'Massive polling failure': experts

Early on Saturday night, ABC election analyst Antony Green summed up the mood as the coalition defied all the pre-election polls.

"At the moment, on these figures, it's a bit of a spectacular failure of opinion polling," he said on the ABC.

Most of the Newspoll, YouGov/Galaxy, Ipsos and ReachTEL polls had Labor ahead 51-49 on the two-party preferred vote, even as late as Friday night.

Instead Tasmanian election analyst Kevin Bonham said the coalition was likely to get 51.6 per cent of the two-party vote - a "mirror image" of what was expected.

"What we've seen is a massive polling failure and a result that (whatever exactly it is) was not predicted by anybody much to my knowledge," Dr Bonham wrote on Saturday night.

Dr Bonham said the polling failures were different to Donald Trump's 2016 election win, where the national polls were correct but there were serious local errors.

"This is a national total polling failure more similar to Brexit or to recent UK national elections," he said.

"Betting markets failed as well - initially expecting Labor to win by more than Labor's leads at the time showed."

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says the polling fail follows a global trend.

"Pollsters got it wrong with Brexit, they got it wrong with Trump, and now they've got it wrong at the federal election here in Australia," he told ABC Radio on Sunday.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale said it was time for a change.

"What it does show is that the era of opinion polls I think is over. They can't be trusted," he said.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews stressed the only poll that matters is the election itself.

"It's not like it's one poll that was wrong, it was 50-odd Newspolls ... Scott Morrison has won the poll that matters."

Perhaps the worst polling failure came from the Northern Territory, where psychic crocs have successfully picked the winners of the past three elections.

This time around, even Burt the psychic croc chose Bill Shorten to win.

Australian Associated Press