Striking prepoll data as federal election booths go crazy with voters lining up across Australia

This election is staggering in that the first-term Albanese government seems to be getting a swing towards it — you just have to look at the exit polling so far, argues Joe Hildebrand.

Election days often bring out the best and the worst in a democracy and so when you have ten of them chances are you’re going to bring out the crazy.

Thus we have already seen some appalling behaviour at polling stations, with a teenager attacking an elderly man in Ashfield, in the PM’s seat of Grayndler, and an angry nutter who decided to sink the boot into Liberal signs in the former prime ministerial seat of Bennelong.

And that is just what’s happening outside the voting booths. Imagine what’s happening inside!

Well, thankfully we don’t have to. This masthead has already conducted a prepoll exit poll — if that isn’t too mindbending a concept — of 4,000 voters in 19 marginal seats over the first two days of early voting.

And already the results are striking.

As I said earlier in the week, a massively high prepoll turnout is likely to favour either the incumbent government — people don’t want change and they know it — or a big swing. In a tight contest you are more likely to see people wait until polling day, and for as much information as possible, before making up their mind.

And every swing at a first term government’s bid for reelection for more than half a century has been against it.

The rule of thumb is that an opposition wins government in a landslide and then takes a haircut on its second outing.

This was true of Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Howard, Rudd/Gillard and Abbott/Turnbull.

But as I said two days ago, this election is staggering in that the first-term Albanese government seems to be getting a swing towards it — meaning that the high prepoll turnout would seem to favour it both in terms of a vote for the status quo and a groundswell of momentum.

And wouldn’t you know it, the exit polling so far confirms just that. In fact it shows a massive 4.4 per cent swing to the ALP in the primary vote to 37 per cent.

This compares to a 2.7 per cent rise in the Coalition vote to 38.4 per cent.

The Greens received a tiny drop of 0.4 per cent to 11.9 per cent — with about 8 out of 10 of those voters likely to preference Labor — and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation copping a 2.5 per cent drop to just half of its 2022 result.

Those voting for “Others” fell a whopping 4.4 per cent to just over 10 per cent.

But Labor won’t be popping the campaign champagne anytime soon because these numbers tell a very particular story.

Firstly these are anything but undecided voters. These are, by definition, voters who are so decided that they cast their ballot 10 days before the election.

In other words, rusted on party supporters are almost certainly overrepresented, and those flirting with the idea of voting for independents are almost certainly underrepresented.

As the campaign goes on the number of swinging or formerly undecided voters will likely increase as a proportion of the prepoll count and reach its zenith on polling day. This is why we’re not yet seeing the expected big independent and minor party vote in these numbers.

Speaking of which, I have another fun rule of thumb to explain another rogue result, and that is the supposed halving of One Nation’s vote from almost 5 per cent in 2022 to just 2.5 in the early exit poll.

In fact in the latest Newspoll just a week ago One Nation was sitting on 7 per cent — higher, not lower, than the last election. So what is going on?

Well the catch with exit polls is that they are one of the very few polls these days that are done face to face. You are literally looking your pollster in the eye.

And I strongly believe that this has a suppressing effect on the result for parties that voters might worry are socially unacceptable.

Think of the so-called “shy Trump voter” phenomenon in the US and then imagine someone who’d just voted for Pauline Hanson for the first time being asked what they did minutes later.

Is it possible they said they were voting for the Coalition instead and this explains its almost identical rise?

It’s just another curiosity in an election that’s getting curiouser and curiouser.

Originally published as Striking prepoll data as federal election booths go crazy with voters lining up across Australia