>>While political commentators and journalists are obsessed with opinion polls reflecting voting trends, they rarely consider the impact of voting trends on seats.>>

Balderdash!

The newspapers have been full of polling in marginal seats. Here is a recent one:

>>Poll blow for Labor in Vic marginal seats>>

http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/poll-blow-for-labor-in-vic-marginal-seats-20130823-2sez5.html

>>Labor looks set to lose two key Victorian marginal seats, but should hang onto a third, a Galaxy Research poll shows.

Liberal candidate Sarah Henderson is well ahead in Australia's most marginal seat of Corangamite, leading Labor MP Darren Cheeseman 56 to 44 per cent on a two-party preferred basis, the poll published in News Corp Australia papers shows.>>

If anything the polling shows that Labor is doing worse in the marginals than nationally.

Given that this piece starts from a demonstrably false premise further comment is superfluous.

Full disclosure:

I feel no affinity for any party. I shall neither celebrate nor mourn whatever the outcome on Saturday.

I hope that the Australian people give 'the suppository' what he deserves given his non-release of costings.

I also hope they give Kevin the chance he deserves and prove beyond all doubt that Australians believe in the 'fair-go'.

The sheer laughable stupidity of any Labor supporter acccusing the Liberals of not accounting for money properly just defies belief.

The selfishness, conceitedness, economic illiteracy, and thuggishness of the Labor voters is on display in this election as never before.

The best that they can claim for Labor, their supposedly high points of policy, namely Gonski and the disability scheme, still only amount to promises to spend lots of money they don't have. And that's what really impresses the rusted-on Labor voters! They operate at the moral and intellectual level of an infant.

While they certainly deserve the worst that Labor can do to anyone, the problem is, the rest of us don't, while democracy enables the grasping amoral moron sector of the population to externalise the costs of their stupidity onto everyone else.

If Mr Rudd were actually a true believer, perhaps?
However, one can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time!
If there were no green party, I for one. would be putting New Labor at the bottom of the ballot paper!
Rhrosty.

J.K.J. It is said that one third of us understand politics, another third understand economics; with the remaining forty percent, who understand neither, deciding all elections?
Rhrosty.

The best long term hope for the ALP is a solid loss in which K Rudd loses his seat. This will enable the party to work out a new balance between its aspirational wing and its old time hard left wing. If Rudd continues in Parliament, however, he will distract all efforts at renewal with his relentless focus on himself. He will surely lose the leadership but if he holds his seat, the party will be faced with another three years of him undermining his replacement.