More than 5% of Victorians have already voted in next Saturday’s state election, despite the poll itself being eight days away.

As of Wednesday night, three days after pre-poll voting opened, about 238,559 of the state’s 4.1 million enrolled voters had already voted at pre-polling stations.

That’s twice the number that voted in the first three days of early voting at the 2014 election, and the trend is predicted to continue.

As Daniel Andrews and Matthew Guy prepare for the final week of voting, they will be talking to an audience that, increasingly, has put the election behind them.

The politics of parks

Seventy per cent of Victorian voters support boosting funding for threatened species protection and native park management and the creation of a great forests national park, according to new polling.

Support for both policies was particularly high among Labor voters, despite the Andrews government not confirming its plan for the central highlands and east Gippsland forests before going into caretaker mode.

The poll of 1,500 people, conducted on Monday night by uComms for the Victorian National Parks Association, found that 47% of Labor voters strongly supported an increase in conservation funding, while a further 36.8% supported it. Just over 40% of respondents who identified themselves as Coalition voters said they either supported or strongly supported increased funding, while 34.6% were opposed. Opposition to the creation of a great forests national park was strongest among Coalition voters, with 37.7% opposed compared to 19.5% of all voters.

Guy has said the creation of the proposed national park was not on his party’s agenda.

Bourke Street fallout

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the Victorian opposition leader, Matthew Guy, were criticised on Tuesday for combining a visit to Melbourne cafe Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar, whose co-owner Sisto Malaspina was killed in the Bourke Street attack last week, with a campaign press conference.

Morrison and Guy signed the condolence book amid a pack of photographers and journalists and then talked up the Coalition’s tough-on-crime policies at a press conference 50 metres away. Morrison denied the visit had politicised a tragedy.

After the attack, Guy also pledged to give the courts the power to issue “terrorism restriction orders”, to restrict the movement of people suspected of being radicalised, and more police to patrol the Melbourne CBD.

Coalition fails to hand in LGBTI homework

The Coalition did not respond to 86% of the issues raised in a survey of 41 questions conducted by the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, which co-convener Dale Park said sent a “troubling signal” to LGBTI voters.

The questions asked both major and crossbench parties to clarify their stance on a range of issues identified as being areas of key concern to LGBTI voters, including what parties were doing to increase representation of LGBTI people and whether parties would introduce laws to defend against discrimination from religious organisations.

The Coalition, says Park, failed to answer the vast majority of questions, including whether it would retain the post of minister for equality, which he said would be of particular interest to voters in the three-cornered contests of Prahran and Albert Park.

Another candidate drops out

The Liberal party is the latest to lose a candidate, booting out Yan Yean hopeful Meralyn Klein after she appeared in a video by Australian Liberty Alliance candidate Avi Yemini that called for a ban on Muslim immigration.

Greens candidate Joanna Nilson resigned after old social media posts with shoplifting tips surfaced, and Labor candidates Justin Mammarella and Peter Lockwood both left for unspecified reasons.

The Greens candidate for Footscray, Angus McAlpine, is still running despite calls for him to resign over a rap song he wrote and released in 2010 that included the lyrics “date-rape drugs in her drink then have my way”.

Free tampons and power boost

Labor has promised to provide free tampons and sanitary pads in schools in an Australian-first policy to support girls and prevent teachers from having to buy the supplies out of pocket.

Meanwhile the Liberal party has offered a 40% rebate for energy-efficient fridges and 50% rebate for energy-efficient TVs for between 40,000 and 850,000 eligible pension, healthcare card, or veterans gold card concession holders.

The Liberals have also promised to build a new 500MW baseload power station, with both power source, cost, and location yet to be determined. In the regions, Coalition candidates are saying the station will be powered by brown coal.

Greens fight

Finally, Liberal campaign spokesman Tim Smith has launched a campaign to highlight the alleged infiltration of Labor by Green activists. There is a website.

The Liberal party has been warning of a risk of a Labor-Green minority government, an option that Labor has so far disavowed.

Labor has authorised its own website about the Greens, highlighting sexual misconduct allegations and featuring an ABC report focused on allegations from within the NSW Greens that have since been aired in parliament.