Neither major party was expecting Scott Morrison to return as Prime Minister as the last day of campaigning revealed two different views about how today’s election will be won and lost.
Coalition sources were predicting on election eve that the government would likely fall short of the 76 seats needed for a majority.
Labor sources said polling suggested they could claim a slight 1-4 seat majority, but the scope for victory was narrow and required minor gains in multiple states.
The internal predictions come as the final pre-election Roy Morgan polling and Newspoll on Friday reported an ALP federal-election winning two-party preferred vote of 53 per cent to the Coalition’s 47 per cent.
Early on, campaigns are a confidence game – exciting expectations attracts media attention, hype and sometimes a misdirection of opposition resources.
Much was made of Coalition visits to Labor seats these six weeks, but gaining an electorate like Parramatta now seems a non-starter – and when it counted most Mr Morrison was playing pure defence.
No other pretext was found for Mr Morrison to spend key time in a Liberal stronghold and the three WA seats under opposition attack: Swan, Pearce and Hasluck.
A visit to one Labor square on the electorate was held but not much was done to dispel the idea it was purely to require paragraphs like these be added to stories about Coalition woes. Mr Morrison also went to Cowan but only after he had sent the traveling press home.
The New Daily understands voter surveys have Mr Morrison’s mercy mission only saving Hasluck, a seat secured mostly by the personal vote of frontbencher Ken Wyatt. Here’s the sting – corporate scion and teal independent Kate Chaney is in very safe Liberal territory.
Liberals’ SOS
Mr Morrison will seek to add to his finish with a Sydney marginal blitz, but sandbagging a state that has been for the Coalition since the Hawke years is a distress signal for a government that cannot afford to lose a seat.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese answered critics who say he does not move fast enough with the single most successful event of the campaign – an almost certainly uncontested title.
Mr Albanese was fond of saying that, like an AFL team coming home strong, Labor should kick with the wind in the fourth quarter of the campaign.
Only former Prime Minister Julia Gillard could have brought atmospherics on demand. Her place in history and rare appearances move a crowd like no one else in political life.
At Cabra Dominican high school on Friday she was The Beatles.
One girl was heard to ask: “And who’s the guy in glasses?”
Ms Gillard said: “As you know I don’t do this much anymore. In fact I never do it, but I’ve made a particular exception today,” she said.
“Vote Labor and vote for Albo to be the prime minister.
“I am very confident it will be a government for women.”
The appeal of this doesn’t need explaining but Labor has seldom had more support from women than under Mr Morrison. There is a potential national effect. A lack of “empathy” observed by women voters in the PM has been behind one of the biggest shifts in Labor’s votes.
Labor will claim a key Coalition chess square never out of its control before, with the highly marginal Boothby adding to its potential majority.
Ms Gillard appeared in Sturt too, but the party won’t claim that seat, sitting on less than 7 per cent.
But the move has produced the opposite effect of Mr Morrison’s finish; it is ambitious and exciting even if as a future move.
And James Stevens MP might have soiled himself on hearing the news (but for denying he did so when missing a key vote went unnoticed in the last parliament).
Labor’s wish list
The rest of Labor’s run home involved perfunctory appearances in Bass in northern Tasmania and Victoria’s Chisholm, revealing two other seats figuring in Labor’s victory strategy.
Where else? Two perhaps in NSW, or more if it loses Macquarie or Gilmore. But with polls tightening, sources said only the Liberal seat of Reid, once Jack Lang’s, seems certain to fall, booting out Fiona Martin MP.
The key shift in polling has been to sink Labor’s long-held ambition to win back seats across Queensland.
“That was always going to be the easy route to a governing majority but we are going to have to do it by bit,” an ALP source said.
Hopes for the Sunshine State have been pared right back again to one net gain, perhaps Brisbane.
There’s plenty more potentially in play, but polling on individual seats is dicey and Labor reckons the effect of local campaigns will distort bigger trends.
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