If Dai Le’s inbox is anything to go by then the Yes campaign is looking shaky in her electorate of Fowler in Sydney’s south-west.

The Independent MP said she has received only five emails from voters about the Voice since the start of the year, and they’ve mostly been “No”.

Fowler was once a Labor stronghold but at the last election, just over half of the electorate deserted the party.

“What’s front and centre of people, and I think working Australians and a majority of people in Western Sydney is about the cost of living,” Dai Le told 7.30.

The biggest challenge for the Yes campaign, it seems, will be persuading voters to look up from their kitchen tables.

While Yes campaigners say the Voice is about love, do voters in Western Sydney really feel a connection to the Indigenous community?

Paul Huy Nguyen thinks probably not enough. The former president of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, NSW is voting No.

“I think a lot of our community members felt the Voice is a bit airy-fairy.”

When 7.30 visited Cabramatta this week, both Yes and No campaigns were nowhere to be seen.

“Is it a program?” one man replied when 7.30 asked about the Voice.

After more than 12 months of political debate, he hadn’t seen the AEC’s $12 million information booklets posted out to 13 million households nationally.

“I don’t check my mail that often,” he said.

Others in Cabramatta were undecided but probably could be persuaded to vote Yes.

“I’m leaning towards maybe, yes, because it is their (Indigenous) land initially. We are the invaders, so I want them to have their own choice about it,” one told 7.30.

Another said: “The things that happened to (Indigenous people) haven’t been set straight. I’m not too sure yet, I do need to do more research about it before I make a decision.”

No campaign focuses on migrant communities

The cost of living is crunching voters at the end of the train line in the electorate of Greenway in Sydney’s north-west.

As one commuter told 7.30: “We are working full time. We are paying lots of taxes. We collected pennies to buy the house. At the end, what we are getting is nothing.”

The No campaign riffs on ideas around national identity and fairness: “If Australia is about equality, then why have a Voice?”

Migrant and culturally diverse communities, campaigners said, are key to their success.

“They understand you gotta have only one voice,” said Blacktown Liberal councillor Jess Diaz, who joined other Liberal members with the No campaign at Tallawong station in Greenway this week.

“We don’t have to have division any more, this thing is dividing the country and it’s bad,” Mr Diaz told 7.30.

But if Australia is to be a fair society, why should some parts of the community continue to suffer serious disadvantages, whether that be in education, health and life expectancy?

That’s what the Yes camp is arguing the Voice will address.

Australian Local Hero of the Year and Western Sydney resident, Amar Singh, is appealing to his counterparts to think beyond their own everyday concerns.

He’s on a national road trip to campaign for the Voice.

“For far too long First Nations people have suffered in silence and the system doesn’t work for them,” Mr Singh told 7.30.

“As a Western Sydney resident, I’m concerned about rising tolls, but that doesn’t stop me from doing what’s right as a nation.”

‘Volatile’ Western Sydney vote will be hard to predict

Greater Western Sydney is a big place, from Windsor, north-west of Sydney, parts of the Blue Mountains and as far south as Campbelltown.

It’s a region known to make or break governments during federal elections.

“Western Sydney has returned as a battleground region in elections at the state and federal levels in the last few years,” Professor Andy Marks from Western Sydney University told 7.30.

“Certainly we’re starting to see volatility in Western Sydney.”

It’s hard to predict how Western Sydney will vote on the referendum, according to Professor Marks.

“Saying that Western Sydney will vote a particular way is really not accurate,” he said. “Western Sydney will vote in really dynamic ways.”

“They are typically voters that are wedded to the major parties, but they don’t vote in clear-cut ways in terms of their attitude to social issues, economic etc … they tend to separate issues out.”

According to ABC election analyst Antony Green, the Yes campaign must be able to match the Labor vote in Western Sydney to win New South Wales.

“It was the failure of the Yes campaign to match Labor’s vote in safe Labor seats that was a key feature of the Republic referendum’s failure in 1999,” he told 7.30.

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