The polls say it’s close: too close to call. So only a fool would try to predict what will happen on Saturday night, right?

Obviously. But we do have the past to guide us, so let’s see if the tea-leaves suggest we’re about to change the government.

The last time any party was kicked out after a single term in office was 1932. Labor had the bad luck to take office just as the great depression began and unemployment lines stretched around the country, so the first question is: are the economic conditions as bad today as they were then?

The answer - demonstrated in part by the NDIS - is no. Instead of contracting, government spending has boomed over the past decade, shifting from 21 to 28 percent of GDP. The Australian Industry Group makes the point this represents the biggest share of the economy since records began in 1985.

People might not be happy about their own personal situation and we might be building up problems for the future, but that anger about the country’s economic management isn’t here today.

This leads to the second point. New governments tend to win big: they don’t just scrape over the line. There’s no indication today that the ‘swing’ is on. Peter Dutton’s polling number’s are more like Kim Beazley’s in 1998, or Bill Shorten’s in 2019. This suggests a change of government is possible, even likely, but there’s certainly no mood for a clean sweep as there normally is when the government changes.

This takes us to the leaders and again the preconditions for a change don’t appear to be in place. Nobody who knows him would call Anthony Albanese charismatic, but he beats Dutton out of the ring in popularity contests.

Indeed, the Opposition Leader’s recent attack on what he unnecessarily described as the ‘hate media’ (the Guardian and the ABC) suggests he’s a man under pressure, not someone building a coalition for victory. Snaps like this reveal that even the private polling he’s being shown (a feed carefully curated to make him perform well) hints that he’s not doing as well as he should be.