Reflecting recent trends in Europe and America, a voter pull-away from the major parties in the current election campaign is accelerating, largely to the benefit of a growing band of independents and micro-parties.

In the past few weeks, the independent candidate momentum has grown to the point where it has broken out of a cluster of highly affluent seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and moved into regional Australia where independent candidates’ prospects have improved in federal seats in NSW like Cowper and Farrer.