The five key battlegrounds where Albanese or Dutton will win the election

From the affluent inner city to the hardscrabble suburbs, and from the resources-rich west to the far-flung regions, these are the battlegrounds on which the fiercest contests of the 2025 election will be fought – and could decide the fate of Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton.

The mortgage belt

Battleground seats: Aston, Boothby, Blair, Bennelong, Chisholm, Deakin, Dunkley, McEwen, Menzies, Reid, Sturt, Watson, Werriwa.

From the day he became federal opposition leader, Peter Dutton said he wanted to win back the mortgage belt electorates of Australia’s capital city middle and outer suburbs.

In 1996, these were the seats where the voters once described as “Howard’s battlers” became “Tony’s tradies” at the 2013 election.

Just over three-quarters of these seats are held by Labor – Aston, Boothby, Blair, Bennelong, Chisholm, Dunkley, McEwen, Reid, Watson and Werriwa – and many of them on slender margins.

These seats are home to families that have felt the pain of 13 rate rises and persistently high inflation over the past couple of years – the voters Dutton is convinced he can win over with his focus on households and small businesses.

But Anthony Albanese won’t give them up without a fight because if he can’t hang on to this slice of middle Australia, his government will be history.

Labor has delivered energy bill relief of $300, redesigned the stage 3 tax cuts to ensure the benefits flowed more directly to low and middle-income earners and introduced a swag of other measures.

The teals and independents

Battleground seats: Curtin, Bradfield, Fowler, Goldstein, Kooyong, Mackellar, Warringah, Wentworth, Wannon.

The independents’ representation in parliament hit a high-water mark in 2022, with a raft of community independents elected to replace moderate Liberals in inner-city seats across Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

One of those MPs, North Sydney’s Kylea Tink, will not be returning as her seat has been abolished.

Of the incumbents, Curtin MP Kate Chaney in Perth, Mackellar MP Sophie Scamps in Sydney and Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel in Melbourne will face the toughest fights against Liberal candidates Tom White, James Brown and Tim Wilson (the former MP), respectively.

All three women hold their seats with margins of 3.3 per cent or less and, in addition, face Liberal candidates backed by a party establishment desperate to reclaim their old heartland seats.

Though the margins are still relatively slender, Monique Ryan in Melbourne’s wealthy enclave of Kooyong, Zali Steggall in Tony Abbott’s old Sydney seat of Warringah and Allegra Spender in the upmarket Sydney beach electorate of Wentworth are considered more likely to hold their seats due to their performance in parliament and strong local followings.

In Fowler, the Liberal-leaning Dai Le faces a tougher fight against Tu Le, the Labor candidate and a local after the unpopular parachute candidate Kristina Keneally last time round.

Then, there are two seats most likely to fall to would-be new independents.

Nicolette Boele secured the biggest swing to her of any teal at the last election in the Sydney electorate of Bradfield, but she fell just short because of the size of retiring MP Paul Fletcher’s margin. This time, against the Liberals’ Gisele Kapterian, she might just get there. She has certainly recruited an army of volunteers.

And in Wannon, former Triple J presenter Alex Dyson is having a third try at dislodging shadow cabinet minister Dan Tehan.

The battle of the west

Battleground seats: Bullwinkel, Hasluck, Moore, Pearce, Tangney

On election night in May 2022, Anthony Albanese was hurtling towards minority government until the west swung late and hard for Labor. Now, the federal government holds most seats in Western Australia for the first time in a generation. To hang on to a majority, the west must hold. How will Labor do that?

Albanese has visited the resources-rich state every month, often more than once, since the election, guaranteed WA its outsized share of the GST and poured money into the state for infrastructure projects big and small.

He’ll be a regular visitor to the state this campaign – he’s been to Perth already – and Labor’s formal campaign launch will probably be held there. There are sure to be plenty of sweeteners for the state, and the government’s Future Made in Australia tax credits, which benefit the state’s miners, will no doubt be mentioned regularly.

The WA state election was held on March 8, the result a convincing win for Labor, whose leader, Roger Cook, remains popular. The opposition did gain four seats, but it still trailed Labor 46-7 in a crushing defeat. That, of course, means plenty of Labor MPs will be available to help the federal ALP campaign.

Tangney, held by first-term MP and former dolphin trainer Sam Lim on the slender margin of 2.8 per cent, is the most vulnerable. The other seat to watch is the newly created electorate of Bullwinkel. While notionally a Labor seat, it’s a three-cornered contest between Labor’s Trish Cook, a nurse, Liberals’ former army officer and political adviser Matt Moran and the Nationals’ former state leader, Mia Davies.

The Greens

Battleground seats: Brisbane, Griffith, Richmond, Ryan, Wills.

The Greens had their best election in 2022, picking up a Senate seat in every state and, more significantly, increasing their representation in the House from one to four seats.

Party leader Adam Bandt has had a lock on his seat of Melbourne for a decade, so the party will focus on two other tasks this time: holding on to Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith in the Queensland capital and picking up a couple more lower house seats in Victoria and NSW.

Hanging on to all three of those Queensland seats will be difficult, particularly in Brisbane, where moderate former Liberal MP Trevor Evans is standing again, while Labor throws everything at clawing at Griffith from the Greens’ enfant terrible and housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather.

The two seats the Greens seem most likely to win are Wills in inner Melbourne and Richmond on the NSW coast.

In Wills, incumbent MP Peter Khalil, on a margin of 4.6 per cent, faces a tough fight against former Greens state leader Samantha Ratnam. The environmental party has had its eye on the seat for years, and the latest boundary redistribution handed Ratnam some prime Greens booths in Fitzroy and Carlton.

Richmond (margin 1.3 per cent) shapes up as a fascinating contest, too, with Greens candidate Mandy Nolan running again against Labor’s Justine Elliot. At the last election, Nolan won 25 per cent of the vote, Elliot 28 per cent and the Nationals 23 per cent, helping Elliot over the line.

But with a strong focus on housing and student debt relief – as well as its traditional focus on climate change – the party is hoping to claim its first regional seat.

The regions and rural Australia

Battleground seats: Bass, Braddon, Calare, Dobell, Gilmore, Hunter, Leichhardt, Lingiari, Lyons, Monash, Paterson, Robertson

The battle for these regional and rural seats will be fought on the same issues as the mortgage belts: housing affordability, cost-of-living relief, job security.

For Labor, the challenge is to explain the relief it has already provided through tax cuts, electricity discounts, cheaper medicines and childcare fee reduction, while for the Coalition, the task is to hammer home the message that the government hasn’t done enough to help families and that only the election of Peter Dutton will put things right.

About half of these seats – Dobell, Gilmore, Hunter, Lingiari, Lyons, Paterson and Robertson – are held by Labor, mostly by slender margins, and the Coalition believes that voter dissatisfaction will help it pick up a swag of seats.

Labor is targeting seats on this list, too, including Bass, Braddon and Leichhardt.

There are also two seats, Calare and Monash, held by former Liberal MPs Andrew Gee and Russell Broadbent, who have moved to the crossbench. That complicates things for the Coalition, as it’s far from guaranteed that they will move back into the conservatives’ column.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.