By “On The Ground in Melbourne:”

The last week of campaigning for the knife-edge seat of Melbourne has been a fairly uneventful affair as campaigns go, especially given how much is riding on this seat for the ALP and the Greens.  While there’s not much evidence of either of these two parties’ supporters playing dumb games, the Liberals are still nowhere to be seen and little has been heard of them.

The more they remain invisible though, the more it will damage their primary vote.

The weekend saw the heaviest amount of foot traffic through key parts of the electorate. Labor’s Cath Bowtell is trying to make up ground and the Greens’ Adam Bandt trying to lock in as many voters as possible.  While both campaigns were out in force, there haven’t yet been too many rumours of sh!t sheets. It’s more likely these underhand documents will be delivered in the last couple of days (Thursday or Friday) in order to prevent any kind of orchestrated response.

But in this last week we can expect to see an increase in the amount of party leaflets in letterboxes.   There’s likely to be some tricks with yard signs disappearing or defaced with graffiti; this so far seems to have been reserved for Liberal Party yard signs. On top of that we can expect to see more volunteers and party activists deployed from both Labor and the Greens to cover pre-polling.

It’s difficult to get a handle on who will win Melbourne, most within the Labor and Greens’ campaigns will say it’s too close to call.  Most activists agree saying they think it will come down to preferences and  whether or not Liberal voters decide to preference Greens over Labor.

Fair to say Melbourne is very an interesting race.

Tags: adam bandt, cath bowtell, election 2010, greens melbourne, labor melbourne, melbourne preferences