To play the devil's advocate on my own point, if polls can't predict the future, neither can history. To descend to the level of sports metaphor, records are made to be broken, and you would have to give Labor a chance of at least outpolling Bob Hawke's record vote from 1983. With redistributions and the retirement of long serving marginal seat holders such as Peter Lindsay in Herbert and Fran Bailey in McEwen, the odds are that the Coalition will go backwards at the 2010 election. The polls might be wrong in their magnitude, but I'm not sure if they are wrong in their direction.

The shorter Green: "Labor will probably win the next election, and probably with an increased majority; but don't quote me on it, because I could be wrong."