ALP may be on a roll but let’s wait for the poll

May 18 may not quite be the slam dunk that some people are taking for granted.

The federal election is all over bar the shouting. Over, as in OVER. Labor has it won. That’s what everyone is saying, and you can see why: the Coalition has lost 51 Newspolls in a row. This last, more formal poll, scheduled for May 18, is surely … well, a formality?

Except that it’s never over in politics until it’s actually over.

Last week’s column traced one pathway to victory for the Coalition, saying if it could hold Warringah and take back Wentworth, if it didn’t lose Dickson and kept Deakin, and so on, it could still win this. The comments were amusing. “Thank you for giving us hope!” said the Right. “You guys just keep kidding yourselves,” replied the Left. Fair enough, but it’s worth noting that Labor has work to do, too. Let’s look at the map.

Labor goes into the poll with 71 out of 151 seats, after by-elections, and the redistribution. So it arguably needs to win five seats, and hold everything it has, to form a majority. Given natural swings, you’d have to think it can win at least one each in NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. That’s four, and it hasn’t even broken a sweat.

This is where it gets interesting: it’s hyper-local in some seats, which explains why candidates are talking about toilet blocks and pools, not normally their purview.

Also, which seats does Labor hope to get? Some polls are saying it’ll win Chisholm in Victoria, held by Julia Banks, who has quit the Liberal Party. The ALP is also counting on Dunkley in Victoria, which has been nudged towards Labor by the redistribution; plus Petrie in Brisbane and the new seat of Bean in the ACT.

In NSW, it’s counting on Robertson, Banks, Reid and Gilmore; in Victoria, on Corangamite, La Trobe, and possibly Deakin, which has a margin of 6.4 per cent. In South Australia it is counting on Boothby. In Queensland, it wants Bonner, Dickson, Dawson, Forde, Flynn and Leichhardt.

That’s a lotta seats. Can it get them all? In Queensland, maybe not, in part because the United Australia Party is polling between 5 per cent and 7 per cent in some seats in the far north and 14 per cent in Herbert. Clive Palmer has done this the traditional way, by outspending his opponents. Analysts say he has spent up to $50 million on a Trump-style campaign, and although his candidates are unlikely to win seats, they will assist the Coalition to hold on.

The Townsville-area seat of Herbert, for example, was won by Labor at the previous election by just 37 votes, and up there it’s all about the Adani coalmine and jobs, jobs, jobs.

The ALP may be hoping for Gilmore, which is on a margin of 0.7 per cent, but retiring Liberal MP Ann Sudmalis has been replaced by Warren Mundine, who is fighting hard to hold it for the Liberal Party. Corangamite has undergone a redistribution, shrinking a 3.1 per cent margin to just 0.03 per cent in Labor’s favour, but local member Sarah Henderson has, according to some polls, got her nose just back in front.

Labor wants to take Reid from Craig Laundy, who in 2013 became the first Liberal to win the Sydney seat. He was a Turnbull fan and is quitting. Scott Morrison tried to find a big name to replace him; among others he tried Stan Grant before settling on psychologist Fiona Martin, who last week managed to get John Howard to support her campaign.

Labor is after Dickson, of course, on the outer suburban fringe of Brisbane. It is held by Peter Dutton on a 1.7 per cent margin. He is hugely unpopular down south, and GetUp is running a ferocious campaign against him, but not everyone thinks he’s gone.

Then we have those seats that Labor may lose, such as Lingiari in the Northern Territory, where it’s suddenly up against the formidable Jacinta Price.

It also may have a problem in the western Sydney seat of Lindsay, which it holds by 1.1 per cent. MP Emma Husar says she has been slut-shamed out of the seat.

Also working against Labor is GetUp, which isn’t having the dream run it did last time. This week it had to pull an advertisement depicting Tony Abbott as a lifesaver refusing to help a drowning swimmer. The Royal Life Saving Society stepped in to criticise that one, especially after two lifesavers drowned last weekend.

Shorten called the ad “grossly disrespectful” and “stupid” and one got the sense he wasn’t entirely happy with GetUp’s campaign, which is, like it or not, being conducted for his benefit.

“In terms of GetUp, they’re independent from us,” he said. “Some of the stuff they say I haven’t agreed with, some of the stuff they’ve said in the past, I have, but this ad is well out of line.”

GetUp also has campaigned for “a parliament free of homophobes” in text messages targeting Abbott and Dutton.

One such message, sent on Wednesday night, said: “You stepped up to call voters for marriage equality and we won! Now, we’re a month out from the election — our chance to win safe schools and a parliament free of homophobes.”

Will any of this be enough? The polls say no, the Lodge is still Shorten’s for the taking, but therein lies another possible caveat: Is there anything the electorate hates more than being told, look, this is how you’re going to vote?