Months of speculation, weeks of politicking, and days on the campaign trail for TDA are in the rear-view.

Regardless of who wins, this election will be one for the history books. Anthony Albanese could become the first Prime Minister to win back-to-back elections since John Howard in 2004.

Or, if Peter Dutton leads the Coalition to victory, Labor will be named the first one-term government in 100 years.

For the first time ever, Millennial and Gen Z voters will outnumber older generations at the ballot box.

That means your vote, and your friends’ votes, will be more influential than ever in deciding the outcome of this election.

With that in mind, TDA jumped on the campaign trail and asked the leaders about the biggest issues for young people. Here’s what we found out, and your guide to the next 24 hours.

TDA video editor Orla Maher and I joined the travelling media pack with the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader this week – jetting around Australia on the fast-paced campaign trail.

At the daily press conferences, I asked Albanese about the focus on gender-based violence on the campaign (day one) and his commitment to introducing a 2035 climate target (day two).

Dutton responded to my questions about the impact of masculinity social media influencers on the mental health of young men (day three) and his approach to young voters, including why he didn’t agree to a sit-down interview with TDA – to answer more of YOUR questions in the lead up to the election (day four).

Along the way, I found the most enlightening moment came when I spoke to someone other than the two leaders: their volunteers.

In the east Brisbane seat of Bonner, the Albanese campaign stopped at an early voting centre.

Liberal MP Ross Vasta has held the marginal seat since 2010. Labor critics call him the “phantom”, saying he only pops up every three years, while his supporters describe him as a “great bloke”.

Donning a Liberal Party shirt, a small business owner (who didn’t want to be named), said Dutton was offering immediate cost of living relief – cheaper petrol, a tax rebate, and lower power bills.

Meanwhile, three metres away, two women in Labor shirts – Moozie and Moors – said Dutton was running on “fear” and “negativity”.

They told me that locals were tired of being ignored by the Liberal-National Party (LNP), who they said have become too comfortable in treating Queensland as a stronghold. As of this morning, the LNP holds 21 of 30 federal seats in the state, while Labor has five, the Greens have three, and Bob Katter has one.

There are few truly safe seats left in Australia.

Sure, Sydney will stay with Labor’s Tanya Plibersek, and David Littleproud and Bob Katter will hold on to their regional Queensland seats of Maranoa and Kennedy, respectively.

But there are dozens, possibly more than 50 seats, that could go in any direction.

Here are standouts from a very crowded field:

Robertson is seen as the last true “bellwether” seat. This means voters in this electorate tend to elect the party that goes on to win government. Labor MP Dr Gordon Reid is up against his predecessor, Lucy Wicks, in a classic Labor vs. Liberal showdown. It’s probably the most typical fight in the campaign between the two major parties.

This inner-eastern Melbourne seat is held by the Teal Independent Dr Monique Ryan, who won the once Liberal heartland seat from former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in 2022. Ryan has faced scrutiny during the campaign, with the Liberal Party determined to win it back with the help of its candidate, 32-year-old Amelia Hamer.

Brisbane is a three-way race between the Greens, Labor, and Liberals. The incumbent MP, Stephen Bates, won the seat for the Greens in 2022 from the sitting Liberal member Trevor Evans. When preferences were distributed, Bates edged out Labor’s Madonna Jarrett. Now, all three are running once again: Madonna for Labor, Stephen for Greens, and Trevor for Liberal. Who could win the rematch?

Liberal MP James Stevens holds Sturt with a margin of just 0.5%. If Labor picks up the seat, it could diminish Dutton’s chances of becoming the next Prime Minister. At the state level, Labor won a seat from the Liberal Party in the area that overlaps with Sturt in 2024.

A vast electorate covering Arnhem Land, regional towns, and the city of Alice Springs, Lingiari is one of Australia’s largest and least predictable electorates. Labor MP Marion Scrymgour holds Lingiari by a very small margin, and voters swung against it substantially at the 2022 election.

Now that you’re armed with the knowledge of some of the key seats to watch, let’s get into how it’s all going to go down tonight.

At 6pm AEST, polls close in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, the ACT, and Tasmania, and counting begins.

Half an hour later, polls close in South Australia and Northern Territory.

Then, 90 minutes after voting wraps up in SA and the NT, Western Australia will finish voting.

Results from the last election first started to come through around 6:30pm AEST. The earliest numbers we see are usually from smaller regional booths, because they have fewer votes to count.

After AEC workers tally the number of ‘first preference’ results for each candidate – i.e. where they have a ‘1’ in the box next to their name – the preferences are distributed.

There are two counts: the first preference count and overall preference count. The candidate with the fewest first preference votes is knocked out, and all ballots with that candidate as their first preference then flow to their next preferred candidate (with a ‘2’ next to their name), until there is a contest between two candidates.

Distributing preferences takes longer than counting whoever has the most votes. Therefore, it can take hours, days, and, in some cases, weeks for the AEC to declare a winner in a seat.

Typically, we have an idea of the election outcome within a few hours of the polls closing.

In order to form a majority, either Labor or the Coalition need to win at least 76 seats. However, pollsters expect we won’t know if this has happened by the end of the night.

At the 2022 election, it took at least a week for some of the final ballots to be counted to officially confirm that Labor had enough seats to form government.

Electoral officials count the ballots in order of: votes cast on election day, early votes, and finally postal votes.

So, we could be in for a long wait on election night.

We will bring you all the action on our Instagram feed tonight: updating you on the seats that are changing hands, the big developments, and, ultimately, who the winner is (if we find out).

If you sleep, party, or ignore it all on Saturday night, you’ll find a recap waiting for you on Sunday morning, as well as a podcast breaking down all the big moments.

Until then, enjoy the democracy sausages and happy voting!

Harry x

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On Thursday, Fran Hurndall started running from Cottesloe Beach in Perth with the goal of reaching Sydney's Bondi Beach in a record time of 34 days. But this run is about more than a record attempt. Fran is running to start a conversation about domestic violence.

In this episode, we interview Fran to understand more about the challenge she's undertaking and why.