The Expected Outcome Of This Marathon Election Campaign Is ... A Tie

It's been the longest election campaign in a good 60 years, and eight weeks of campaigning has moved the polls one point. Yep. One percentage point.

Sigh.

At the beginning of this political marathon the Turnbull Government led by a solid two points over Labor, winning 51 to 49 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in the Fairfax-Ipsos poll.

The Coalition and Labor are now tied 50:50 in the latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll released today, which uses the preferences delivered at the 2013 election.

Luckily Turnbull doesn't read into the polls, right.

So let's break it down a bit more to see whether anything else has actually changed.

In terms of preferred Prime Minister there is a significant difference, but still not too much movement.

Malcolm Turnbull's preferred PM status has increased by one point since June with 49 percent of the vote compared to Bill Shorten's 35 percent. This hasn't moved since a couple of weeks ago, but since the beginning of the campaign the margin between the two has shrunk from a 17 point margin in Turnbull's favour to 14.

For some perspective, in October -- one month into Turnbull's prime ministership -- this was as high as 67-21. A 46 point margin in the Coalition's favour. Oh, how far the mighty have fallen.

Since then we've had a double-dissolution, a budget, and eight weeks of 'jobs and growth', '100 positive policies', rat encounters, a 10-year economic plan, and then there was the Brexit.

The newspaper pre-election editorials are also in this morning, with both Fairfax and News Corp's overwhelming consensus in favour of the Coalition returning to govern.

Both News Corp's Herald Sun and Fairfax's Australian Financial Review recognised significant and effective campaigning by Shorten but still endorsed a Coalition government.

You can read some of these editorials here, here, here, and here.

As voters hit the polling booths on Saturday, three in five people believe the Coalition will win the election.

This has increased, with 61 percent of the public thinking Turnbull will be re-elected in less than 48 hours.

At the beginning of the election, only 53 percent thought this would be the case.

That's some 'growth' the Coalition can get on board with.