The Coalition could be on track for a historic electoral wipeout as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton denies he’s resorted to sandbagging his own seat.

A dire YouGov analysis released two days before Saturday’s vote predicted the worst Coalition result in nearly 80 years and an expanded Labor majority.

It came on the same day as the Coalition released its policy costings on Thursday afternoon.

Earlier in the day, Dutton admitted one major campaign fault, saying he wished the Coalition had called out “Labor’s lies” earlier.

But he was still bullish about his chances of becoming prime minister.

The YouGov polled showed Anthony Albanese on track to secure a clear majority at Saturday’s election.

It’s a startling decline from prior to the campaign in February, when polls put Dutton on track to win government.

Dutton urged voters not to concentrate on the events of the last five weeks, but to think about how their lives had got worse under the Albanese administration.

“This election really is a referendum, not about the election campaign, but about the last three years of government,” Dutton told reporters.

“We should have called out Labor’s lies earlier on,” he added when asked whether he would have done anything differently on the campaign.

“When you have a look at what this government has done; the hurt, the personal, family hurt that the Albanese government has delivered on Australia is without precedent.”

Dutton releases costings

After days of speculation, the opposition on Thursday unveiled policy costings headlined by a budget bottom line improvement of $14 billion over the next four years.

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said the Coalition would return the budget to surplus faster than Labor by paring back spending.

“This is the biggest improvement in the budget position since the current costing conventions were put in place almost 15 years ago,” he told reporters in Sydney.

“We’ve laid out a $40 billion improvement in the debt position over (the next four years).”

Labor’s costings, released on Tuesday, showed a $7 billion budget improvement, delivered through a slash in spending on consultants and labour hire as well as increasing international student visa fees.

The Coalition costings said the budget deficit would increase by $5.6 billion in the 2025/26 financial year and be $2.3 billion worse off the following year, compared to pre-election forecasts.

However, the next two financial years would see improvements of $9.5 billion and $2.2 billion.

Spending cuts would come from a hiring freeze and natural attrition of 41,000 Canberra-based federal public servants, opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume said.

The plan would bring the public service “back to a sustainable level, while protecting front-line services delivery and national security positions”.

“Good economic management is about preparing for the future, not just patching up the present,” she said.

The costings also include plans to cut at least two of the Labor government’s off-budget investment funds: the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, set up to build 30,000 new homes, and the $20 billion Rewiring the Nation Fund.

Other cuts include scrapping student debt relief worth $16 billion, and unwinding Labor’s decision to lower tax concessions for superannuation accounts with balances higher than $3 million.

The Coalition came under fire from the government for releasing its costings late in the campaign — however, it was released at the same point in the election as Labor did when it was in opposition at the 2022 poll.

The opposition’s controversial plan to build seven nuclear reactors would set the budget back by $118 billion through to 2050.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said on Thursday the costings from the opposition should not be taken seriously.

Dutton’s seat under siege

If the party does go backwards, even Dutton’s northern Brisbane seat of Dickson might not be safe.

Speculation about Dutton’s demise in Dickson has accompanied every election since he first won the seat in 2001, but he has always managed to hold onto the marginal electorate.

The opposition leader started Thursday in his home electorate of Dickson, where he’s under siege from Labor and a teal independent challenger.

Labor believes the Queensland seat, the most marginal in the state, is winnable despite being held by the Liberals for 24 years.

Dutton said he wasn’t in his electorate because he was worried, but rather because of an annual Red Shield Appeal breakfast he always attended.

People used to call Dickson “the one-term curse” with members routinely having their political careers cut short, but he’d worked hard to represent his community, he added.

While the opposition leader is tipped to keep his seat in the latest tranche of polling, YouGov predicted the Coalition would suffer its worst lower-house seat result since 1946 and Labor to govern with an expanded majority.

Its modelling points to an 84-seat win for the government, well above the 76 needed for an outright majority.

Under this scenario, the Coalition will drop to 47 seats: a net loss of 11.

The prime minister said he didn’t put his faith in the polling, learning his lesson from Labor’s 2019 shock defeat to the Scott Morrison-led coalition in defiance of predictions.

“We take nothing for granted,” he told reporters in Perth on Thursday.

“No prime minister has been re-elected in this country having served a full term since 2004. We have a mountain to climb.”

Dutton’s flips again

But there was one school of thought Albanese was happy to harp on at Winthrop Primary in the Perth-based electorate of Tangney, which Labor took from the coalition in 2022.

He seized on another coalition backtrack after Dutton abandoned a pledge to change the school curriculum due to children being “indoctrinated”.

“The current school curriculum was put in place by the former (coalition) government, not us, but they looked for culture wars in every corner that they can find one, every dark corner,” Albanese said.

“Having said they would rail against the curriculum, that it wasn’t appropriate, now they are saying they won’t touch the curriculum.”

Dutton previously mentioned the Commonwealth being able to condition school funding when asked about influencing state governments over what was being taught.

“We don’t have any proposals,” he said on Thursday when asked about changing the curriculum.

“What we’ll do is we’ll work with parents to reflect what they want to see in the education system.”

Opposition government efficiency spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price seemingly contradicted his stance just hours later.

“With the conversations I have had with our shadow cabinet minister, Sarah Henderson, there is a plan to ensure that schools are no longer ideologically indoctrinating children,” she said.

“Peter Dutton is absolutely and utterly all about ensuring our children in this country receive an education and aren’t indoctrinated.”

It’s the latest policy ambiguity in a coalition campaign marred by walk-backs, including ditching planned changes to work-from-home arrangements for the public service.

Labor leads the Coalition 52.9 per cent to 47.1 per cent on a two-party preferred basis, YouGov said.

The two-party vote is roughly in line with other polling, but the coalition’s primary vote has tracked as high as 35 per cent, according to the Resolve Political Monitor published in Nine newspapers.

About one-in-four eligible Australians have already taken advantage of early voting ahead of the election.

-with AAP