By his own account, Ron Ismay has been a National party member for an awfully long time.

He is the mayor of Hindmarsh council in Andrew Broad’s old seat of Mallee and owns a hardware shop in his little town of Rainbow (population 600), 100km east of the South Australian border.

Farming is the mainstay in the town, though he is also pretty excited about the Eureka pub’s plans for a brewery.

Ismay usually doesn’t see many political candidates in town but this election there has been a stream. He describes the town mood as disenchanted with both sides of politics, which may explain the field of 13 candidates contesting a longstanding National party stronghold with a margin of 20%.

They include the Nationals’ anointed candidate, Anne Webster, the Liberal Melbourne-based barrister Serge Petrovich and three independents, of which the farmer and former Yarriambiack mayor Ray Kingston looks to be pulling ahead as the most likely challenger.

Ismay is torn.

“I am certainly not blindly voting for the Nationals,” he says from the hardware shop floor.

“I have had second thoughts, because of the stuff going on. Mallee is the safest seat and the Nationals have held it for the last 70 years. I would almost be half happy if it does [change], to send them a message.”

Mallee’s margin should suggest challengers have no hope but there is an odd vibe about this election that is hard to read, particularly in country seats where issues are hyperlocal and fiercely felt.

The sense is there will be a shift in primary votes in a small number of surprising seats, though whether it will be enough to remove sitting members is not clear.

There is also an increasing recognition on the ground that having competitive candidates to challenge incumbents is helpful for attracting media attention, testing the incumbent party mettle and debating policy ideas.

Outside Queensland’s regional coastal seats, campaign eyeballs have been trained on just a few seats.

Rob Oakeshott is challenging the Nationals candidate Patrick Conaghan in Cowper (on a margin of 4.6%) and is in with a chance.

With Cathy McGowan retiring, the Voices for Indi community group is attempting the first ever independent handover to Helen Haines in Indi (5.5%) but Liberals are very bullish about their candidate, Steve Martin.

Next door, the Albury mayor Kevin Mack is challenging Sussan Ley in Farrer (20.5%), predicated on angst over water management in the Murray-Darling Basin.

I would add Mallee (19.8%) to that list and it says a lot that many of the locals in the seat cannot pick the winner.

Peter Bannon, the editor of the Swan Hill Guardian, said it was competitive, given Kingston was a strong contender, who was “across the water issues” and was known for a range of things, including the silo art trails.

“The conservatives will vote for Nats and so it is really hard to gauge at the moment,” Bannon said.

Also worth watching is the seat of Grey (1.1% 2CP) in South Australia, which pretty much takes up the whole state or 908,000 square kilometres. Andrea Broadfoot is challenging the Liberal sitting MP Rowan Ramsey for a second time, having pushed him down to the wire in 2016.

Like so many large rural seats, Grey is diverse, with issues ranging from drilling in the Bight to plans for a nuclear dump which threaten tourism ventures.

Farmer Susan Carn will vote for Broadfoot because she is disillusioned with Ramsey, while her husband, Ben, will stick with the current member.

“The area is so diverse, with big towns like Port Lincoln, the farming area of Eyre peninsula, Whyalla, which has lurched from being saved and disaster and back again, plus mining at Roxby Downs” Carn said.

“I really feel for [grazing] stations in the Flinders Ranges that have tourist operations as a major part of their income that a nuclear waste dump could jeopardise this.”

Finally, let’s call Barnaby Joyce’s seat of New England (16.4%) the wildcard.

National party insiders are absolutely confident he will hold his seat, though they do admit that he might lose the positive swing that he won in the 2017 by-election over his citizenship.

This is in spite of a series of scandals involving water buybacks, gob-stopping radio interventions and challenging independents (Adam Blakester is the most visible) in an area known for its independent streak.

And yet. Joyce has not appeared at many local candidate forums while campaigning in other seats, including Cowper where he had a Twitter tête-à-tête with Oakeshott. He has rejected an appearance on city-based election night panels in favour of staying in the electorate with branch members.

For what it’s worth, speaking in Armidale last week, Joyce acknowledged he was on the nose.

“I am not going to win a popularity contest in Canberra and I probably wouldn’t win one here, but I’m effective.”

But will it translate into change?