The undecided vote has been swinging to the Liberal Party in the six days of Canberra Times-Datacol polling up to Wednesday, but a Liberal Government is by no means a certainty because support from minors and independents is in the air.
The undecided vote has been falling at the rate of one per cent a day.
According to the principal of Datacol, Malcolm Mearns, this means that about 20 per cent of voters will go into the polling booth today undecided.
Datacol went back to the sample it began with at the beginning on the month to gauge how the vote was swinging.
Indeed, many who began decided later replied they were undecided. Others swapped voting intention. The Liberals gained 10 points and lost 4; Labor Gained 4.6 and lost 5.2. Others were mostly steady gaining and losing roughly equal and small amounts.
The way the undecided go and the way preferences fall will largely determine today’s election.
The latest polling (as published yesterday) is repeated in the tables.
It gives the major parties two seats in each electorate, Osborne 1 and the Greens 1. The election will be decided on whether the Liberals get a third seat in Molonglo and whether the Osborne group gets a seat in Ginninderra.
Even with more seats, there is no guarantee that Mrs Carnell can get support from the Osborne group or minor parties to get nine votes in the 17 seat house. If Labor changes leader after the election and before the first meeting of the Assembly, assuming some new blood gets elected to be leader, Labor could form government.
The undecided vote has been generally lower in the two weeks leading up to this election than in the same period before the last election in 1995.
The most recent poll in the six days to Wednesday night had the average undecided at 26.7 in Molonglo, 28.7 in Ginninderra and 28.9 in Brindabella. In 1995, Canberra-wide it was 29 per cent.
Undecided voting tends to generally mirror existing voting patterns except that it slightly favours independents because people are always have major parties in their mind, but would not keep the names of independents at the front of their minds. A pollster cannot read out all the names in an opinion poll, but on voting day voters have all the names before them.
Mr Mearns puts the large number of undecided voters down to some unfamiliarity with the Hare-Clark system and the fact that any proportional system with the possibility of a wider range of candidates means greater choice and greater indecision.
Polling in the ACT on the federal seats has resulted in a far lower undecided vote.
He says also that a general lack of interest in ACT politics makes people undecided. Those who respond to a question about their interest as low are much more likely to be undecided.
Mr Mearns says the trend has been for an increase in the Liberal vote, but this could have changed in the past two days.
Coupled with the polling on the leaders which puts Kate Carnell in front, he says, “”People want to vote Labor but feel they can’t because of Wayne Berry. The relative popularity of the leaders accounts for the swing to the Liberals”