After a week spent splashing cash at marginal seats in South Australia and Tasmania, new polls arrive from Queensland and western Sydney to steady the Coalition's nerves.

The Courier-Mail today brings the Coalition one of its most encouraging poll results in a while, crediting them with leads on federal voting intention in Queensland of 54-46 on two-party preferred, and 46% to 33% on the primary vote. This compares with 57.0-43.0 at the 2013 election, and primary votes of Coalition 45.7% and Labor 29.8%. The only seats a uniform swing of 3% would net for Labor would be the Rockhampton region seat of Capricornia (margin 0.8%), which Labor has only lost three times since 1961, and the northern Brisbane seat of Petrie (0.5%). The poll was conducted Tuesday and Wednesday evening from a sample of 1176.

Also from Galaxy, the Daily Telegraph has electorate-level polling showing the Liberals leading 54-46 in Lindsay and by unspecified amounts in Gilmore and Reid, with 50-50 results from Banks and Dobell and a 51-49 lead for Labor in Macarthur, the scene of last night’s leaders forum. More precise figures on that will be available at some point, hopefully soon. The polls were automated phone surveys of around 500 respondents per electorate.

I’m aware at least one other big set of regional polling that will be with us this evening, so stay tuned for that one. Other news:

• The small sample of attendees at last night’s leaders forum came down 42-29 in favour of Bill Shorten over Malcolm Turnbull.

• Family First Senator Bob Day’s constitutional challenge against Senate election reforms got short shrift from the High Court in yesterday’s judgement, which said in reference to the plaintiff’s submission: “None of the above arguments has any merit and each can be dealt with briefly.”

• The government has maintained its recently developed interest in South Australia with a visit to the state yesterday by the Prime Minister, in which he committed to funding half of an $85 million rail project connecting Flinders University to the central business district, with a scheduled completion in late 2018. This helpfully runs through the electorate of Boothby, to be vacated at the election by Liberal member Andrew Southcott.

• Labor and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie have attacked the federal and Tasmanian state governments over $22 million in grants from the Tasmanian Jobs and Investment Fund that were announced this week. Most of the money had been freed up by the demise of a proposed tourism visitors centre at the Cadbury’s factory in the northern Hobart suburb of Claremont, in Wilkie’s seat of Denison, but the bulk of the new projects were in the three marginal Liberal seats in the state’s north. The Hobart Mercury reports that $6.29 million has gone to Lyons, $5.55 million to Bass and $3.59 million to Braddon, compared with $3.6 million in Denison and $2.91 million in Labor-held Franklin.

• Some anonymous public-spirited individuals have put together an outstanding interactive data visualisation site through which you can explore disclosures of political donations.

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