Exclusive YouGov polling puts Anthony Albanese in the Lodge, but NSW a Coalition stronghold

Polling conducted exclusively for The Daily Telegraph has put Anthony Albanese in the Lodge come May 21, using a method which predicted the UK’s 2017 hung parliament.

Labor is likely to sweep to power and form government on its own right with 80 seats leaving so-called “teal” independents backed by Simon Holmes a Court dangling without portfolio on the crossbench, according to YouGov polling conducted exclusively for The Daily Telegraph.

The survey also predicts that NSW will be a relative stronghold for the Coalition, which is predicted to lose only the inner-west seat of Reid and the Central Coast seat of Robertson to Labor, though it also lists the North Shore seat of Bennelong and the western Sydney seat of Lindsay as too close to call.

According to the results, the “most likely” outcome of next Saturday’s poll is for Labor to win the election with 80 seats with the Coalition falling to just 63 seats.

The Greens are predicted to hold their one seat, defying the party’s hopeful predictions about picking up more places in the lower house, while various independent candidates are expected to wind up with seven seats.

In more disappointing news for the Coalition, Labor wins across the survey’s margin of error, picking up anywhere between 76 and 85 seats in its more extreme models.

The results come a day after the release of survey data which found that several Liberal MPs who have been under threat from independent candidates are likely to hold on.

These include Dave Sharma in Wentworth, Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney, and Jason Falinski in Mackellar on the northern beaches.

Signing in the rain: Anthony Albanese is set to lead the Labor Party to victory in the 2022 Federal Election, exclusive polling suggests. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

However, if the results of the poll hold on election day many of the Coalition’s hoped-for pick-ups will not occur, including in the Hunter Valley where Labor is expected to take Hunter, Newcastle, and Shortland by comfortable margins.

The YouGov polling conducted exclusively for The Daily Telegraph used new survey techniques that combined the results of nearly 19,000 surveys with other data to produce very precise pictures of seat-by-seat voting intention.

The survey’s methodology, known as MRP or multi-level regression with post-stratification, purports to be able to predict individual seat results more accurately than standard robocall techniques, and correctly predicted the hung parliament which came out of the UK’s 2017 general election.