Northern electorates to be key election battle fronts: analysts

Labor holds two seats in each of the Northern electorates, while the Liberals hold three in each.

But Premier Peter Gutwien and his party will need to record a net gain of two seats in order to secure a majority.

As was the case at the last election, both the major parties have said they will govern in majority or not at all.

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"If the Liberal Party only holds its present seats, it may be a minority government [or] it may be having to watch a Labor minority government in power, depending on how the negotiations go," political analyst Richard Herr said. "So it has to win seats - that's the one thing that has to be clear here."

Mr Gutwein said the reason he'd called an early election was because "Tasmania can't afford the uncertainty of minority government".

Psephologist Kevin Bonham believes the Liberals' focus will be on winning additional seats in the North, while attempting to sandbag the seats they already hold in the Southern electorates of Clark and Franklin.

"I think that the strategy for the government will probably be to do as well as it possibly can in the North of the state because what might happen in the South of the state is a little difficult to predict," he said.

"They'd be hoping to get a fourth [seat] somewhere [in] Bass, Braddon or Lyons to offset any problems that they might have in Clark especially."

Speaker of the House of Assembly Sue Hickey, who was elected as a Clark Liberal MHA in 2018, said earlier this week that she would run as an independent candidate, after the Premier informed her she would not be preselected as a Liberal candidate again.

She will face off against independent Clark MHA Madeleine Ogilvie (who some have speculated could join the Liberals), Attorney-General Elise Archer, Labor justice spokeswoman Ella Haddad and independent candidate and Glenorchy mayor Kristie Johnston.

Professor Herr said both Labor and the Greens had to ask themselves whether their relative lack of public exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the government's dominance of the news cycle, might affect their electoral fortunes.

"The Greens ... really can't afford to lose another seat," he said.

Professor Herr said there was a chance that the Premier's timing for calling an election could prove to be a miscalculation.

"Labor has a female leader at a time when the Liberal Party is struggling with ... women empowerment in the party," he said. "And also because [Labor leader Rebecca White] is pregnant, it almost certainly won't be a nasty campaign focused on her."

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