South Australia generally follows national political trends, with fewer extremes.
It means the state is unlikely to attract a significant amount of attention from the political leaders who are more focused on winning key battlegrounds elsewhere.
But as Karen Ashford reports, even the most predictable places can sometimes hold surprises.
South Australia's 11 House of Representatives seats are fairly evenly split, 6 Labor and 5 Liberal, and the broad prediction is that will remain the case after September 7.
The ALP holds its seats with generally more comfortable margins than the Liberals, but even so, some of these could come under pressure given the predicted national swing towards the conservatives.
The smallest Labor margin is in the western suburbs seat of Hindmarsh, held by Steve Georganas by 6.1 per cent, rising to an unassailable 20.9 per cent margin in the working class seat of Port Adelaide held by federal Environment Minister Mark Butler.
The head of the school of history and politics at the University of Adelaide, Professor Clem Macintyre, believes some of the ALP's margins were inflated last election by home town support for former Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
Professor Macintyre expects that to be reduced as a result of Ms Gillard's demise and an expected general swing towards the Liberals, but without changing the status quo.
"We're going to follow the national trend I think, and there'll be a marginal drift of votes to the Liberal Party, probably a bit stronger in South Australian than some other parts of the country. There's every chance, bearing in mind that South Australia was a reasonably strong state for Labor at the 2010 election, there'll be some softening in that vote I think. But all the seats held by Labor are on margins of more than six per cent. So unless there's a significant move in the campaign between now and the election date, I think we'll see Labor margins thinned out and some of the Liberal increased, but probably no net change of seats."
Meanwhile, the Liberal seats are held on comparatively slimmer margins.
Boothby in the mid-southern suburbs, is the most marginal of any Liberal seat in Australia - held by Andrew Southcott by just 0.6 of one per cent.
And Christopher Pyne's seat of Sturt, in Adelaide's northeast, also has a relatively slender margin of 3.6 per cent.
They're Labor's best chances of making gains to offset expected losses in other states but Liberal number-cruncher, Senator Simon Birmingham, says the expected national swing in his party's favour should see them remain in conservative hands, with increased margins.
Furthermore, he thinks some Labor seats are vulnerable after a decade of Labor at the state level and nearly as long federally.
"We're very hopeful of our chances of winning some seats in South Australia. We recognise that people in SA are doing it perhaps tougher than almost anywhere else in the country. Just last week we saw unemployment rise from 6.1 per cent to 7.1 per cent in South Australia, so unemployment is the highest on the mainland, the biggest rise across the country in one hit, state debt is going up at a rate that rivals the rate that national debt of government has been going up at - these factors are all piling up on top of one another so there is a real mood for change right across SA."
ALP candidate Annabel Digance is having her second tilt at Boothby, and says her chances have been boosted by a recent change in the electoral boundaries, which whittled its margin from 0.8 per cent to 0.6 per cent..
"The margin actually will vary depending on where you look, so some will say 0.6, some will say 0.3, so we'll go 0.6 for the sake of this. So that's only a hundred or so, a couple of hundred votes that I need to make up to bring it across the line. I'm confident in the fact that I know I'm running a really good campaign, I'm out speaking to people, engaging with a lot of community groups, people in the community are very enthusiastic. I don't take anything for granted so I'll wait and see what happens on September 7."
In the state's Senate race, a fascinating fight is underway between the Liberals, Greens and an independent.
Traditionally in South Australia, the six Senate seats were held equally by the ALP and the Liberals.
But a few years ago the unexpected occurred, when one of those seats fell to the Greens' Sarah Hanson-Young, and another went to maverick independent Nick Xenophon.
Senator Xenophon was the third in order of election when he won his seat in 2007 and is considered a safe bet to retain his spot by drawing a significant number of non-major party votes.
Not only does the Xenophon option give voters an electable alternative to the Greens, it also diminishes the chance of Sarah Hanson-Young getting in on preferences.
That's because Senator Xenophon says he will split his excess votes equally between Labor and Liberal, after he has met his quota to be elected.
Professor Macintyre says it sets the scene for a close battle.
He says Senator Hanson-Young will strive to save her seat against an expected surge in support for the Liberals that could see their number three candidate, state party Vice President Cathie Webb, joining Simon Birmingham and Cory Bernardi on the Coalition senate benches.
"I think the results will probably on the basis of current polling shift slightly and there's every chance the Greens' Sarah Hanson Young will lose her seat and that last seat in the senate will be won by the Coalition, which would mean three from the Coalition, two Labor and one independent. But that is very much dependent upon fine balances of votes on the night and the flow of preferences. So while I think my gut feeling at the moment is it'll be very difficult for Sarah Hanson Young to hold her seat, I wouldn't discount it with the right primary vote and a flow of preferences that comes from the minor parties, the Greens may hold on."
