Polls this week were once again music to Labor ears. Newspoll showed the opposition maintaining its strong election-winning margin. A poll in selected Western Australian seats had the Morrison government on the nose.
Polls, as everyone stresses, aren’t predictive – they register the mood of the moment. Nevertheless, and despite their unreliability in the last election, politicians and media take a lot of notice of them, and for Anthony Albanese their story is very positive.
So what could possibly go wrong on the opposition leader’s path to The Lodge? Plenty, as Labor knows, reinforced by that 2019 experience of false expectations. When voters really started concentrating during that campaign, they soured on the opposition.