher than Gillard's Labor-led minority government.

The prospect that Abbott will take over the reins of the world's 12th-largest economy this year is worse than "being told there's no beer left", according to one response on a Twitter campaign.

The election is unique not only for the length of the campaign - Gillard has said she will go to the polls in September - but also because the two main contenders are the most unpopular politicians in the country.

"It is going to be a grudging vote. People certainly won't be voting for personalities or the qualities of the leaders," Griffith University political analyst Paul Williams said.

The latest Nielsen poll shows Abbott, a former Rhodes scholar and fitness fanatic, has a 60 per cent disapproval rating. Gillard is also widely disliked, with 48 per cent disapproving of the Welsh-born lawyer.

Abbott, 55, has turned off voters with his aggressive style and relentless opposition to government policies, designed to force a crisis and an early election.

Social media has been harsh on both Abbott and Gillard, with a recent Twitter trend tagged ThingsMorePopularThan TonyAbbott attracting more than 5,200 responses, with answers such as "a hockey ball to your private parts".

Gillard, 51, fared little better in a similar campaign, with "gravel rash" nominated as more popular than the prime minister.

Worried by his negative image, Abbott has promised to be more positive in the election year. "I think what people are now looking for is for a little bit more from us," Abbott told his party on Monday. "They want us not so much to be an opposition but to be an alternative government."

Abbott wants the next election to be a vote on a carbon tax, which he blames for pushing up electricity prices and has promised to scrap. He has also vowed to end a new 30 per cent tax on coal and iron ore mine profits.

However, policy has been largely sidelined in an increasingly bitter and personal political debate.

In a withering attack in parliament last year, Gillard decried Abbott as a misogynist, reflecting polls which find Abbott is more unpopular with women voters.

Abbott says Gillard is unfit to govern after her backflip on the carbon tax, which she once promised not to introduce, highlighting the prime minister's struggle to gain public trust.

A problem for the main parties is the fact both leaders are being stalked by alternatives within their own ranks who are much more popular with voters.

The government has former prime minister Kevin Rudd, overthrown by Gillard in a backroom coup in 2010, while former Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull is in the wings should Abbott fall.