State elections: the day before
Tomorrow both South Australia and Tasmania go to the polls.
The betting market has it as a lay down misere in South Australia, giving the Liberals a ten per cent chance of winning, and Labor a 90 per cent chance.
In Tasmania the story is less clear. The Centrebet punters think that Labor has a 40 per cent chance of getting enough seats to hold majority government in its own right, and a 60 per cent chance that it wont. (Update at 7am 18 March 2006: This morning’s odds are even money — paying $1.85 each way.)
According to today’s Mercury, the polls are in agreement. It will be a close call.
THE Lennon Labor Government is poised on the edge of retaining its majority rule at tomorrow’s state election, according to the cliffhanger results of the latest Mercury TasPoll voter survey.
A swing back to Labor in the past two weeks now puts the crucial 13 seats needed for majority rule — and a ticket to absolute power — clearly within its grasp.
In the largest election telephone survey yet, of 2000 Tasmanians taken in the four days before Wednesday, nearly 42 per cent said they now intended to vote Labor… The Mercury TasPoll found that nearly one in 10 voters in Tasmania has still to make up their minds how they will vote tomorrow.