Daniel Andrews’ Labor government is on course for a thumping win in Saturday’s election after extending its lead over its Coalition rivals in the latest exclusive opinion poll commissioned by The Age.
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The poll predicts a Labor win on Saturday by 54 to 46 per cent of the statewide two-party preferred vote, a greater margin than it achieved in 2014.
This suggests that several Coalition seats are now in danger of falling to an increasingly confident ALP.
The results show the Coalition going backward since the previous survey, in October, when it trailled Labor 48-52 and it is the second consecutive statewide poll for The Age in which the ALP has pulled ahead.
The Coalition has been falling behind for several months, from a competitive 49-51 result in July to 48-52 in early October, before campaigning began in earnest, and it is now facing an election-losing result.
But it is the three-point collapse in the Coalition’s primary vote since October, from 39 to 36 per cent, that will most worry Liberal leader Matthew Guy and his colleagues.
With Labor’s primary support surging by more than 3 points to nearly 39 per cent this week, the Coalition seats of Ripon, Bass, Burwood and South Barwon are in grave danger of falling on Saturday, assuming a uniform swing, with Labor also a big chance to pick up Prahran from the Greens as well as Morwell, currently held by an independent.
If the swing to Labor is uniform, the government should easily hold the four knife-edge "sandbelt" seats along the Frankston line in Melbourne's south-east defined as the the election's crucial battleground.
Mr Andrews has stretched his lead over Mr Guy as better Premier and is now ahead of his rival 54 to 46 per cent, up from 51 to 49 in October.
The results point to a returned Labor government with an increased Parliamentary majority, even if it loses some of its other close contests against the Greens in inner-city electorates.
With just one day left of campaigning, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy and his colleagues need a massive late surge in support to get back into a competitive position.
But their task is even more difficult with more than a million Victorians having cast pre-poll ballots, drastically reducing the pool of voters left to persuade.
The uComms/ReachTEL poll of 1239 voters was taken on the night of November 21 and has a margin for error of 3 per cent, plus or minus.
The Greens, who hope to take two Labor seats in Melbourne’s inner city, saw a slight dip in their statewide primary vote, of half a percentage point to 10.4 per cent, with the change well within the margin for error.
The poll also contains good news for independents and micro parties with their combined level of support potentially hitting an all-time high, along with the Greens, of more than 22 per cent on Saturday.
The Coalition’s relentless attack on Labor over crime appears to have faltered with voters, with Labor improving its standing in this policy area by 2 points since October, but still trailing the Coalition by 48 to 52 per cent.
After a campaign featuring promises of some of the biggest infrastructure and transport projects in the nation’s history, Labor remains ahead as the party best able to relieve urban congestion, by 55 to 45 per cent, virtually unchanged since October.
Labor has also stretched its lead among voters on another campaign-defining issue, population, ahead of the Coalition by 53 to 47 per cent.
The two parties were almost neck-and-neck on the population question before the campaign.
Labor has also improved its number on another key Coalition attack point, the cost of living, to a decisive 56.6 to 43.4 per cent.
