After six weeks of campaigning and about 20 national polls, the Coalition's position looks to have improved, but not by as much as it would have hoped.
According to the ABC's average of national polls, Labor currently has about 53.6 per cent support, down from 54.8 per cent on the day the election was called.
If that figure turned out to be the election result on Saturday, Labor would expect to be in the box seat to form government.
It means that to win on Saturday, the government will be hoping the national polls have an error even bigger than last election, and that it has successfully managed to sandbag key marginal seats.
Through the campaign, the ABC has been averaging the polls, using a model developed by Professor Simon Jackman from The University of Sydney.
It uses what we know about their sample sizes and margins of error to also calculate a margin of error for the average.
It averages the results of the five pollsters conducting national polls: YouGov Galaxy, Essential, Resolve, Ipsos and Roy Morgan.
The result is not a prediction of the election outcome, but an effort to interpret the existing published polling.
The lines in the polling average chart show the trendline generated by the model, while the shaded regions represent the margins of error on this trend.
But didn't the polls all tighten this week?
Yes, but not by that much.
Most of the movements were within the margins of error published by each pollster.
Also, Labor's leads shrunk from previous polls which had given the party its biggest lead in the campaign.
The poll that moved the most this week was Resolve's, published by the Nine newspapers, which has swung up and down more than most polls during the campaign.
Resolve is not a member of the Australian Polling Council, formed by the polling industry after the 2019 election, and because of that we know less about its methods than some other pollsters.
Professor Simon Jackman said the tightening in the polls we have seen during the campaign is "completely consistent" with previous elections.
"Almost every cycle … at least since 2007 onwards, you see exactly the pattern we're seeing this time around, perhaps coming a little bit late [this time]," he said. "The overall pattern of the Coalition doing better in the polls on election eve than where it started the campaign [is] entirely consistent."
Jackman said that tightening is typically between one and two percentage points, which is what we have seen in 2022.
Ipsos Director Jessica Elgood said she wasn't surprised by the narrowing either.
"I do expect to see the polls tightening, we're in the last few days of the race," she told the ABC's Afternoon Briefing program.
Undecided voters and caveats
Recent polls also estimate there are still between 5 and 8 per cent of voters who are genuinely undecided and are still making up their minds.
"We see them looking at the two major parties and just deciding they don't like either of them, there's no enthusiasm for either and it's weighing them up in terms of the lesser of two evils," Elgood says.
"When they actually assess the characteristics of the two leaders available, they're not particularly amazed by either," she says. "They see them as equally competent. Possibly [Morrison] has the advantage on economic policy, but they see Albanese as being more trustworthy."
More votes may not equal more seats
Even after the narrowing we've seen, Labor's polling lead is significant.
"Ordinarily, you'd say a poll average of 53.6 [per cent] three or four days out from election day, even though the polls have been wrong in the past, you'd say at that point Labor is almost certain to win government," Jackman says. "But there's a few caveats this time around."
For the Coalition to win, two things must happen, says Jackman.
"One is that the poll average is wrong, and the second is we have a very unusual election in which that Labor vote is perhaps locked up in seats they've already got … or it's not going to translate into seats for them."
National polls missed the two party preferred vote by nearly three percentage points, on average, in 2019.
Polls continue to suggest record non-major party vote
According to the average of the polls, the Greens currently have about 11.8 per cent national support, up from 10.5 per cent at the start of the campaign.
If that came to pass, the party would equal or even exceed its record vote from 2010, when Adam Bandt was first elected to represent the seat of Melbourne.
But even if it did, that wouldn't necessarily translate into more seats in the lower house, because the party would need to see its vote increase in the right seats.
"What would it mean if the Greens were doing better than average in national polls… what is that going to translate into politically," Professor Jackman said. "The answer is: it's very hard to know from a national sample."
The average also implies a record number of people currently favour a party other than the Liberals, Nationals or Labor.
The average suggests more than 28 per cent of people would support a minor party or independent, up around one percentage point since the start of the campaign, and up from 25 per cent last election.
That would be a continuation of the trend in Australian elections of first preference votes slipping away from major parties.
In the long term, the more independents and minor parties that end up in contention for lower house seats, the less useful traditional polling will be at predicting winners.
