NSW Labor has taken the lead ahead of an upcoming election, but a turbulent week and a long road ahead will dampen any celebration.
If the NSW election was held on Saturday, not in six months, Labor would be swept to power for the first time since 2011, according to the latest Newspoll and Resolve surveys.
The Newspoll, conducted for News Corp by YouGov and published in The Australian, had Labor and the Coalition neck-and-neck on a two-party preferred basis across three consecutive polls since March 2018.
The latest results, released on Saturday, show Labor taking a four-point lead.
Resolve Strategic's political monitoring on behalf of Nine newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald showed Labor securing 43 per cent of the primary vote, compared to 30 per cent for the Coalition.
While it's good news for the party, it's less so for leader Chris Minns.
Support for Mr Minns as preferred premier dropped from 32 per cent in February. He and Premier Dominic Perrottet, who lost one point, were both locked in at 28 per cent, with 44 per cent of voters undecided.
The first-preference results from Sunday showed a marked change from a February poll in which the Liberals and Nationals led 37 per cent to 34.
Since then, the government has faced the John Barilaro trade appointment scandal and bullying allegations that led to a minister being sacked.
Multiple reviews into Mr. Barilaro's appointment have placed the blame on a since-fired department secretary, clearing former deputy Liberal leader and senior minister Stuart Ayres.
Whether those two actions can shake the perception of "jobs for the boys" in an ageing government before the March election remains to be seen.
The Resolve poll was conducted before a turbulent week resulted in Bankstown MP Tania Mihailuk being removed from the opposition's inner circle after she launched a sensational attack on her own party.
She accused a potential upper house Labor MP, currently a local mayor, of corruption and linked him to disgraced former Labor minister and powerbroker Eddie Obeid.
Mr Minns sacked Ms Mihailuk from his shadow cabinet after she did not respond to an ultimatum to substantiate her claims through the proper channels and hold off using parliamentary privilege to make further attacks.
After failing to respond to texts and voicemails from the Labor leader, Ms Mihailuk found out about her sacking when Mr Minns announced it on commercial radio on Friday.
He said she did not present any new information in her speech in parliament late on Tuesday night and the claims, more than a decade old, had already been investigated.
Ms Mihailuk was recently the subject of bullying allegations she dismissed as an "internal stitch-up".
Veteran upper house MP Walt Secord also resigned his cabinet positions and announced he will retire at the March election after bullying allegations emerged last month.
