WILL we have a new government tomorrow?
The margin is narrowing, and nobody should be surprised if the Coalition holds on, despite a huge surge in pre-poll and postal voting, traditionally taken to mean that voters are taking to the government with a cricket bat.
Labor will be hoping an apparently visceral dislike of Scott Morrison will stop a repeat of 2019, but old heads will tell you that no one ever admitted to voting for Robert Menzies, either, but his second term in The Lodge went from 1949 to 1966.
The election campaign might have begun formally six weeks ago when Prime Minister Scott Morrison went to Yarralumla on Sunday, April 10, but both sides were well into campaign mode late last year.
Early on, the government had its sights on Paterson, with Brooke Vitnell - promoted by the party as a "family solicitor" but more pointedly an experienced parliamentary staffer whose husband works in the PM's office - unveiled in early November.
Like a veteran, Vitnell smoothly found the prime camera position behind the shoulders of various Liberal leaders, from the PM down, and her team fed the media with a constant stream of statements, comments, photo opportunities and interview transcripts. Until a fortnight ago.
"Vitnell announces funding after crime crackdown campaign", on Friday, May 6, was the last email that I, or the Herald's main news email address, received.
When I checked her Facebook page yesterday, the most recent post was May 9.
The word on the street is that the government has given up on Paterson but her camp was adamant yesterday that was not the case, and that with her profile elevated by the early publicity, the focus had shifted to the grassroots stuff of door-knocking and face-to-face campaigning.
Pat Conroy sits on a narrowish margin of 4.5 per cent in Shortland, but he should get back easily enough, as will Sharon Claydon in Newcastle.
Hunter, though, has me as stumped as the outcome of the election itself.
Before the previous election in 2019, Hunter was one of those seats that the election night commentators barely mention, and rightly so, because it had been held by Labor since federation.
But as we all now know, One Nation candidate Stuart Bonds woke everyone up with 21.59 per cent of the first preference vote, almost catching Nationals challenger Josh Angus, who had 23.47 per cent.
On a two-candidate preferred basis, Joel Fitzgibbon survived a hostile 9.48 per cent swing to win by 52.98 per cent to 47.02.
This time around, Labor's Dan Repacholi does not have the advantage of individual incumbency and James Thomson has worked hard on the ground for the Nationals.
One Nation's mining machinery millionaire candidate Dale McNamara also owns a number of pubs in the area, which are de facto One Nation campaign booths.
Stuart Bonds has had three high-profile years campaigning against labour hire in coalmining but knows it's a tall ask as an Independent to even replicate his vote from last time.
Meanwhile, Clive Palmer's United Australia Party has poured a whole lot of money into advertising, including in the Newcastle Herald.
One other factor in Hunter is the impact of the 2016 redistribution that saw it effectively take over much of the old electorate of Charlton, when this region lost a seat to create an extra electorate in Western Australia.
The impact of that change, taking Hunter to the western shore of Lake Macquarie as far south as Wyee, may have been obscured by the Bonds impact last time around.
The biggest unknown this time may well be the surge in pre-poll and posting voting.
A parliamentary inquiry into the 2019 election found "more Australians than ever cast their vote prior to election day".
And that was before COVID.
In 2016, Last time around, 2.53million of 15.1million House of Representatives votes were cast as pre-polls, postals, pre-declaration or postals, compared with 2.46million of 14.26million in 2016.
By yesterday, detailed AEC spreadsheets showed more than 3.33 million pre-poll votes had been cast and more than 2.73 million postal votes received.
That's more than 6 million votes lodged, two days out.
A retired Joel Fitzgibbon, no longer needing to mind his political manners, said on Thursday that pre-polling was "out of control".
The customer is always right, so perhaps the pollies have to react to the trend, but it wasn't that long ago that you needed a statutory declaration showing good reason to vote early.
That requirement evaporated before COVID, but however you look at it, the present situation makes a mockery of the concept of "polling day".
At at the very least, if things stay the way they are, the political parties will have to start paying much closer attention to early voting trends when it comes to timing their big announcements.
Because if Santa offers you something, you can't go and get that letter out of the mail, or run back to the pre-poll booth to try again.
So, that's about it for me for a few weeks.
I'll be back to torment you soon enough.
Have a good election everyone.
