As the election campaign gets underway, there will be countless promises and pledges, criticism and sledges hurled by all sides of politics.
The story of what our political leaders say is, of course, incredibly important. But just as telling is where they say it.
There are 151 seats in the House of Representatives being contested. But the top brass aren't going to appear in each and every electorate around the country.
The ABC Politics team will be monitoring, as best we can, exactly where Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek travel.
We've spent the past six weeks taking notes and here is what we've learned:
Coalition
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has spent quite a bit of time in western Sydney, the south coast of New South Wales, Tasmania, parts of Melbourne and WA.
Some of those spots have been traditional electoral battlegrounds for many decades, but after the electoral wipe-out for the Liberals in the Victorian state election last year, we might see more canvassing for votes there throughout the campaign.
The Prime Minister has also spent time in Tasmania in recent weeks, reflecting the Liberal Party's optimism that it might be able to target Labor-held seats in the state's north.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has been focussed on his own electorate of Riverina, but also other Nationals seats such as Cowper, which has a retiring National MP.
Labor
The Opposition doesn't have to sandbag seats in the same way the Coalition does, and it's already notionally picked up two seats from the Government in the latest round of seat redistributions.
Both Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek have been hitting the streets of Melbourne hard.
The Labor leader has also looked to western Sydney, Townsville — where the electorate of Herbert is his party's most marginal — and parts of Perth, where Labor believes it could find rich electoral pickings.
Notes
- We haven't included press conferences and events in Commonwealth Offices around the country, and Parliament House in Canberra.
- Commitments following the Christchurch massacre have also been left out of this data.
- Where multiple candidates are present with the political leader, the electorate where the event is being held or where the issues being discussed are of most importance is listed as the location.
