Face of a winner: Scott Morrison at the footy after his 'miracle' win

Prime Minister Scott Morrison's 'miracle' victory at the weekend was so stunning because the government had lost virtually every opinion poll since 2016.

On Saturday, Labor was ahead 52-48 in Newspoll; 51.5-48.5 according to Ipsos; and Galaxy's exit poll put Labor ahead 52-48 - just minutes before voting closed.

'Hindsight is a marvelous thing but at the time we thought it was a fair reflection,' said David Briggs, the managing director of survey firm Galaxy.

'When you look at the final polls which were obviously the benchmark we all use, most of the polls underestimated the Coalition vote and overestimated Labor. That’s just a fact.'

The failure of the polling companies to get the right result has sparked calls for regular surveys such as Newspoll to be wound back - especially given both Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull were axed largely on the back of poor poll ratings.

Mr Turnbull justified seizing the top job in 2015 by pointing out Mr Abbott had lost 30 succesive Newspolls. Three years later he was ousted himself after losing 38 straight Newspolls.

Peta Credlin, Mr Abbott's former chief of staff, has said: 'One thing I would love to see come out of this is ... we give up this cycle of fortnightly polls I think is so damaging to our democracy.

'It's not good the way that we fixate on these fortnightly polls and we can see now how far away they are from the actual results.'

The polls have accurately predicted election results in the past - so why did they get it so wrong in this election?

Both Tony Abbott (left) and Malcolm Turnbull (right) lost the prime ministership after their colleagues became concerned about poor polling

HOW DID THEY GET IT SO WRONG?

As the election results rolled in on Saturday, the ABC's election guru Antony Green said the death of the household landline was to blame for the wrong polls.

'Polling in Australia has a really good record, but what people have forgotten in the past four years is they've totally changed their methodology,' Mr Green said.

'Polling used to be dominated by running from the electoral roll and doing random samples based on ringing up landlines.

'Now landlines have disappeared and therefore using landlines is no longer a reliable estimate.'

He said pollsters were making random calls to mobiles and it then 'gets very hard to determine what sample you're getting'.

'I think that's what the problem is, they are having difficulty trying to get a representative sample, and they're all wrong.

'The only other alternative is they were getting a result like this and nobody believed it and they got a result like this.'

Labor of love: Frustrated Bill Shorten supporters cried into their beers as they lost the election

Bewildered... A supporter grappled with the numbers as they rolled in on Saturday

A pair of frustrated Labor supporters watch as everything goes horribly wrong

But Galaxy's director Mr Briggs said the reality is actually the opposite.

His company conducted a series of seat-by-seat polls last week, which found little evidence of Labor bringing it home in a swag of seats.

'Within a week or so of the final election, we administered 22 seat polls that were published in News Corp dailies and elsewhere,' Mr Briggs told Daily Mail Australia.

'These seat polls indicated that Herbert and Lindsay were moving from Labor to the Coalition and Gilmore was probably the only seat we could find that was going to Labor.'

'The national polls were showing one picture. When we looked at these individual seats we were seeing something different.

'And you know what? When we released those poll results they were widely criticised for being inaccurate and misleading.'

Liberal voters cheered and beamed with delight after the election was called for Mr Morrison

Liberal supporters raised their fists in the air when they saw the positive result for their party

Mr Briggs said his company has used the 'same methodology' repeatedly at previous state and federal elections 'and they've proved reliable in the past.'

He forcefully rejected Mr Green's claims the death of the landline was to blame, saying technology gave pollsters more information than ever.

'The criticism about the landlines is all a furphy really because the thing is we've got a better databases now with landlines and mobile phones than we ever had. That's not a problem.

'We've got more ways of reaching people than ever before – we cannot only get them on landlines and mobiles, we can get them online, we can send them questionaires they can complete on their mobile phone.

''Really, the ability to reach out to respondents is not the problem. What we've got to do is we've got to make sure we've got a fair representation of the population and that they don't change their mind at the last minute!'

In their post-mortems, polling companies will also examine whether there may have been a late swing - possibly after the death of former PM Bob Hawke.

Jessica Elgood, director of Ipsos, told Macquarie Radio her company's polling had picked up a narrowing in the polls in the final week.

But, like the others, hadn't got the national picture right.

'The truth is, like other organisations, we also backed the wrong horse.

'We thought Labor were going to pull it off and of course, we've seen what the results were, so there's a lot to learn.'

She said Ipsos (which uses a half landline, half mobile split) will be reviewing what exactly what wrong, and no doubt the other companies will too.

'People have already started putting theories forward.

'One suggestion is there was a late swing, and some have already said no they don't think that happened.

'I'd like to see more evidence about that.'

'This election clearly more than others will cause us all to look at what we've done, question what we've done and really critically assess where it went wrong.'

'I NEVER BELIEVED THE POLLS THAT SAID I WAS WINNING': MARK LATHAM ON HIS 2004 FEDERAL ELECTION EXPERIENCE

In 2004, Mark Latham's Labor party was ahead of the Coalition 56 to 44 per cent, five months out from the election. The polls consistently overstated Labor's position', he said

Former Labor leader Mark Latham, who is now a One Nation member of the New South Wales upper house, said he never believed he would beat Liberal prime minister John Howard in the 2004 election, despite his Opposition leading the Coalition 56 to 44 per cent, after preferences, only five months out from the October poll.

'I've probably been the biggest public skeptic about polls in Australia in the last couple of years. My skepticism, in some part, comes out of the 2004 campaign,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'Because in Labor's private polling Howard was always ahead in that campaign and Newspoll, in particular, consistently overstated Labor's position.

'I had no expectation in the six weeks of that campaign that we were ever in a winning position so Newspoll was as wrong in 2004 as it was yesterday.'

In October 2004, however, Newspoll had the Coalition ahead 50.5 per cent to 49.5 per cent.

The final election result was 53 to 47 per cent, with the Liberal Party primary vote climbing above 40 per cent for the first time since 1975 while Labor's vote of 37 per cent was then the lowest since the 1930s

When it came to the opinion polls getting it wrong, Mr Latham claimed pollsters had failed to talk to those who hate politics and political correctness.

'Shorten scared a lot of people with his $400 billion tax agenda, scared a lot of people with his radical economic policies and they galvanised around Morrison,' he said.

'These are people, One Nation-types you might think of them, people who don't like politics, don't like the system, wouldn't answer a polling survey, keep their views to themselves other than in private conversation, worry about if you're caught out saying certain things you'll be pounced upon by the system, by the elites.'

But Ipsos pollster Ms Elgood said she could see no reason why people would be shy about telling surveys what they really think at this election.

'I've seen that discussed many a time and actually I don't think that's a case here. I don't think there's any particular reticence on any side of the political divide here.'