By Paul Austin
The trouble with a dead-heat election is that nobody quite knows how to spin it. How can you claim victory when nobody has yet won? How do you traduce your opponent's performance when they may yet end up with the keys to The Lodge?
The 2010 federal election has redrawn the rule book on Australian politics, and the political class is confused and off balance. Nowhere more so than in Victoria, which is the next jurisdiction to go the polls.
Here's a sobering thought: the sort of mess we are seeing played out in Canberra right now could be repeated in Victoria after the November state election - because the federal vote has reinforced the fact that a hung parliament is possible here, too.
What else can be read into the stalemate between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott? A few things are clear for the federal parties, irrespective of the ultimate result.
First, this was a shocking election for federal Labor. A first-term government that was at the helm when Australia avoided the worst of a global financial crisis has lost its majority. The humiliation for Gillard will be complete should Labor lose office.
Second, this is a stunning achievement by the federal Coalition. Only 10 months ago, the Liberals were in an existential crisis, imploding over Malcolm Turnbull's leadership and his policy on the generational issue of climate change. Since then, the vastly underestimated Abbott, who won the party leadership by just one vote, has unified the Coalition, seen off Kevin Rudd and may yet have defeated Gillard. A triumph indeed - but, of course, Abbott still might end up on the wrong side of the Parliament for another three years.
Third, the Greens are the unambiguous winners. After the best election result in their history, they will have at least nine members and the balance of power in the new Senate, and they have finally broken through in the House of Representatives to win the Labor citadel of Melbourne. That's more than a symbolic victory. It means the Greens matter, like never before.
But what might all this mean for John Brumby and Ted Baillieu, who this week began campaigning in earnest for the 2010 Victorian election, to be held three months from tomorrow, on November 27?
Again, a few things are clear.
First, Brumby and state Labor can take considerable heart from this result. Second, Baillieu and the state Coalition are kidding themselves if they think Saturday was all bad for Victorian Labor. And third, the state Greens, like their federal counterparts, are unalloyed winners.
In a bad election overall for Labor, the party picked up at least two seats from the Coalition in Victoria. In the face of an overall anti-Labor swing, Victoria recorded a pro-Labor swing, building on an already strong vote at the Kevin '07 election. Indeed, Labor's share of the vote in Victoria on Saturday, at about 55 per cent after distribution of preferences, appears to be the best the party has ever recorded at a federal poll (and is higher than it achieved in the 2006 Victorian election, when Steve Bracks had a strong win over Baillieu).
The obvious contrast is with NSW and Queensland, where voters came at federal Labor on Saturday armed, metaphorically, with baseball bats. Clearly, Brumby is no Kristina Keneally or Anna Bligh - Victorian Labor is not electoral poison in the way that the Labor governments of NSW and Queensland most assuredly are.
In the dying days of the campaign, the Liberals were distributing material in Queensland urging voters not to allow Gillard to do to Australia what Bligh was doing to Queensland. It is telling that there was no such attempt by the Liberals to tap into any anti-Brumby sentiment to hurt Gillard in Victoria.
Baillieu should be disappointed in Saturday's result. The vote in Victoria provides no sense of momentum for the state Coalition as it gears up for November.
Remember, for the Coalition to win government in its own right in Victoria it will have to win 13 extra seats, requiring a uniform statewide swing of about 6.5 per cent. To put the scale of that task into some context, consider this: the national swing to the federal Coalition on Saturday was about 2 per cent, and even in Queensland the anti-Labor swing was ''only'' about 5 per cent. Clearly, Baillieu needs all the momentum he can find.
Brumby and Victorian Labor are being appropriately cautious about all this. They are still predicting a very close state election, and with good reason.
For one thing, Abbott, the outsider, played poorly in Victoria. Baillieu has his problems, but that's not one of them.
For another, both sides are reporting that Gillard did enjoy a political honeymoon in this state, and that Saturday's strong vote for Labor in Victoria included a ''home-town girl'' factor. No one expects such a honeymoon effect for Brumby come November.
Also, there's a long list of very local issues that, naturally, didn't figure in the federal campaign, but which will be front-and-centre of the Victorian political debate over the next three months - issues such as Melbourne's public transport woes, increasing road congestion, rising levels of street violence, and disturbing breakdowns in the child protection system. Yesterday's bombshell resignation by veteran state Labor MP Craig Langdon only adds to Brumby's smorgasbord of problems.
Finally, there's the Greens. Labor has done the maths and is deeply concerned they could snatch as many as four ALP-held lower house seats come November: Melbourne, Richmond, Brunswick and Northcote.
Anyone for a dead-heat Victorian election?
Paul Austin is Age state political editor.