Early voting, late decisions

Well, here we go. As of Tuesday, you can now officially vote in Australia’s 2025 Federal Election.

In practical terms, this means that if you happen to be walking past a polling station in an electorate that swings, you’ll get more attention than a Secret Lives of Mormon Wives cast member.

Yes, it’s the return of how-to-vote cards, where volunteers explain the order in which to place candidates to secure the result they want. 

The first step, of course, is to place their preferred party first. Unless you’re Trumpet of Patriots candidate Jason Smart, who is advising voters to put him last after a disagreement with party chair Clive Palmer. At this stage, Palmer could invest his estimated $70m spend in a comedy series and fail to come up with something funnier than his campaign.

For everyone else, preferences are no laughing matter. A Guardian Essential poll found 47% of voters were either undecided or could still be turned, a huge unknown in an election that - on the surface, at least - seems to be firming up to beat the recent global incumbent curse.

With most policy bullets now fired, parties are basically reliant on a mix of ground game and vibes. 

Those vibes are incredibly hard to measure, dependent as they are on an individual's media consumption, in-built bias, and desired outcome (see Hillary Clinton 2016 and Bill Shorten 2019).

So. Nine days to go. A thousand more ToP ads to watch. A few more corflutes to steal. It’s all to play for. Watch those vibes.