Righto, prediction time. Election day is soon upon us and voters will be trudging to polling booths set up all around the country. Ballots on the east coast will start being counted from 6pm local time, with the WA numbers coming in two hours later. With so many minor parties and independents contesting seats, preference distributions will be critical in marginal seats. Who will win: Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton? It is all but assured that Albo will be victorious. The only real outstanding question is whether he secures a majority for his second term in power, or sees his government reduced to a minority administration reliant on crossbenchers for support. I predict the latter as the more likely of the two outcomes, but if I'm right, the particulars of just how many seats Labor wins versus how many crossbenchers it needs support from to govern will be crucial in assessing the extent of Albo's victory. That's because when it comes to a PM's parliamentary team, size does matter. The magic number for Labor to form majority government is 76 seats. Anything less than that and it needs the likes of teals, Greens or other independent MPs to pledge support to retain power. Size matters because winning with 74 or 75 seats means that Albo would only need one or two crossbenchers to back him into government. It would also mean that, by comparison, the Coalition holds far fewer seats, perhaps in the low 60s. That would be a dominant Labor minority government, as opposed to a weak one always at risk of losing votes in the House of Reps. If Labor's share of seats dipped to somewhere closer to 70-72 in total, it still wins the election and forms minority government, but the narrative of its win is completely different. It becomes a Pyrrhic victory. King Pyrrhus of Epirus won battles against the Romans but suffered devastating losses when doing so. Eventually the cost of his victories brought him undone. Similarly, the optics of Labor winning badly rather than well is likely to have lasting consequences for its second term - the same way Labor suffered after the 2010 election which saw its share of seats fall to 72. So while I'm predicting Labor misses out on majority government tonight, it could be close, which is why I would be surprised if it wasn't able to at least win around 74 seats to stave off becoming a weak minority government. Anything less than that and I'll be somewhat surprised. The Coalition will still have lost, and Labor won, but the victory will be a little more hollow. Millions of Australians have already voted at pre-polling booths. Usually these voters aren't swinging voters, meaning that while they represent a sizeable chunk of the electorate who cast ballots before the major parties finish making their pitches, in most cases their minds were already made up anyway. The pre-poll ballot results will land in large clumps throughout the evening once voting begins. Then there are postal votes to count, some of which only come in in the days after the formal election day. These usually favour the Coalition, but sometimes favour incumbents over Coalition challengers. The counting of postal votes in very tight seats will happen for days, perhaps weeks, after polling day. Which is why in these ultra-tight contests, the smart money is usually on Coalition candidates or incumbent MPs squeaking home. So bear that in mind if we are forced to wait for days to find out what the exact result of the election is - especially if the small number of undecided seats is the difference between Labor forming majority or minority government, or if it represents the difference between a clear minority victory versus a more messy scenario like I outlined above. Okay, so I am putting my head on the chopping block and saying Labor wins. More specifically, I'm expecting that victory to only be as a minority government, but with a better share of seats than could otherwise have been the case. There is plenty of room to be wrong in such a specific prediction. The howler would be if Peter Dutton mounted a comeback to outdo Scott Morrison's comeback-from-behind win in 2019 against Bill Shorten. By the way, on that occasion, I got it wrong by incorrectly predicting a Labor win. In my defence, it was the first federal election I got wrong since I first started making public calls on results back in 2004. While it's no surprise to tip Labor now, I was tipping them to win well over a year ago, and again late last year and early this year when polling agencies such as YouGov claimed their data gave Labor a mere one per cent chance of victory. That claim was beyond stupid but there were plenty of commentators who also thought a change of government was in the offing. Not me. No first-term federal government has lost a re-election attempt since way back in 1931. Plenty have come close: John Howard in 1998 won with just 48.9 per cent of the vote; Labor scrapped home in minority in 2010; and the Coalition lost a swag of seats in 2016 on the way to only winning the barest of majorities, 76 seats under Malcolm Turnbull's leadership. The lesson: first-term governments lose skin and can come close to losing elections, but they don't lose. Not since 1931. That historical precedent won't be broken tonight. But I would be surprised if Albo finds a way to retain his majority. But what if I am wrong, and Labor does secure a second term with a majority? If that happens, there are two things that will explain it. Firstly, Dutton and the Coalition have had a suboptimal election campaign. They have been flat, made mistakes requiring policy reversals on the fly (such as the WFH policy), and the personal attacks against Dutton have been hyper-aggressive from Labor. It has cost the conservatives support, no question. The second reason Labor has a chance of forming majority government - indeed the same reason it might win somewhat comfortably with a stable rather than unstable minority - is the scare campaign mounted against the Coalition. I'm talking about claims the Libs would gut Medicare, gut education spending and blow the finances with its nuclear energy policy. Most of the attacks were either inflated or outright wrong, but that doesn't mean they weren't effective. And Team Dutton has to take some of the blame for their effectiveness by setting itself up for the attacks. In short, the Coalition made it easier for Labor to scare the bejesus out of enough voters to do better than it probably should have on the campaign hustings. I say that because, even late in the campaign, most polls found that voters aren't happy with the Labor government. They haven't thought that it's done a good job over the past three years. They aren't happy about the cost-of-living pressures they face and the fact their standards of living have gone backwards. These are all entirely understandable reactions from the public. But the opposition missed its chance to turn those sentiments into a willingness to kick Labor out of power - especially in the context of Albo breaking a series of clear-cut promises he made in 2022, such as stage three tax cuts and to not change super rules. However, enough people voting on Saturday will choose what they consider the lesser of two evils: a poorly performing government over an opposition they don't believe is ready for a comeback. Finally, another reason Labor has won this election, one way or the other, is because it has thrown your money back at you to win your votes. That's right, it has bought its political recovery with high-priced spending that future generations will one day need to pay back. Because the budget is in deficit and national debt is rising. The big-spending policies that have helped Labor win this election are funded by more borrowing, which will create higher interest payments. Not that the Coalition was much better; the addiction to spending more than the nation can afford is a bipartisan problem. But only Labor's spending initiatives will take effect because they are the expected winners. There is no denying that Labor has bought this election with policies such as forgiving 20 per cent of everyone's HECS debts, a $10billion dollar funding injection for Medicare (matched by the Coalition despite scare campaigns to the contrary), energy rebate handouts and not even means testing its homes guarantee. In raw political terms, credit to Team Albo for achieving the outcome they wanted: more time in power. But as a nation we need a government and an opposition prepared to accept and embrace the need for major structural reforms. No one seems willing to do that, and the markers for what happens over the next three years laid out by Labor during this campaign will only make it harder to fix the budget and streamline the economy. Because the government has boxed itself into a narrow corner, with no mandate for reform in a second term. So it's a Labor win but without purpose… beyond staying in power.