The seats Dutton and Albanese avoid in their race around the nation

The federal election campaign map of visits made by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reveals the daunting task for the challenger, who is working at a furious pace.

But the most revealing element of the campaign, which the leaders do not want you to know, is the marginal electorates where Dutton and Albanese do not show their faces.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have been crisscrossing the country to seek votes.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis

As J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “not all those who wander are lost”, and the political leaders have not missed these political battlegrounds by chance – it’s a strategic move to maximise the chances of victory in seats where the party believes the leader would be a drag on the local candidate’s chances.

Since the election campaign kicked off on March 28, Dutton has made 49 stops around the country, compared to Albanese’s 36.

Albanese is making only two, sometimes just one, visits a day as he seeks to minimise the risks of a damaging mishap while appealing to as many voters as possible.

What places have the leaders visited?

Seasoned campaigners believe many voters are swayed by the photo opportunities, which means site selection is a huge issue for campaign managers. The locations chosen for stops on this campaign trail tell you everything you need to know about Albanese and Dutton’s campaign.

The Coalition leader is targeting outer suburban voters, who tend to drive more and cop higher fuel bills. Dutton is pumping fuel into cars at many, many petrol stations – pitching his pledge to cut fuel excise in half for one year, discounting the price by 25.4 cents a litre.

Albanese is visiting a health care facility every two days to promote his $8.5 billion Medicare commitment to make nine out of 10 GP visits free by 2030. The prime minister inevitably emphasises his point by holding up his Medicare card and promising to “honour the promise of this piece of green and gold”.

Where have the leaders gone?

The must-win battlegrounds of western Sydney and suburban Melbourne have regularly hosted visits from the party leaders.

Both have made two visits each to the outer suburban Melbourne electorate of McEwan, where Labor MP Rob Mitchell is battling to hold his seat on a margin of 3.8 per cent.

Dutton has launched his campaign in the marginal seat of Werriwa, held by Labor on 5.3 per cent, in Sydney’s sprawling south-western suburbs.

Meanwhile, Albanese spent two days in Leichhardt, where former Cairns Taipans basketballer Matt Smith is gunning to win the seat held by the Liberals on 3.4 per cent margin, with popular long-term MP Warren Entsch retiring.

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton crossed paths at a campaign event in western Sydney - an area both have returned to several times.Credit: James Brickwood

He also held a rally of party faithful in Griffith – the Brisbane seat Labor is gunning to win back from Greens tyro Max Chandler-Mather, who holds it on a 10.5 per cent margin.

Dutton and Albanese both made a couple of stops in Lyons in Tasmania (Labor on a slender 0.9 per cent margin) and swung through Darwin, where the Labor-held seat of Lingiari is up for grabs, with only a 1.7 per cent buffer.

Labor made major gains in Perth in the 2022 election, picking up four seats, while the Coalition took a major hit with the loss of 6 seats. No surprise then that Dutton has made eight stops there so far, and Albanese chose to hold his party’s official campaign launch in the city on Sunday.

Where haven’t they gone?

While the leaders are backing themselves to boost their party’s votes in many marginal electorates, some are no-go zones, suggesting that polling shows either Albanese or Dutton’s presence would harm the chances of the local candidate.

The hyper-marginal seat of Gilmore on the NSW South Coast is held by Labor MP Fiona Phillips on the slimmest of margins, at 0.2 per cent. It is being contested by former state MP Andrew Constance. But with questions over Albanese’s record on cost of living, and Dutton’s action on climate change, neither leader has shown up.

The even more marginal Labor seat of Bennelong (-0.04 per cent) has not yet had a party leader visit. Won from the Coalition in 2022 by Jerome Laxale, it is now notionally Liberal after an electoral boundary redraw.

Dutton is selective about visiting teal seats, former blue ribbon Liberal electorates his party wants to win back. He has dropped into Melbourne’s Goldstein, where Zoe Daniels defeated Tim Wilson in 2022, as well as Perth’s Curtin - the beachside suburb Teal Kate Chaney won the seat from Liberal MP Celia Hammond. The Liberals believe they can take these seats back.

However, the opposition leader has not yet visited the Sydney teal electorates of Warringah, Wentworth, Mackellar or Bradfield, nor the Melbourne seat of Kooyong. And despite Labor running candidates in these seats, Albanese has not shown up either.

Meanwhile, Albanese has not yet visited the Melbourne electorate of Menzies, held by Liberal MP Keith Wolahan and now hyper-marginal due to a seat redistribution that has it “notionally” a Labor seat on 0.4 per cent.

Dutton has also not visited any of the seven sites where he has pledged, if elected, to build a nuclear reactor. Albanese is seeking to capitalise on the perceived unpopularity of the policy with visits to proposed nuclear electorates in Hunter and Maranoa.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be updating this map to record where Albanese and Dutton have travelled to (the red and blue dots) and where they were last spotted (the red and blue flags). Hovering over these icons will give you a bit of detail about where they stopped by and why. In busy cities such as Brisbane and Sydney, zoom in to see exactly where leaders spent time.

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