It’s not just the fate of the government that is going down to the wire. Our Crikey Election Contest can match the election proper for being described in cliches. The outcome is a real cliffhanger.

This is how our entries finished up in predicting the result in our chosen 20 marginal seats:

23-08-2010 contestentries

Unless something extraordinary happens with the late counts the Crikey readership favoured the winner in 16 of the 2o seats. They are highlighted in yellow. Robertson and Solomon upset a majority of entrants where the winner is highlighted in Green. Corangamite and Hasluck are still in the undecided column with Labor perhaps favoured in Corangamite and the Coalition in Hasluck.

Now if that happens — Labor wins Corangamite and the Coalition wins Hasluck — no one will have got all 20 electorates correct and the final winner will come down to the tie breaking question with these entrants in with a chance having got 19 correct:

Akim Bannikoff,  David Pettersson, Dennis Tuan-Mu,  Gary Mays, Guy Hargreaves, John Cuch, Julian Zytnik, Mark Podesta, Patrick Clancy, Paul Mossman, Peter Bonica, Peter Forrest, Simon Keen

A Coalition win in both Corangamite and Hasluck would see the following still in with a chance of winning our $5000 first prize with 19 correct:

Chris Kaias, James Hastie, Matt Evans, Pag Arao-Arao, Peter Olah, Richard Mayne

A Labor victory in both  Corangamite and Hasluck and our winner will come from those with 18 correct predictions:

Akim Bannikoff, Ally Wicks, David Best, David Pettersson, Dennis Tuan-Mu, Eacham Curry, Gary Mays, Guy Hargreaves, Jared Morabi, Jock Gardiner, John Cuch, Julian Zytnik, Lachlan McFarlane, Mark Ferguson, Mark Podesta, Mike Hettinger, Patrick Clancy, Paul Mossman, Peter Bonica, Peter Forrest, Shaun Wilson, Simon Keen, Simone Collins, Timothy Brown

Personally I have to congratulate all those still in with a chance of winning after a very dismal performance of getting only 14 electorates correct with my unofficial entry. I am duly humbled.