Clive Palmer the election wildcard that could affect Scott Morrison or Anthony Albanese win

Pollsters are tipping one wildcard candidate is being massively underestimated as Australians head to the polls.

If there was any doubt this has turned into an election like no other it was the sight of Anthony Albanese sitting down for coffee with Julia Gillard in the inner city Adelaide suburb of Norwood.

When Scott Morrison shocked the political world by beating Bill Shorten in 2019 one of the reasons cited was that Labor had lost touch with its working-class base, especially blokes.

The best way for the party to win – or indeed not to go backwards further – was for it to find a way to get them back.

But fast forward three years and Labor is seeking a very different route to office, one that threatens to completely redraw the electoral map of Australia.

Instead of chasing battleground marginals in the outer suburbs and urban fringe, Labor is going full bore to capture the ‘nice’ suburbs that were once the Liberals’ heartland.

Anthony Albanese and Julia Gillard during their Adelaide coffee date. Picture: AFP

The seats it is trying to win to get it to 76, the magic number needed to form government – Higgins, Reid, Brisbane, Swan, Boothby, Sturt, Chisholm and Bennelong – all contain more people with more money and more tertiary education than the average.

In the even richer and better educated seats such as Wentworth, North Sydney, Kooyong and Goldstein, Labor is not trying to win itself but relying on its Climate 200 funded allies to deprive Morrison of a majority.

Labor strategists admit that more than anything they’ve done it is the personal unpopularity of the PM that has put them in this position.

And the group of voters with whom he is most on the nose are professional, tertiary-educated women.

Hence the last campaign-day deployment of Australia’s only female prime minister in the SA marginal seat of Sturt.

Albanese and Gillard campaigned together for the female vote. Picture: AFP

Morrison’s response has been to redouble his efforts in Labor-held seats such as Parramatta, Werriwa, McEwen where cost-of-living not climate is front of mind for voters.

The Government has also sought to capitalise on worries about Albo’s fitness for the top job, worries that have not exactly been put to bed by his performance during this campaign.

If Morrison can convince enough voters in these sorts of places to change their vote from Labor, he is in with a show of being re-elected.

Polls have narrowed as polls tend to do in the final days with both sides conceding there were enough ‘undecideds’ left in the last week to swing the result.

Labor believes it can get to government via the seats mentioned above – either in its own right or with teal support along with some combination of the re-elected crossbenchers Adam Bandt, Andrew Wilkie, Helen Haines and Zali Steggall.

It may also be able to rely on a newly-elected Green, Elizabeth Watson-Brown, who the LNP fear could snatch the Queensland seat of Ryan from Julian Simmonds.

Scott Morrison is targeting voters where cost-of-living is front of mind. Picture: Jason Edwards

But Labor is still hopeful of a more conventional route to government, one that involves it also winning more traditional battleground seats such as Leichhardt, Longman in Queensland and the Central Coast NSW seat of Robertson as well as the redistributed Pearce in WA.

Government strategists are sceptical; they’re convinced that enough of the undecideds are breaking their way for them to deprive Labor of an outright majority.

They also say they are convinced the teal threat in Victoria is receding in Josh Frydenberg’s seat of Kooyong, though they remain deeply worried about Goldstein.

In NSW, Wentworth remains a Liberal concern but a senior opposition frontbencher conceded this week he suspects Trent Zimmerman will be OK in North Sydney as enough of Labor’s preferences will spray to him to get him through.

Clive Palmer is being underestimated, according to some pollsters. Picture: Nigel Hallett

The big wildcard is Clive Palmer’s UAP.

Some pollsters are adamant Palmer’s support is being massively underestimated in outer suburban and regional areas, where for the past two weeks his party has successfully manned pre-poll stations with genuine volunteers unlike the paid help he relied upon in 2019.

Scott Morrison’s chances of staying in the Lodge will depend on how many of these voters’ preferences come back to him.

Got a story tip? Email us at [e-mail]

Know some goss or seen something in your electorate? Contact us at [e-mail]

Originally published as Clive Palmer the election wildcard that could affect Scott Morrison or Anthony Albanese win