The best way I’ve come up with to explain the prospects in tomorrow’s Tasmanian election is to say there are two ways of looking at the outcome, the conventional and the unexpected.

On the conventional view, Labor will lose four seats to come down to ten, two in each electorate. Two of them (in Franklin and Lyons) will definitely go to the Liberals; the only question is whether the other two, in Braddon and Denison, will go to the Liberals or the Greens. Depending on that, the result (Labor-Liberal-Green) will be either 10-11-4, 10-9-6 or 10-10-5, with the last being the most likely.

Another way to put the conventional view is that there is a default position in each electorate, where it splits 2-2-1. Presently only Bass is in this position, but it’s almost certain that Franklin and Lyons will join it. The question then is whether Braddon and Denison will as well, or whether the Greens will again miss out on a seat in Braddon, or conversely pick up a second seat in Denison (the contest in each case being with the Liberals).

I still think the conventional view is the way to go, but Labor’s abysmal performance in the polls has opened up the possibility that the unexpected could happen, and Labor could lose its second seat in one or more electorates. In rough order of likelihood, the possibilities would be Bass (to the Liberals), Franklin (Greens), Denison, Braddon (each to whichever of Liberals or Greens missed out on taking the third Labor seat) and Lyons (Liberals).

If the unthinkable happened and all five went — we’re talking about a drop in the Labor vote of maybe 18%, compared to the already-awful 14% in this morning’s Newspoll — the Liberals would win 13 seats, the Greens seven and Labor five. Will Hodgman would be Premier with a one-seat absolute majority, and Nick McKim would be leader of the opposition.

The other side of the coin is that Labor could do unexpectedly well, retaining a third seat somewhere. The poll results seem to have ruled that out, but if there’s to be a boilover then Lyons and Braddon would be the best chance, followed at some distance by Denison.

The final nail in Labor’s coffin could be an unusually poor performance on preferences. Monday’s Examiner poll conveyed the interesting information that a majority of Greens voters would rather support a minority Liberal government (51% to 43% for Labor): a straw in the wind for the flow of Greens preferences. Even when it comes to Labor’s own tickets, the government’s low standing encourages an “every candidate for himself (and herself)” attitude that’s not conducive to a tight preference flow.

But all you really need to know is that no-one will have a majority, so what happens next will be out of the hands of the voters.