Libs fear repeat of 1998 in SA seat

Nick Xenophon doesn't believe voters are ready to swing baseball bats at the Turnbull government on July 2.

But the good folk of Mayo appear to be taking aim at their local MP Jamie Briggs.

Malcolm Turnbull made a mercy dash to the Adelaide Hills electorate on Friday in a bid to save the political career of the man he dumped from his ministry at the end of last year.

It came as activist group GetUp! released an opinion poll showing the Nick Xenophon Team well placed to win Mayo.

The ReachTEL poll, gathered in mid-May, found just under 40 per cent of voters in the Adelaide Hills electorate back their local MP - a big drop from the 54 per cent who voted Liberal in 2013.

Mayo, on paper, might look safe Liberal territory.

It was held by Alexander Downer, one-time party leader and foreign minister, for 24 years until his retirement in 2008.

But it has a history that is unnerving Liberal strategists who fear the planets of 1998 are re-aligning.

Back then, just as now, a coalition government was seeking re-election after a first term.

John Schumann, the popular lead singer of folk group Redgum, made a run for Mayo as an Australian Democrats candidate.

Schumman outpolled Labor on the primary vote, garnered their preferences and ran Downer to the brink.

The Howard government was returned comfortably even though it lost the national vote 49-51 per cent.

The polls so far, taken with analyses of marginal seats, suggests a similar result in 2016.

Xenophon, one of the best judges of what's happening on the ground outside Canberra, believes the Turnbull government will win on July 2.

That's because he doesn't sense voters are angry with the coalition, an anger that brought down the first-term Newman government in Queensland a year ago and precipitated a Liberal leadership spill in Canberra.

"If there are any baseball bats out, they are inflatable ones that don't actually do too much damage," the independent senator said this week.

As the campaign arrives at its mid-point the consensus is the coalition will lose a little skin on polling day, but not enough to be fatal.

But no-one is prepared to predict the outcome in South Australia where the presence of NXT has spooked both the coalition and Labor camps.

As the PM was signalling Liberal concern for Mayo, Labor strategists were sensing trouble in the seat of Adelaide held by frontbencher Kate Ellis.