Political strategists for both major parties believe the Coalition is on track to lose about 12 seats at the July 2 poll, slashing Malcolm Turnbull's buffer in the Parliament but returning his government with a reduced second-term majority.
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The Prime Minister's home state of NSW has emerged as the weakest link for the Coalition and the state where the most seats could change hands, but the ALP's push to claim as many as 11 Queensland seats of the 21 required for Labor to form government is flagging.
Underscoring the vulnerability of Coalition seats in Sydney's west, Labor will formally launch its campaign in Penrith, in the Liberal-held marginal seat of Lindsay, on June 19.
At the start of the fourth week of the federal election campaign and after the leaders fought each other to a dour draw in the first National Press Club debate, political strategists on both sides said that Bill Shorten had not yet done enough to snatch victory for Labor.
Liberal strategists who spoke to Fairfax Media on condition of anonymity predicted that - at this stage of the campaign - about 12 seats would fall, whereas Labor strategists were unsurprisingly more bullish and nominated another eight seats they regarded as potential gains.
This is despite national opinion polls showing the prospect of a hung Parliament is a real possibility under a uniform swing.
The 12 seats considered most at-risk for the Liberals are Barton and Dobell (both notionally Labor after a redistribution), Lindsay, Robertson, Eden-Monaro and Macarthur in NSW; Dunkley and La Trobe in Victoria; Petrie and Capricornia in Queensland; Lyons in Tasmania and Solomon in the Northern Territory.
The eight extra seats Labor points to are Hasluck and the new seat of Burt in WA; Hindmarsh in SA; Banks, Patterson (now notionally Labor) and Page in NSW, Braddon in Tasmania and Bonner in Queensland.
On Monday, Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop appeared to leave the door open to negotiating with the crossbench in the event of a hung Parliament - but Mr Turnbull shut the door and said he had made it "very clear" that would not happen, arguing she had been referring to negotiating over Senate legislation.
"I'm surprised that you would imagine it was possible that we would be doing deals with the Greens or independents," he told reporters as he returned again to campaign in Lindsay.
Mr Turnbull led Bill Shorten 51-49 per cent in the most recent Fairfax-Ipsos poll. Newspoll had Labor leading by the same margin and Mr Shorten led 52-48 in Friday's ReachTEL/Seven News poll - and swings are rarely uniform.
Both camps agreed a reduced Turnbull majority of about 80 seats in the 150-member House of Representatives was, at this stage, the most likely result.
"We can get to 10 easily but 21? Everything will have to break our way," one Labor strategist said. "But we aren't below 49 in any published poll, there is a sense of optimism in our camp and we look set for a good result. Can we turn it in to victory? That's what the next five weeks will tell."
Both parties are tracking about 30 target seats and as the halfway point of the campaign nears, focus has sharpened on those which are considered most "in play" and likely to decide the election.
Early Labor hopes in Queensland for wins in seats like Herbert, Dawson, Dickson and Leichhardt appear to be fading, though some still hold out hope - and argue there is enough time - for the party to claim Brisbane and the Victorian seat of Corangamite.
Further complicating calculations, the Labor seat of Batman, held by the accident-prone Labor frontbencher David Feeney, is now considered a possible loss to the Greens; the Queensland seat of Fairfax, vacated by Clive Palmer, is expected to return to the Coalition and in Victoria, Liberals still argue the seats of Bruce and Chisholm are an outside chance to be lost by Labor.
