Australian Federal Election 2010: the iffy seats confirmed

The Australian Electoral Commission has kindly listed the status of all 150 House of Representatives seats across the country which will be contested in this year's federal election in a handy PDF file:

How is status defined?

Seat status is based on the two-party preferred vote count (TPP). The two-party preferred vote

refers to the number of votes received by the Labor and Coalition candidates after a full distribution

of preferences.

The AEC classifies seats using the following business rules: when a party receives less than

56 per cent of the vote the seat is classified as ‘marginal’ (M); between 56-60 per cent it is

classified as ‘fairly safe’ (FS) and more than 60 per cent is classified ‘safe’ (S).

In New South Wales 48 seats will be on the ballot and 16 of these are currently held by very slim margins (post 2009 redistribution) and another 7 are only classified as fairly safe.

The marginal seats are Bennelong, Calare, Cowper, Dobell, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore, Greenway, Hughes, Hume, Macarthur, Macquarie, North Sydney, Page, Paterson, Robertson, and Wentworth.

Five of these marginal seats are held by the Coalition and seven by Labor. Two are on the NSW North Coast - Page held by Labor MP Janelle Saffin and Cowper held by National Party MP Luke Hartsuyker.

The fact that marginal and fairly safe seats make up almost half of all NSW seats will make for an interesting and possibly brutal federal election campaign in this state.