Of those who have cast their votes already, 41 per cent said they backed the Coalition while 33 per cent favoured Labor, indicating higher core support for the government in this group than in the electorate at large. While the poll is subject to a margin of error of 2.3 per cent, it suggests the early votes could skew to the Coalition when they are counted on Saturday night, with some of these results coming later than the ordinary votes cast that day. Mr Morrison appealed to voters by assuring them he “burned with a passion for the Australian people” and would apply that in government if he kept his position this weekend. “If Australians give me that opportunity on Saturday, they can be absolutely assured that I will burn for you every day, every single day, so you can achieve your ambitions, your aspirations, your desires,” he said.

“That is what’s at the top of my agenda. I’m for you. I’m asking you to vote for me.” Mr Shorten asked voters to consider the next generation by backing his agenda against the attacks from the government on the tax revenue he would raise over a decade to pay for his programs. Loading “Never before has your decision and your vote been more important,” he said. “It is why we seek government. Not for history’s sake. And not for our own. Not for the trappings or ornamentation of office, but to build things that last, to change the nation, to write Australia larger and better.”

While the race is tightening, 55 per cent of respondents said they expected Labor to win the election while only 32 per cent said the Coalition. Another 13 per cent were undecided. The latest result indicates a nationwide swing of 1.4 per cent to Labor after preferences compared to the party’s result at the last election, when Labor secured 49.6 per cent of the vote and the Coalition gained 50.4 per cent. While this would take Labor to a narrow majority of 77 seats in the House of Representatives, neither of the major parties expects a uniform nationwide swing and the result might indicate a hung Parliament in which independent MPs hold the balance of power. The swing is enough in theory to enable Labor to win the seats of Dunkley, Corangamite, Banks, Robertson, Flynn, Gilmore, Forde and Capricornia.

When voters were asked to rate Mr Morrison’s performance, 48 per cent approved and 43 per cent disapproved, a slight improvement from a previous Ipsos poll in May. This means Mr Morrison’s net approval rating – the difference between those who approve and disapprove of his performance – was 5 percentage points, an improvement over the election campaign but well below his peak of 17 points last October. Mr Shorten also saw an improvement in his personal ratings, with the number who approve of him rising from 40 to 43 per cent over the past two weeks and the proportion who disapprove falling. Loading The greatest rise in party support in the latest poll was a jump in the Coalition’s primary vote from 36 to 39 per cent since the last Ipsos survey in early May.

This is the highest core support for the government since July, one month before the leadership spill that removed Malcolm Turnbull and installed Mr Morrison as Liberal leader. Even so, the Coalition primary vote remains 3 percentage points below its result at the last election, exposing it to a significant swing in key seats and leaving it dependent on preference flows from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. Ipsos found Labor had a primary vote of 33 per cent, a result unchanged from the last survey but unusually low compared to other polls this week, which put the party on 36 or 37 per cent. Loading Ipsos found the Greens had a primary vote of 13 per cent, much higher than the party’s result of about 10 per cent at the last election.

The two-party result is based on preference flows at the last election, allocating second preferences from One Nation and United Australia Party using a split of 53 per cent to the Coalition and 47 per cent to Labor. The poll is based on 1842 respondents who were surveyed from Sunday to Wednesday, in the wake of Mr Morrison’s official campaign launch, the announcement of his scheme to guarantee part of the loans made to some first home buyers and Mr Shorten’s promise of $10 billion in funding for a Melbourne rail loop. The survey has a margin of error of 2.3 per cent and was conducted by telephone with 46 per cent of the sample based on mobile phone calls.