The poll follows a spiteful period in Victorian politics, during which the government junked parliamentary convention and released a huge trove of documents on Mr Guy’s botched rezoning of land on Phillip Island while planning minister, and Victoria Police arrested several junior Labor operatives in their criminal investigation of the red shirts rorting affair. It also comes six weeks after the federal Liberals turfed their leader, Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister. The result is better for Labor than the previous ReachTEL poll, taken three months ago in July, which gave the Andrews government a razor-thin 51-49 per cent lead in two-party preferred terms. But after four years in the role, Mr Andrews’ personal brand remains relatively weak among voters, who only narrowly rated him a better choice as premier than Mr Guy, by 51.3 per cent to 48.7 per cent. Mr Andrews is clearly preferred by younger voters aged 18 to 34, leading in that age category by 57 per cent to 43 per cent on the question of who would be the better premier.

But those aged 65 and older favour the Liberal leader almost as strongly, by 55.7 per cent to 44.3 per cent. Survey respondents were also polled on the pivotal election issues of congestion, cost of living, law and order and population growth. They marked Labor well ahead of the Coalition as the party better placed to relieve Melbourne’s congestion, by 54 per cent to 46 per cent.

The government has campaigned more heavily on its transport record than perhaps any other issue, including removing dozens of level crossings, starting construction of the Metro rail tunnel and promising to build the North East Link. The Coalition has also campaigned heavily on infrastructure, pledging to revive the East West Link that Labor cancelled almost four years ago, and to remove 55 major suburban road intersections, a policy that borrows heavily from Labor’s popular level-crossing work. The result was not much better for the Coalition on the question of cost of living, with Labor ahead 52.9 per cent to 47.1 per cent as the party best able to reduce cost of living pressures. Loading Labor has pledged it will pay households that earn less than $180,000 a year 50 per cent of the cost of installing solar panels, while the Coalition has so far released few policies on cost of living.

But its continual hammering of Labor over crime has resonated with the electorate, which took a firm view the Coalition has superior policies on law and order: 53.9 per cent of respondents rated them better able to manage law and order to 46.1 per cent who liked Labor. Both major parties have introduced tougher and more punitive law and order policies, such as tightening access to bail and more mandatory sentencing, to win over those voters concerned by violent crime. The Coalition was also marginally favoured as the party best placed to manage Melbourne’s rapid population growth, one of its major policy focuses. The poll was taken on the evening after the Coalition released the centrepiece of its decentralisation plan: a $19 billion promise to rebuild the state’s regional rail network and introduce fast trains with speeds of up to 200 km/h to all large regional cities. Support for the Greens was relatively static at 10.9 per cent, marginally higher than the 10.5 per cent support the party got in July’s poll.

The Greens are hopeful of claiming enough inner-city seats to win the balance of power and force Labor to negotiate with them, an ambition the Coalition has sought to exploit by warning of the prospect of a hard-left Labor-Greens alliance.

Labor insists it would do no such deal. Among the minor parties, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party appears to have benefited from One Nation’s recent withdrawal from the race. Its support has jumped from 2.8 per cent to 3.8 per cent. But Fiona Patten’s Reason Party is in the doldrums, drawing support from just 0.9 per cent of voters, despite its important role in two major social policy reforms – the trial of a medically supervised injecting room in Richmond and legalisation of voluntary assisted dying for the terminally ill. The Coalition must win eight seats to win government and has campaigned heavily in marginal suburban electorates including Frankston, Prahran and Cranbourne, as well as regional electorates in Ballarat and Geelong.