Recent opinion polls point to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’ centre-left Labor government securing a third consecutive term in office at the Nov. 26 election with a slim majority.
But Labor’s prospects of slipping into minority government appeared to be increasing as the polls tightened, before the centre-right Coalition led by Matthew Guy suffered two setbacks.
Firstly, the Victorian Electoral Commission referred its probe into a Liberal donor scandal to the corruption watchdog.
While the Andrews government is under a fresh corruption cloud of its own, former state Labor deputy campaign director turned independent pollster Kos Samaras said the donor probe development will hurt the Liberal.
“Both parties have got a problem. Both of them will end up in the 30s in terms of primary votes,” he told AAP.“The Liberal Party strategy was ‘put Labor last because they’re corrupt’. Well, people could say ’so are you'.”
“It really punches a big hole in their strategy that was targeted towards people who will go to vote for minor parties and harvesting their preferences ahead of Labor in critical seats.”
The Liberals have accused the VEC of election “interference” over its referral of the case, which centres on Guy’s former chief of staff Mitch Catlin asking a billionaire Liberal donor to make more than A$100,000 (US$66,750) in payments to his private marketing company.
A contract for the proposed arrangement was sent to Guy’s personal email address but he has categorically rejected it was signed or agreed.
Guy is set to continue his eight-day tour of each upper house region on Sunday in a bid to woo voters across the state.
The Liberal leader and Andrews will also lock horns in a televised debate on Tuesday evening, fielding questions from 100 undecided voters.
