Eden-Monaro byelection: neither side predicting victory in contest on knife-edge

The Australian Electoral Commission has boosted resources in an effort to ensure a result in Saturday’s Eden-Monaro will be known on the night, rather than dragging on for days in the event the contest is decided by a handful of votes.

With voters in the New South Wales marginal seat heading to the polls on Saturday, Liberals believe they have made up ground during the contest, but strategists think Labor remains in front and is likely to hold the seat. Labor strategists believe their candidate, Kristy McBain, has run a solid campaign, but no one is predicting victory.

A poll conducted late this week for a progressive thinktank had McBain ahead of the Liberal candidate, Fiona Kotvojs, 52% to 48% in two-party preferred terms. The sample size was 643 residents, and the poll had a margin of error of 3.9%.

Related: Man charged over scam emails targeting Labor's Eden-Monaro candidate Kristy McBain

While Scott Morrison is facing a number of difficult decisions in the coming weeks, including resolving the future of the fiscal support rolled out during the opening phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, has faced more pressure during the contest.

A government has not taken a seat from an opposition at a byelection for a century. If Labor loses the seat on Saturday night by a reasonable margin, Albanese will be vulnerable to brinkmanship, with internal opponents mounting a case he is not cutting through.

The result in the byelection is hard to forecast because the electorate is very diverse and the pandemic has restricted the ability of candidates to engage in normal activities on the hustings. Both sides have poured scarce cash into advertising campaigns, mail and direct messaging rather than extensive polling or research.

Labor believes McBain is a more relatable candidate, and she has been assisted by some issues, such as ABC funding cuts and the continuing uncertainty about the future of jobseeker and jobkeeper payments. There is also residual community anger at the Coalition on the south coast for the mishandling of the summer bushfire catastrophe and the slow pace of recovery.

The Liberals and Nationals have also run a messy campaign. There was a standoff at the start between two “star” candidates from the New South Wales state parliament, Andrew Constance and John Barilaro, which resulted in neither running. The Liberals preselected Fiona Kotvojs, who contested the seat at the last federal election.

Two days out from polling day, Barilaro, who is the deputy premier of NSW, compounded the scrappy opening by refusing to say if he voted Labor ahead of Kotvojs, at the last election. He also contradicted Kotvojs and Scott Morrison’s claims that there had been no cuts to the ABC, weighing into another key byelection debate on the side of Labor and the Nationals, which want to restore $84m of funding to the public broadcaster.

Related: What's the big deal about the Eden-Monaro byelection?

But the Liberal campaign has pushed the importance of incumbency as a message. Voters have been told throughout the campaign that sending Kotvojs to Canberra rather than the Labor candidate will mean faster economic recovery from the bushfires and the economic downturn associated with Covid-19.

Morrison is currently enjoying a national approval rating north of 60%, and the likelihood of a second wave of coronavirus infections in Victoria over the closing weeks of the campaign will likely compound feelings of community uncertainty, which reinforces the incumbency message.

McBain was also targeted during the contest by a campaign of disinformation emails, claiming she had withdrawn from the contest and making false allegations about members of her family. On the eve of the contest, Australian federal police arrested and charged a 32-year-old Blacktown man in relation to the scam.

On Friday evening, neither side was ruling out an upset where Kotvojs took the seat from Labor.

With the seat traditionally on a knife-edge, the AEC has told the major parties they have hired additional staff for the count, setting up 112 counting tables and eleven teams to count pre-poll votes.

There is also an expectation that a substantial sample of postal votes will be counted on Saturday night. Close to 17,000 residents made postal vote applications, with 4,447 people completing an ALP postal vote form and 2,908 a Liberal postal vote form.

Counting will continue until 10pm on Saturday night.