TWO weeks after Calare voters went to the polls, a recount and redistribution of preferences has been all-but completed by the Australian Electoral Commission.
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And the news is all bad for Labor's candidate Jess Jennings.
The Bathurst councillor and the party's supporters had hoped this would be the election that finally made a serious dent in incumbent National Andrew Gee's comfortable 12 per cent margin.
The signs were good: Dr Jennings, contesting his third election as the Labor candidate, was reporting the most positive feedback yet at the early voting centres and he even had people telling him they had voted Labor for the first time.
The emergence of the Shooters, Farmers and Fishers Party as a local political force was always going to draw primary votes away from the Nationals and national opinion polls were pointing to a Labor victory, with a swing away from the Coalition anticipated across the country.
But it didn't happen nationally, and it didn't happen in Calare.
The tortuous recount was needed because the AEC had initially done a two-candidate-preferred (TCP) count for Mr Gee and the SFF's Sam Romano, apparently predicting the Shooters would outpoll Labor in Calare.
Once it became clear Labor had finished second, those votes had to be recounted - not to determine the winner (that was obvious), but to determine the final margin.
And with more than 92 per cent of votes now recounted, Mr Gee's margin has actually increased by about 1.5 per cent - a disaster for Labor. Dr Jennings won just four booths on a TCP basis - Bathurst South, Lithgow, Oakey Park and the tiny Sydney Town Hall count - and Labor will head into the 2022 federal election even further away from victory in Calare.
Even the SFF, which garnered a respectable 17.4 per cent of primary votes across the electorate, cannot call the election a success because its "Put Nats Last" mantra simply did not hold. It's clear many SFF supporters wanted to deliver a warning to the Nationals but, when push came to shove, could not bring themselves to preference Dr Jennings above Mr Gee.
That meant there was only winner in Calare, and a decisive one. Mr Gee will remain our federal member for the next three years and, on the numbers delivered on May 18, for as long as he wants the job.
