NATIONALLY, this election is a battle of negatives.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is a clearly unpopular leader, with a smirk more famous than the Cheshire Cat's.
Opposition leader Anthony Albanese, first elected in 1996, and six years a Cabinet minister, has had an underwhelming campaign and remains an unknown to many.
A late rush to enrol for voting and a wait-for-the-doors-to-open turnout at pre-polling suggests, on past history, an electorate ready to take to the government with a cricket bat.
But the polls were famously wrong in 2019 when Mr Morrison delivered the Coalition its self-described "miracle" win.
Paul Keating also won an "unwinnable" election in 1993, only to fall heavily next time around to his nemesis, John Howard.
May 21 may prove a parallel in reverse, but Labor still needs to win seven seats to put Mr Albanese into The Lodge, more if it loses some along the way.
Mr Howard, as it happens, was in the region yesterday, meeting Morisset shoppers with James Thomson, the National Party's candidate for the seat of Hunter.
Joel Fitzgibbon's retirement has given the Coalition its best chance yet of taking a seat it has never held. Newly recruited ALP member Dan Repacholi would beat Mr Thomson head-to-head but the government is hoping a strong preference flow from One Nation, Clive Palmer's United Australia Party and Independent Stuart Bonds will tip their candidate over the line.
Hunter now stretches from beyond Muswellbrook to the western shore of Lake Macquarie and as far south as Wyee. More than half of its voters live in the eastern end.
Within the electorate, traditionally Labor-voting Cessnock returned three Liberal councillors at the recent local government elections.
A steady influx of new residents from Sydney may well be reshaping the Hunter Region's old voting patterns.
Mr Morrison has been a frequent visitor, and was here again yesterday - with $50 million from the Commonwealth's Trailblazer program - at the Warners Bay business incubator, The Melt, in Pat Conroy's Labor electorate of Shortland.
Labor incumbent Meryl Swanson is tipped to hold Paterson, but it's the region's only historically swinging seat.
With another week after this to election day, the campaigning will move into top gear. Both sides know their weaknesses, but both remain optimistic.
It's game on.
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