The proliferation of pundits is one of the strangest features of this strange election campaign. Forget Twitter, Facebook and the chattering classes.

The full coverage on the Sky News public affairs channel (APAC) and additional windows devoted to Coalition and Labor campaigns together with the advent of the 24 hour ABC News Channel ensures that no statement and no event occurs without immediate comment by some self-styled expert, whether a professional journalist or an associate of one or another political party.

A few examples illustrate the point. Even as Labor members entered the caucus meeting on 24 June 2010 the pundits were absolutely confident of a contest and only differed in their estimates of how many votes Julia Gillard would get. In the event no vote occurred and Julia Gillard was the only nominee, apparently because Rudd had decided not to stand and neglected to tell his supporters.

The role these commentators play should provide topics for endless PhDs in psephology at least until the next election. Such studies should tell us not only about the obvious biases of most commentators but also how significantly their opinions differ from those measured in opinion polls and similar surveys of voter reactions. If anything, far from leading public opinion commentators more often are scrambling to catch up with the trends.

The major opinion polls such as Nielsen, Galaxy and Newspoll have produced results over the past two weeks that have rattled the confidence of the pundits. But the evidence that support was moving towards the Coalition was quite evident in the daily poll Roy Morgan conducts on Yahoo and particularly in the instant poll linked to Sky News that almost always rejects the views asserted by Sky News commentators.

Today for example Laurie Oakes says the only Prime Ministerial figure in the campaign is Kevin Rudd. In contrast the Yahoo poll asks "Is Rudd's return good for Labor?" At 11.30am with nearly 17000 votes counted, 7996 respondents (47%) thought Rudd's return would be Good and 8870 (53%) said Bad.

Earlier Sky News poll asked "Does the Orgill Report vindicate the BER Program". While most news reports focused on BER waste, most commentators initially accepted the Gillard defence of not many complaints and a premium for speedy delivery. In contrast at 10am today 77.8% of Sky News respondents thought Orgill had not vindicated the program and only 22% thought he had.

While such views must be subject to numerous caveats, they are just as valid as any expressed by the leak-magnate Laurie Oakes on Channel 9 or in the Daily Telegraph, Government apologists Phil Coorey and Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald and the doyen Paul Kelly in The Australian.

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