Has Rudd got an election hope?

Possum's Pollytics has a most interesting article about the impending federal election. In it he raises the fact that doing a blanket two party preferred poll across the nation is misleading as far as the current election chances are concerned, with both parties very close now. He says to get a real indication you need to look at polling in individual states to get a truer picture of what's going on, and that although Labor is behind on the national two party preferred numbers, they may well be ahead in the  number of seats they're likely to win. Referring to this graph, he states:

The “Swing to the ALP” figure is the change to the ALP two party preferred vote since the 2010 election. As we can see, there’s big movements to the ALP in Qld, but large movements away from them in Victoria and South Australia, with NSW and WA remaining static.

If we plug those numbers into Antony Greens Election Calculator, we get the ALP currently sitting on 77 seats, the Coalition 71 and 2 Independents (Katter and Wilkie). The Tasmania, ACT and NT results all come from small samples in either the ReachTEL or Morgan SMS results – so they’re a bit iffy, but you get the general picture.

My election simulation produces a similar result 76 seats to the ALP vs. 72 to the Coalition, with 2 Independents. more

This isn't new in Australian federal politics. There's been times before, with both major parties, where the election victor has actually gotten less overall votes than the vanquished but won more electoral seats in parliament. Last election in fact Abbott got more overall votes than Gillard, but couldn't form government. I seem to remember an election of Howard's too when he won on less votes but more electorate wins. Possum continues:

So if the headline two party preferred results have underneath them big swings towards the ALP in Qld and relatively modest swings away from them in either NSW or Victoria (but not both), then we would expect to see the ALP win more seats than the national two party preferred might ordinarily suggest (for example, what we see now with the current polling). more

Interesting. Perhaps we won't end up with the antichrist for our glorious leader after all? Not that I'm into Labor currently. Shows how bad the choice is if you're talking about who'd be worse, not better.