They've been labelled the "teal independents" — a group of mostly female candidates taking on mostly male Liberal MPs in some of Australia's wealthiest electorates, spanning the country from Perth and Adelaide to Sydney, Melbourne and parts of regional Victoria.
With millions of dollars in funding behind them from small donors and from the Climate 200 group set up by clean energy investor and son of Australia's first billionaire Simon Holmes à Court, their campaigns are making many in the Liberal Party nervous, with polls suggesting a close-run election.
So who are the "teal independents", where are they standing for election, and if a handful of them are successful, what will their impact be on which party can form government after May 21?
The ABC News Daily podcast has been speaking with chief elections analyst Antony Green to answer those questions.
Why 'teal'?
According to Green, the term "teal independents" is a little misleading. North Sydney independent candidate Kylea Tink's placards and website aren't teal at all, for example, they're pink.
But for many of the candidates, the colour choice is consistent: teal, a shade between blue and green.
And it's not just the colour that the candidates have in common. According to Green, their policy platforms largely overlap too.
Is this unusual?
Independent candidates aren't all that new in Australian politics, although their presence on ballot papers at federal elections has waxed and waned over time.
After being a common sight in parliament for the first half of the twentieth century, Green says World War II was something of an inflection point for the number of independents seeking election.
He says for a time after that, Australia's political party system stabilised, leaving independents with less room to campaign.
Their return more recently, Green thinks, speaks to a bigger shift in voter behaviour.
"There were no independents elected between 1940 and 1990," he told the ABC News Daily podcast.
"(Former North Sydney MP) Ted Mack was the first of the modern independents, and there've been several since. Of course, there's five in the parliament at the moment.
"This is just a sign of the decline of the major-party vote. If you go back to the 1970s, the two major parties polled 90 per cent of the vote, and it fell below 80 per cent for the first time in the 1990s and is dipping below 70 per cent these days.
"It's a decline — but it's not being picked up by any particular party."
And what's driving that decline?
According to Green, it's a drift in voter blocs away from Labor and the Coalition at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
"Both parties are suffering from a degree of de-alignment," he says.
"The Labor Party is losing support among traditional blue-collar voters in seats like Hunter and Capricornia, where mining workers are perceiving different interests to their traditional class loyalties.
"In seats like Warringah and Wentworth — the 'small-l liberal' electorates — you're seeing a de-alignment of people from the modern Liberal Party which isn't quite coalescing with their views."
What is the 'teal' platform?
While the 'teal candidates' are all running as independents, they all share a broad set of policy principles, and are all receiving cash from Climate 200 and other donors to their campaigns.
Green says there are two main themes to the candidates' offerings, and he says they're both tailored to the priorities of the voters they're trying to attract.
"The common themes they're running on are climate change — that the government needs to do something about climate change — and the need to do something about an independent commission against corruption, so integrity in politics," he says.
"They're tapping into a perception amongst some Liberal voters that the government isn't doing enough about either of those issues."
A further line of attack, Green says, is that moderate Liberals have failed to convince their more conservative colleagues on those questions while in government.
"The advertising has been targeting that," he says.
"'What's the point of electing a ''small-l liberal' if they vote with (Nationals leader) Barnaby Joyce and (One Nation candidate) George Christensen all the time?'
"That's the tactic that's being tried to sort of undermine the sitting Liberals."
How many 'teal independents' are there?
It depends on how you count them.
According to the Climate 200 website, there are 22 "community-backed independents" — a number which includes Andrew Wilkie in Tasmania, Rebekha Sharkie in South Australia, Helen Haines in Victoria and Zali Steggall in NSW.
There are also Climate 200-backed independents running for Senate seats, including Kim Rubenstein and David Pocock in the ACT, and Leanne Minshull in Tasmania.
With those candidates deducted, you're left with a group of 15 seeking election in lower house seats and taking on incumbents — and, according to Green, their electoral prospects are varied.
"Some of them are more likely to be elected than others," he says.
"Most of them are running in inner-city urban seats, and many of them are people who've had a professional career and are now sticking their hand up for politics.
"There's Monique Ryan running in Kooyong, who's a medical specialist, Allegra Spender (in Wentworth) who's a businesswoman, Kylea Tink (running in North Sydney) who is a professional and CEO of various charities and fundraisers, and Zoe Daniel (running in Goldstein) who is a journalist — so there's a variety of them running."
Are they a political party?
Not really, according to Green.
"None of them will be elected because of Simon Holmes à Court or Climate 200," he says.
"All of them will be elected because of their name. They need the money, they need the advertising, but independents need to have their name out there.
"No independent will be elected if people don't know their name (whereas) a political party candidate might [elected] be because people know the party name."
That's where, according to Green, we can start to get a sense of which of the candidates running in 2022 are most likely to be successful.
"This is why (Warringah MP) Zali Steggall was so successful (in 2019)," he says.
"She was a well-known name that she brought to the contest, and that was a significant factor.
"Some of the names like Allegra Spender in Wentworth, because of the family connection and also because of her late mother Carla Zampatti, have strong connections.
"In Curtin in Western Australia too, Kate Chaney — she's a well-known political and business name in Western Australia. So you can tap into a whole network of people who know the name, know the family."
Why are they only going after Liberals?
According to Green, the "teal independents" are largely popping up in seats where there is at least a chance of defeating a sitting MP.
"They're winnable seats," Green says, "but these are seats that Labor would never win, the Greens wouldn't win — these are safe Liberal seats."
But there's a catch.
"The thing you need to defeat any member is they need to be unpopular," Green says.
"It's easier to defeat an unpopular sitting member. And in the end, that's what undid (former Liberal MP) Sophie Mirabella and (former prime minister) Tony Abbott — both were seen as having lost touch with their electorate.
"It will be harder to knock off some other sitting members, like Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney (or) Josh Frydenberg, the Treasurer, in Kooyong at this election."
What kind of primary vote does a 'teal independent' need?
According to Green, there are two magic numbers to watch out for in polling and on election night in seats where "teal independents" are running: 45 per cent and 30 per cent.
"I have a basic measure on this," Green explains.
"If the major party candidate — and in most of these cases it's a Liberal — if their primary vote drops below 45 per cent, then the sitting member is in trouble.
"And if the independent [candidate] is above 30 per cent, then this is the sort of rough equation: You are relying on a strong flow of preferences, maybe 70 or 80 per cent, which you often see in some of these seats from Labor and the Greens, and the sitting member is in trouble."
He cites the example of former independent MP Kerryn Phelps — elected at a by-election in the eastern Sydney seat of Wentworth in 2018 and then defeated at the general election the next year — as a case in point.
"[Liberal MP] Dave Sharma got about 43 per cent of the vote and was defeated [at the 2018 Wentworth by-election]," Green says.
"[But] he got 47 per cent of the vote at the 2019 election and he won.
"So that's the rough guide — you have to get strong preference flows as well. But the lower they can drive the Liberal vote, the higher the independent can poll, so any time a major party candidate drops under 45 per cent in one of these seats, they're in trouble."
So will there be a hung parliament?
With five more weeks to go of this election campaign, Green thinks it's too early to make any bold predictions.
"Every election there are predictions of a hung parliament," he says.
"As the crossbench gets bigger, it does become more and more likely, but really we still have five weeks until the election.
"Labor's ahead in the opinion polls, [but] it had a rocky first week.
"We'll just have to watch the count on the night."
