EXCLUSIVE: Who voters want as Prime Minister

FIRST ON 7: Tony Abbott's opponents are sharpening their knives tonight, with the Prime Minister forced to debate a leadership spill at a Liberal partyroom meeting this Tuesday.

7News political editor Mark Riley first predicted this would happen and said that just as imagined he would, Tony Abbott responded ‘like a fighter’.

Holding a live press conference on Friday afternoon to try to save his Prime Ministership, Mr Abbott told his colleagues to reject the Labor way of dumping leaders, but he is looking shakey.

Two West Australian backbenchers will put that motion for a leadership spill on Tuesday, as an exclusive 7News-ReachTEL poll shows Malcolm Turnbull is a clear favourite with voters.

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But Tony Abbott has declared he is fighting on;

"I have spoken with Deputy Leader Julie Bishop and we will stand together in urging the partyroom to defeat this particular motion," the Prime Minister said.

But that first shot in the now open leadership battle soon backfired, with Julie Bishop making clear to 7News she was only standing alongside Mr Abbott out of duty.

"I agreed with the PM that, due to cabinet solidarity and my position as deputy, there should be support for the current leadership in the spill motion," Ms Bishop said in the statement.

It is understood that if it does come to a leadership ballot, Ms Bishop would not be on any joint ticket, with Tony Abbott or Malcolm Turnbull.

West Australian MPs Luke Simpkins and Don Randall sparked the leadership fire announcing they will put a spill motion on Tuesday.

“I think most people around the country unfortunately have stopped listening to the PM and if he's not being listened to then he can't lead,” Simpkin said on Friday.

Mr Simpkins and Mr Randall are both from Mr Abbott's own rightwing power base.

Mr Abbott has again suggested it was not his colleagues' role to determine his future.

"We are not the Labor party," he said. "They are asking the party room to vote out the people that the electorate voted in, in September 2013.

Tony Abbott has been arguing publicly for days that this would not come to a spill motion, but it is now obvious he had been privately marshalling a defence strategy for exactly these events - immediately rolling out a phalanx of ministers in quick succession to back him.

“I will vote to defeat the motion,” Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said.

The Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, and Peter Dutton also said they will stand by the Prime Minister

As Assistant Infrastructure Minister Jamie Brigg said “this is not the answer to difficulties in the electorate.”

But, embarrassingly, one minister fluffed his lines; “I believe that the team of Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard is the best leadership team for the Liberal Party,” Kevin Andrews said.

So who do voters want?

Overwhelmingly Malcolm Turnbull.

An exclusive 7News-ReachTEL poll taken on Thursday night, says a change in leadership would poll-vault the Government from facing annihilation under Tony Abbott to an immediate landslide lead under Mr Turnbull.

The national poll of 3,500 people says with Tony Abbott in charge the government trails Labor 55-45, but installing Malcolm Turnbull would instantly turn that ten-point deficit into an eight-point lead of 54-46.

The poll shows a shift to Mr Turnbull would lift the Liberal primary vote by 10 percent from 34 to 44, and cut Labor's seven points from 41 to 34.

A change to Julie Bishop also puts the Government back in front, though not as emphatically 51-49.