“I guess every party’s doing everything that they can at the moment to try and put themselves in a better position.”
The Labor Party campaign has made no secret it is pouring resources into the group of newly enfranchised Australians.
The ALP warns its candidates in the marginal seats are hunting down every last vote before Saturday.
Targeting marginal seats
Newspoll’s Martin O’Shannessy is not surprised.
“I think the parties would be very interested in these voters, especially if they happen to be in marginal seats,” he said.
“Urban Melbourne would be a very important area for voters who are essentially mostly virgins; that is they have not voted before.
“If you think that 100,000 of them spread over 150 electorates there’s about 750 per electorate; it doesn’t sound like a lot but there’ll be electorates that move on one and two-point swings and we’re talking very fine margins out there in the marginals.”
Mr O’Shannessy says in this election an even greater percentage of voters will leave their decision right up to the last moment.
“By this time in 2007 about 70 per cent of people felt that this was the only party that they were going to vote for,” he said.
“The balance, not many of them were thinking that another option was possible.
“At the moment, we’re 10 points below that; the concern for the Government will be that a lot of that is within Labor voters, so concern that people haven’t locked in.
“Now that does mean that things can change late and it’s certainly making it devilishly difficult for us pollsters to have a nice clear-cut answer before the election.”
First posted