Coalition leader Peter Dutton addresses media during the election campaign. Photo: ABC News/Matt Roberts
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese heads into the final hours of the election campaign, potentially on track to retain Labor's majority, after Peter Dutton all but admitted he had botched the Coalition's campaign.
With record numbers of Australians flocking to pre-polling booths, polls suggest Labor's momentum over the coalition has firmed.
The final election YouGov survey showed Labour's two-party preferred support on 52.9 percent, with the Coalition on 47.1 percent - a 0.7 percent swing to the prime minister from the 2022 election.
At the start of the campaign in late March, the research group found Labor was on 50.2 percent and the Coalition on 49.8 percent.
A separate Redbridge-Accent poll published in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday mirrored the YouGov results, showing Labor had extended its lead by an extra point to 53 percent.
Both polls indicated Labor would win a second term in office on Saturday and may potentially expand its majority. An analysis by YouGov projects Labor could win between 76 seats and 85 seats.
Speaking from his northern Brisbane seat of Dickson, Dutton sought to downplay the significance of the Coalition's election campaign performance, which faced growing internal Coalition criticism for being ill-prepared and mistake-ridden.
Setbacks included Dutton not appearing to know the price of eggs, prematurely musing about life in Kirribilli, reversing a planned ban on public service work-from-home rules, "verballing" the Indonesian president and admitting he did "not know" Donald Trump, despite guaranteeing he would land a trade deal in his first months in office.
The Coalition also struggled to sell its cornerstone nuclear power policy and suffered an industry backlash - including from Coalition fundraiser Gina Rinehart - over Dutton's plan to intervene in the gas market.
"This election really is a referendum, not about the election campaign, but about the last three years of government," Dutton said. "Are you better off today than you were three years ago?"
'Nervous' Albanese also confronts dwindling primary
Despite the poll trends, Albanese continued to downplay his prospects, admitting to Sydney's KIIS FM that he was nervous.
"Elections are tough… and they're tough to win," he said. "Here's a little fun fact for you - there has not been a prime minister re-elected since John Howard in 2004.
"Twenty-one years, we've had a revolving door."
Despite Labor's lead in the headline national two-party preferred polls, both sides of politics are predicted to suffer weak levels of primary support.
YouGov said 31.4 percent of voters said they would give their first preferences to Labor, with the Coalition capturing about the same (31.1 percent). Both would be lower than the last election.
Greens were estimated to capture 12.6 percent of the vote, on par with the party's 2022 result, while Pauline Hanson's One Nation had lifted its base from 5 percent three years ago to 9.3 percent.
"Others" are at 7.2 percent, down from 9.2 percent in 2022.
YouGov's research was based on responses from 1100 voters between last Thursday and Tuesday. Its two-party preferred results were based on "respondent-allocated" preferences, rather than the 2022 patterns.
The low primary support suggested preference flows would play an outsized role in Saturday's final results, particularly in outer-urban electorates, where there were signs disgruntled One Nation voters were more likely to prefer the Liberal Party than in the past.
YouGov's "central" case is for Labor to win 84 seats, with the Coalition falling to 47 seats and the Greens retaining three seats.
Independents would hold 14 and "others" would have the remaining two seats in the House of Representatives.
The group believed its data indicated all sitting independents would win their seats on Saturday, with the Coalition to also lose the electorates of Bradfield, Calare, Cowper, Monash and Wannon.
By contrast, the Coalition would regain the seat of Aston, which the government won in a 2023 by-election. The three Queensland seats held by the Greens may be close-run contests that remained too close to predict.
"While Labor is favoured to win Brisbane and Griffith from the Greens, the results will be determined by the preferences of voters of the third-placed party in what are three-way contests between Labor, Greens and the Coalition," YouGov said.
- ABC
