ELLEN RANSLEY: Last Albo, Dutton showdown to kick off final week after Federal election campaign’s lost days

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton will square off for the final time this election campaign on Sunday night when they meet for the crucial fourth and final debate.

Six days out from polling day, the Channel 7 debate will be the leader’s last chance to make their case to a captive TV audience and convince the vital “soft voters” why they should vote for them.

After losing three valuable campaigning days this week and still sliding in the polls, the Opposition Leader goes into Sunday’s showdown desperately needing a win.

To do so, he will need to leave nothing on the table, be explicit in his messaging, and build on the fiery energy he brought to the third debate on Tuesday.

The Prime Minister, meanwhile, must get through the hour without any hiccups or gaffes that could squander the lead he has built over his opponent.

As soon as their fourth and final debate is over, the pair will need to keep up that same momentum throughout the final week of the campaign. The marathon becomes a sprint.

And every day, both leaders will appeal to a smaller cohort of voters. By Thursday afternoon, about 2.3 million voters or 14 per cent of the country’s voters had already cast their ballot.

If current trends continue, about 500,000 will vote every day next week at minimum. Add in postal votes, remote polling, and absentees, and by the time Saturday morning rolls around half the country will have already had their say.

Mr Dutton begins the last week of the campaign on the backfoot.

The Pope’s death, Easter and Anzac Day meant he struggled to get clear air in the penultimate week where voters were already mostly tuned out. His confusing messaging over electric vehicle taxes, the missing details in his $21bn defence policy, and new and urgent questions about his proposed public service cuts made it more difficult for him to sell his core message to voters.

Mr Albanese starts the final week in front. Labor looks set to win another term, it’s just a question of whether that’s majority or minority, and how big or small that deficit is.

But Labor is cautious about getting too far ahead of itself. The ghost of 2019 looms large, and internal polls are giving the Coalition some cause for hope.

“I think there’s a big disparity (that) you’re seeing in some of the published polls to what we’re seeing,” Mr Dutton said last weekend.

Mr Albanese assured voters his team weren’t taking anything for granted.

“This election is certainly up for grabs. There is one word that I will say . . . it’s a year: 2019. I remind colleagues that 2019, the bookies paid out. And guess what? That (win) didn’t occur,” he said on Monday.

The seats both men visit during this final week will reveal what those internal polls say. Time becomes the most precious resource in the final days, and there’s every chance there could be four or five seats visited in a single day — maybe even across three states.

What has the potential to be the most revealing is whether the men visit the bellwether seat of Robertson. For the past 42 years, whichever party has won the NSW Central Coast seat has won Government.

Held by Labor’s Gordon Reid since 2022 with a 2.2 per cent margin, neither Mr Albanese nor Mr Dutton have visited it since the election was called.

That could be because Labor believes it will hold onto it, and Mr Albanese’s time is better spent in the outer suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, where safe seats like Gorton (10 per cent) are now deemed in play.

But there’s also some confidence in the Liberal ranks that they could nab Robertson. It’s hard to know who to believe, and the absence of the leaders makes it an interesting case study.

There are plenty of seats around the country considered in play that would have raised eyebrows a few months ago. The Coalition could lose Cowper in the mid-north coast to an independent. But they could also pick up Bendigo (11.2 per cent) from Labor.

While his campaign plans in Callare were scuppered by the Pope’s death, his decision to head to Orange to campaign for the Nationals this week suggested the three-way contest against defector Andrew Gee and a teal independent is close.

Mr Dutton visited Gorton this week for the second time this campaign. The outer-Melbourne electorate, held by Labor since its creation in 2004, received an extra $13,675 worth of Google advertising over three days last week after Dutton’s first stop. He visited again on Monday.

His two events in Lyons on Thursday — which bring the total visits this campaign to four — suggest confidence they’ll take the seat from Labor.

Mr Albanese, meanwhile, started the week in Gilmore. Despite Mr Dutton not having visited Labor’s second most marginal seat (0.2 per cent) this campaign, Liberal sources have a high degree of confidence they can pick it up.

His stop in Fremantle indicates a concern the Climate-200 backed candidate is putting the pressure on Labor’s MP, who holds the seat with a 16.9 margin.

This election has all the makings to be a real doozy. There may not be a uniform swing. Some seats might move incrementally one way or the other, others could experience a tsunami.

Despite losing half a million voters to pitch their message to every day before election day, reaching the soft vote — the bulk of which are likely to vote on Saturday — is the most crucial task for both leaders in this final week.

Who wins the final debate on Sunday night could go a long way in swaying this deciding cohort.