Political scientists expect prime minister John Howard, swept to power in a landslide victory just 2 years ago, to scrape back into government thanks largely to compulsory voting and a lack of faith in any other leader.

``If it weren't compulsory, I'd be surprised if 60 per cent of the voters turned out,'' said politics professor Ross Fitzgerald at Brisbane's Griffith University. ``It's a more disaffected electorate than at any time since the Great Depression.''

Most opinion polls give the Labor opposition party a slight edge over Howard's coalition and show flagging support for Pauline Hanson's protectionist One Nation party, viewed just weeks ago as a major threat to the mainstream parties.

But most analysts advocate caution.

Few are willing to write off Hanson's One Nation after it defied the pollsters to take 23 per cent of the vote on its first outingin Queensland's state election last June.

And no one is certain the swing to Labor will be consistent enough for the party to seize the 27 seats it needs to win an absolute majority in the 148-seat house of representatives.

Analysts say national opinion polls fail to reflect the pockets of loyalty to individual politicians and the enclaves of anger where protest votes will be fired at random.

``It's a rather miserable, grizzly electorate,'' said reader in political science Marian Simms at the Australian National University in Canberra. ``It's going to be a very, very close election and seats are going to fall in slightly unusual ways.''

She sees the election as too close to call.

But there is a fair degree of common ground between Labor and coalition sources, suggesting that Howard could return with may be 78 seats against 94 in 1996.

In a world fraught with economic uncertainty, Howard is urging voters to play safe by re-electing him.

Respected Australian Broadcasting Corp analyst Antony Greensaid the tactic should work. ``The government's running a very big scare campaign in the last few days,'' Green said.

Many voters will still swing to Labor, drawn by Beazley's large and likable persona, by his dream of cutting unemployment to five per cent from eight, and by his opposition to Howard's central vision for Australia, a tax on goods and services.

But analysts say a sizable minority of voters will rebel, against social change, against the curbs the major parties imposed on gun ownership and, above all, against the orthodoxies of free markets and globalisation.

Beazley was prominent in the government Australia ejected in 1996 after 13 years of economic rationalism under Labor.

So despite a campaign of blunders, like her plan for a two per cent ``Easy tax'' on everything and her claim to feel like Australia's mother, Hanson offers a home for protest voters.

Some respond to her assertions that aboriginal welfare policies discriminate against white Australians and that Asian migrants couldsoon swamp the country.

But much of her appeal lies in her claims that mainstream parties are selling Australia out to foreign investors, the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation.

``One Nation... is a kind of drainpipe for disillusionment with the major parties,'' said independent political researcher Hugh Mackay.

Fitzgerald in Queensland agreed. ``The key to One Nation's (appeal) is economic,'' he said. He questions opinion polls showing the party's support falling below seven per cent.

``People are reticent to say they support One Nation,'' he said, suggesting the party could win a couple of lower house seats as well as three or four in the upper house senate.

While Hanson will probably lose her own seat in the lower house, due to boundary changes, analysts agree One Nation will win at least one senate seat, which could be transferred to her.

And Australia's senate wields real power.

Howard already lacks a majority there, relying on two independent senators to pass controversiallegislation.

Just over half the senate seats are being offered in this election. If Australian voters run true to form, they will allow Howard a second term in office but ensure him an even rougher ride in the senate by voting there for Labor, the left-leaning Democrats, the Greens, One Nation -- anyone but the coalition.

``It's an unpopular government, an unpopular prime minister, but I think the probability is they will hang on and it will be something of a hollow victory,'' Mackay told Reuters Television.

``There will be no feeling of triumph... The most striking thing about this campaign is the reluctance of voters to talk about it, to feel it's an election about them.''