If political polls are the scoreboard of election campaigns, then the Morrison government begins the second half with momentum having shaped the contest into a man-on-man slugfest.

In an election where the central media has never been weaker and information sources more fragmented, the Coalition is managing to reduce the national debate into a game of scary numbers and character attacks.

With the usual caveats about single digit movements being within a 3% margin of error, today’s Guardian-Essential poll suggests the strategy is working and exposes any thoughts of an inevitable transfer of power as folly.

Labor remains in front of Coalition 51-49 in Guardian Essential poll Read more

While the ALP retains an election-winning two-party preferred vote of 51-49, the gap is the narrowest since Malcolm Turnbull was rolled as prime minister nine long months ago.

“Game on”, as they say in the sports pages that it appears Scott Morrison assiduously reads on his way to the motoring section.

In many ways the Coalition campaign has been specifically designed for and, many would argue, by the broadcast media: a two-man contest where only the pithiest one-liners and sharpest photo-ops triumph in the nightly news cycle.

Morrison the marketing man is in his element here, working in lock-step with a media who feeds off personal conflict and deploying post-truth advertising to frame the election as both a vindication of his own confected good blokeiness and a searing test of Bill Shorten’s deficits.

In doing so, Morrison is not only conceding the paucity of his own team, he is honing in on his clearest advantage over Labor, his personal status as preferred PM.

These are hardly messianic ratings and the gap is narrowing, but for all his bluster and multiple personas, Morrison has enjoyed preferred PM status since Turnbull lost the leadership, comfortable in his delivery of one-liners and savvy to the ripples of the daily media beast.

Shorten has never attracted high personal approval. The consummate dealmaker particularly struggles to resonate with his own base – throughout six years of leadership he has never broken through 65% as preferred prime minster among his own voters.

In this context, his real achievement has been to construct a stable team and to build arguably the most progressive set of policies since Whitlam convinced Australians it was time enter the 20th century in 1972. In this context, Shorten’s path to victory is to avoid, where possible, being drawn into the two-man contest and focus on these two assets.

His daily appearances are team affairs, with a roster of front-benchers who highlight diversity and experience within his ranks. From Plibersek to Wong, Burke to Bowen, Keneally to Albanese, the Labor story has many narrators.

And while Morrison uses each day as a hook to kill Bill, Labor continues to build on its suite of policies which now includes, but is not limited to, acting on climate change, recognising an Indigenous voice, closing tax loopholes for the rich, redressing the balance in the workplace, funding early learning, expanding Medicare to cancer patients, social housing and fixing the NDIS.

Leaders' election debate: Shorten hits back at Morrison's demand for emissions policy cost Read more

For the broadcast media the agenda is so widespread it’s hard to contain and give definition to, but each element is the result of a deal with a different constituency, invested in the Labor project and willing to make the case.

What’s hard to quantify in the polls and the media coverage, is what is going on below the line as volunteers knock on doors, share information on social media, log into phone banks and do their little bit for the campaign, one conversation at a time.

With nearly half of all voters saying that to date they have still paid little or no attention to the election, the ground game will have every bit as much bearing on the election outcome as the predictable endorsements from the News Ltd stable.

That’s the truth of this election that slips under the daily news cycle.

Should it win (and I still think it will), the Labor government will be a team effort; not the result of a confected contest between Bill and ScoMo, but a collective choice made about the road the nation travels.

• Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential and a Guardian Australia columnist