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This election is staggering in that the first-term Albanese government seems to be getting a swing towards it — you just have to look at the exit polling so far, argues Joe Hildebrand.
View in browser 24th April 2025
 

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Joe Hildebrand
Federal election correspondent

Election days often bring out the best and the worst in a democracy and so when you have ten of them chances are you’re going to bring out the crazy.

Thus we have already seen some appalling behaviour at polling stations, with a teenager attacking an elderly man in Ashfield, in the PM’s seat of Grayndler, and an angry nutter who decided to sink the boot into Liberal signs in the former prime ministerial seat of Bennelong.

And that is just what’s happening outside the voting booths. Imagine what’s happening inside!

INTERACTIVE: Don't know who to vote for? Election MatchMaker is here to help

image‘Twinnies’ by Brett Lethbridge.

Well, thankfully we don’t have to. This masthead has already conducted a pre-poll exit poll — if that isn’t too mind bending a concept — of 4,000 voters in 19 marginal seats over the first two days of early voting.

And already the results are striking.

As I said earlier in the week, a massively high pre-poll turnout is likely to favour either the incumbent government — people don’t want change and they know it — or a big swing. In a tight contest you are more likely to see people wait until polling day, and for as much information as possible, before making up their mind.

And every swing at a first term government’s bid for re-election for more than half a century has been against it.

CLICK HERE FOR JOE HILDEBRAND'S FULL ANALYSIS

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VIDEO OF THE DAY

image’Woman punches gatecrasher at candidates' forum

An older woman has punched a much larger male protester who gate-crashed a candidates forum, prompting Kooyong MP Monique Ryan to intervene.

The man, Matt Trihey from the National Workers Alliance, demanded to know what the candidates were doing to address problems with rising crime ’caused’ by immigration. “You are putting out people at risk,” Mr Trihey said, before others said the forum, which was on funding for the ABC, was not the place for the issue to be raised.

"But they're there in far too many numbers for my liking".

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

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