| Good morning Tylko, Welcome to our federal election newsletter.
As millions of Australians cast early votes and around 2.4 million more prepare postal votes, almost half of the country is expected to have voted before polling day on May 3.
The trend of early voting, which took off during the pandemic, is here to stay and that means there is no room for mistakes from Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton in the final nine-day push.
The five-week campaign — punctuated by global factors including Donald Trump’s tariffs, the passing of Pope Francis and claims of Russian military expansion in the Indo-Pacific — has been a dull affair devoid of any memorable or fatal political blows.
The other dominant feature of the election campaign has been school, Easter and Anzac Day holidays and long weekends. The stop-start nature of the campaign trail, which on Friday will pause to remember our diggers, has favoured Albanese’s first-term government.
Despite cost-of-living, housing and energy crises pushing up the price of everything, Labor and the Coalition have engaged in a big-spending, populist competition that ignores meaningful or bold economic and social reforms. Australians, of which many remain disengaged, are being told Albanese will "build Australia’s future" and Dutton will “get Australia back on track”
. Both are bland motherhood statements. While national polling shows the ALP ahead, both Labor and Coalition insiders expect tight races in seats across the country. Dutton may not have had the best campaign, but some Labor figures are concerned about the scale of swings against their MPs and the splattering of preferences.
Albanese, who recorded one of Labor’s worst ever primary votes at the 2022 election despite Scott Morrison’s unpopularity, claimed majority government off the back of strong preference flows from the Greens and others.
Strategists from the major parties are bracing for low primary votes when the votes are counted on May 3. Yet again, Labor and the Coalition will rely on strong preference flows from others to fall over the line in key battleground seats. | 
