Labor is clinging to a four-seat majority just three days from the federal election, according to 28,000 voters sampled in the most comprehensive public opinion poll undertaken in Australian politics.
The JWS Research poll, which has been obtained exclusively by Fairfax Media, shows that if the election were held last weekend, Labor would have lost 15 seats and gained six, handing it a net loss of nine seats.
Labor notionally holds 88 seats, meaning it would have been reduced to 79, a majority of four in the 150-seat Parliament. The Coalition would have 68 seats and there would be three independents.
The poll shows Labor losses looming in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia but it stands to gain in Victoria, regional NSW and South Australia.
The poll was conducted on Saturday and Sunday and is the biggest and the most specific of its kind.
Using automated phone calls, it sampled 22,000 voters in the 54 most marginal seats in the country. In each seat, 400 voters were canvassed.
The 54 seats included Labor's 33 most marginal seats, starting from the notionally held and most marginal, Macarthur, with a margin of 0.2 per cent, up to and including Lindsay, which Labor holds by 6.4 per cent.
The 21 Coalition seats polled started from the most marginal, Bowman, with a 0.1 per cent margin, up to and including McMillan with a 4.8 per cent margin.
Another 6000 voters from safe seats were surveyed.
The results showed that if the election were held last weekend, Labor would have lost four seats in NSW - Lindsay, Bennelong, Macarthur and Robertson but would have held on to Eden-Monaro and Dobell.
It would have lost eight seats in Queensland - Brisbane, Bonner, Petrie, Leichhardt, Forde, Dawson, Flynn and Dickson. It would have lost Corangamite in Victoria, and in Western Australia, Hasluck and Swan.
The 15 losses would have been offset by gaining Paterson and Cowper in NSW, McEwen, La Trobe and Dunkley in Victoria, and Boothby in South Australia.
''This call obviously precedes events in the last week of campaigning that might influence this outcome either way. Local incumbency and candidate name identity also plays a role,'' the managing director of JWS, John Scales, said.
Mr Scales, a renowned pollster, spent three years at Roy Morgan Research before becoming director of the Morgan Poll from 1992 to 1995. From 2002 until this year, he was the research director at Crosby Textor.
Each election, more people tend to vote before polling day and Labor fears that its bad second week of the campaign cost it prepoll votes. Mr Scales's research found that of the 28,000 people sampled, 4576 - or 15 per cent - had already voted but they favoured Labor on a two-party-preferred basis by 56.5 per cent to 43.5 per cent.
In the 54 seats, the Labor-Coalition split was 53.2 per cent to 46.8 per cent among those who have voted.
Labor's total primary vote in the 54 marginals is a lowly 35 per cent, the Coalition's 44.7 per cent and the Greens 14.3 per cent. Labor trails on the two-party vote by 49.2 to 50.8.
Among all 28,000 voters Labor leads by 51.6% to 48.4%.
The seat-by-seat findings show Bennelong, which Labor's Maxine McKew took from John Howard in 2007, falling to the Coalition. It comes as the betting odds in the seat closed after a flurry of bets on the Liberal candidate, John Alexander.
The poll shows Labor trailing in Bennelong by 47.5 per cent to 52.5 per cent, a 4 percentage point swing against Ms McKew. In Lindsay, the poll picks up an 8.2 point swing against Labor.
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