With the general election closing in, Australian Prime Minister John Howard is trying to tilt up his coalition’s plummeting popularity after opinion polls showed the opposition is heading for a landslide win.

“I believe the next election will be difficult for the coalition, but we can win it,” Howard said.

“I hope people understand from observing me in 30-odd years of public life that I have never run from a fight before and I don't intend to do so now,” the Liberal Party leader added.

Members of the governing party asked Howard to let deputy and Treasurer Peter Costello take over the helm, but the prime minister maintained his stance saying the issues was resolved in 2006 and “it is not in the party's interests to revisit it.”

According to opinion polls, Labour Party leader Kevin Rudd is bound to replace Howard in the prime minister’s seat after the general election. Pre-election polls indicate the Labor Party would clinch 57 per cent of the vote, while the current ruling coalition would have to settle with 43 per cent.

Howard’s experience offers him a slight advantage, but despite heading a popular government since 1996, the 68-year-old seems set to step down from Australia’s political stage.  

On the other side, 49-year-old Rudd doesn’t have so much experience in leading positions, but at the moment his popularity and the Australians’ eagerness for change seem to be enough for a victory.  

Howard hoped last week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit would have drawn the electorate’s support, but his siding with US President George W Bush seems to have done more damage to the coalition's image.

Most Australians want the military troops out of Iraq and criticized Howard for backing Bush’s policy and sending soldiers to the war-torn country.

Televisions tried to illustrate the different policies of the country’s prominent politicians by showing two apparently contrasting images. Howard was filmed while talking with Bush and Rudd having a friendly conversation with Chinese President Hu Jintao in a fluent Mandarin, footage that quickly surrounded the world.

Howard made a call to the other party members, urging them to maintain stability within the coalition and allow him lead the party through the election.

“I ask my colleagues to not allow their political understanding to desert them,” Howard said. “In the end, governments are thrown out because they are regarded as incompetent or because their leader is deeply unpopular. I don't think those conditions exist.”

Even if Costello said he wouldn’t refuse the party’s leadership if offered to him, opinion polls reveal that he is less popular than Howard. Over almost leven years the treasurer failed to gain the same amount of sympathy as the opposition leader Kevin Rudd managed in the last nine months.