The leaders of the major political parties have focused a lot of their campaign on key marginal seats in the state, particularly around western Sydney and the state's central coast, in the run-up to polling day on September 7.
Michael Kenny reports.
Left with a hung parliament after the 2010 federal election, Labor needs to win seats from the Coalition to be able to retain government in its own right.
And it faces one of its toughest challenges in western Sydney, where it holds five marginal seats on a margin of less than five per cent.
Labor's most marginal seat in this area is Greenway, which it holds by a margin of 0.88 per cent, closely followed by Lindsay, which it holds by 1.12 per cent.
Labor is also hoping to win at least three marginal seats from the Liberals in Sydney and the Blue Mountains to give it a chance of retaining government.
Associate Professor Rodney Smith specialises in Australian politics at the University of Sydney.
He says a lot of the marginal electorates in western Sydney have large numbers of voters from a non-English-speaking background.
Dr Smith believes the debate around the future direction of immigration and asylum seeker policy could have a big impact on who these voters support.
"It is clear that migration issues are issues which are of great sensitivity to communities, particularly communities which are affected through family and other links with people who want to come to Australia. So I think both the major political parties will be very careful in terms of the way they present their candidates and their statements around these issues, but also their more general policies. It is possible that the Labor Party may suffer some backlash through its tightening of the 457 visas, but by the same token, it may be the case that there may be some groups in those electorates who may well say 'Well, by doing that, it's giving people who are already here more of an opportunity to get work'."
Dr Smith believes Labor will struggle to retain its marginal seats in New South Wales and the party is also unlikely to win seats from the Coalition.
He believes the Liberals are likely to win the western Sydney seats of Parramatta, Reid and Greenway from Labor, the central coast seats of Dobell and Robertson and the southern Sydney seat of Banks.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he believes Labor has a good chance of winning the northern Sydney seat of Bennelong and the Blue Mountains-based seat of Macquarie from the Liberals.
Labor lost both these seats in 2010.
The Liberals hold Bennelong by a margin of just over three per cent and Macquarie by a margin of over one per cent.
In Bennelong, Labor has preselected a Chinese Australian lawyer, Jason Yat Sen Li, to face Liberal MP and former tennis champion John Alexander, in a seat with a large Asian-Australian population.
Dr Smith says he believes Bennelong is likely to be retained by the Coalition, despite Mr Rudd's high personal popularity in the seat.
"Well in Bennelong, you have the combination if you like of the leader Kevin Rudd and an ethnically Chinese candidate. So you've got that kind of combination. But whether or not that will be enough to swing a seat which is in terms of its socio-economic base- still should be a reasonably safe Liberal seat-is unlikely I think."
Professor Andrew Jakubowicz specialises in Australian politics at the University of Technology in Sydney and has done extensive research on the voting patterns of migrant communities in New South Wales.
He believes the Coalition is likely to gain a lot of support in the state from socially conservative migrant voters who see a natural ally in Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, given his conservative views on issues like same-sex marriage.
Professor Jakubowicz believes the Liberal Party is likely to build upon the support it currently enjoys at a state level in western Sydney in the upcoming election.
He believes the party's tough asylum-seeker policies may appeal to many longer-term migrants and refugees in key marginal seats.
"There are many humanitarian entrants - people who came through normal humanitarian routes or people who came here as migrants who have families in situations of humanitarian stress - who are very uncomfortable with the notion that the boat people, as they would see them, are taking places that should go to their families who are waiting in refugee camps or are waiting for legitimate arrival."
Professor Jakubowicz believes the Liberals have made a conscious effort to win over migrant voters, including through recruiting candidates from a non-English-speaking background.
He says the Liberal candidate in the Labor-held marginal seat of Greenway in Sydney's northwest, Jaymes Diaz, is a good example of that.
The Filipino-Australian lawyer had an embarrassing start to his election campaign, when he raised the Coalition's asylum-seeker policy at a media event, and then couldn't answer questions from a reporter about it.
But Mr Diaz only needs a small swing of less than one per cent to oust Labor's Michelle Rowland.
Professor Jakubowicz believes the Liberals are in a particularly strong position to win seats with large migrant populations, like Greenway, under Tony Abbott's leadership.
"There are many new generation young migrant professionals who are quite conservative. Those candidates are both drawn to the party and the party is drawn to them. If you look at somebody like Abbott, he is turning out to be a sort of natural magnet for social conservatives whether they be Jewish, Muslim or Christian and that changes a dynamic that wasn't previously there in the same sort of way."
Sydney University politics lecturer Dr Rodney Smith believes the lengthy investigation into the credit card use of former Labor MP Craig Thomson is likely to hurt Labor's chances of retaining the two central coast seats of Dobell and Robertson.
However he says it is debatable as to whether Labor's image may have been tarnished across the state, more generally, through the recent Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry into former state Labor MPs, Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald.
"It may well be that voters have already assimilated their views, if you like, about the NSW Labor Party and have already worked out whether or not they think federal Labor deserves punishment and whether there is a connection between the ICAC findings and the Labor candidates who are running in federal seats and so it may be that we don't see the same sort of punishment that was handed to Labor in the 2011 state election."
In regional NSW, polling suggests the Nationals are likely to win the seats of New England and Lyne, held by retiring Independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.
In the north coast seat of Page, the Nationals are also hopeful of defeating Labor's Janelle Saffin who holds the electorate by a four per cent margin.
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