Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard faced a knockback in the polls on Saturday after Labor Party rival Kevin Rudd was shown to have a better chance of winning next year's parliamentary election.

Rudd, who resigned as foreign minister last week, goes up against Gillard on Monday in a ballot for party leadership. The secret ballot of the 103 members of the Labor Party caucus was called by the prime minister after Rudd initiated resurrected a long-standing battle for the top job.

Gillard had largely been tipped to win the vote, having already toppled Rudd as Australian premier and ruling party leader in an internal party coup in 2010.

A Nielsen poll of 1,200 voters published in the Sydney Morning Herald, however, found that Rudd was overwhelmingly the preferred party leader, securing 58 percent of the vote compared with Gillard's 34 percent.

The poll also found that Labor's overall support remained below the opposition's, with only 47 percent of votes likely to go to the government compared to 53 percent heading to the opposition Liberal Party if an election were held now.

Meanwhile a Galaxy poll of 1,020 voters, published in Sydney's Daily Telegraph, showed Rudd ahead of Gillard as best placed to lead the Labor party by 52 percent to 26 percent.

Head-to-head

Rudd responded to the polls on Saturday, calling on his party to accept the "cold, hard, stark reality" and reinstate him as leader to prevent Labor from being ousted at the next election.

The results were "out there in black and white for everyone to look at," Rudd added, warning that the polling data proved Labor would be thrashed by Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott under the helm of the current prime minister.

Gillard downplayed the polls, however, saying: "Delivering good government isn't about keeping your eyes on the opinion polls."

"It's about doing the job that the nation needs done, sometimes that does cost you popularity, but we've got to embrace the future, get the big reforms done and that's precisely what I've been doing," she told reporters.

After more than a decade of conservative rule under John Howard, Rudd shot to power in November 2007 in a crushing election victory.

Less than three years later he was ousted by disgruntled Labor Party colleagues and replaced with Gillard - the nation's first female prime minister. She only narrowly won August 2010 elections, forming a minority government with the support of the Greens and independent lawmakers and has since endured a year of dismal polling.

ccp/rc (AFP, AP, dpa)