At a pre-polling centre at Bondi Junction, Dave Sharma laughed when talking about how being preselected for the seemingly plum Liberal seat of Wentworth hadn't turned out exactly as expected.
"It would be wrong to describe it as a blue-ribbon Liberal seat," he said.
"It's a marginal seat."
Of all the Liberal seats under threat from independent candidates, Wentworth is one of the most vulnerable.
Liberal MP Dave Sharma holds the seat on a slim margin of 1.3 per cent.
He is no stranger to facing a strong independent candidate.
In 2018, when Mr Sharma was the Liberal candidate to replace Malcolm Turnbull in a by-election, he lost to independent candidate Kerryn Phelps.
In the 2019 general election he won.
But this time is slightly different because the independent challenge is part of a movement across the country.
Independent candidate Allegra Spender is supported by the Climate 200 group, which has serious financial backing.
She also has more than 1,000 volunteers working on her campaign, which cannot be matched by the Liberal Party.
The campaign has pushed Mr Sharma to prove his moderate Liberal credentials in the affluent seat that is socially progressive.
"You can say you're a moderate but it really matters how you vote and what you achieve," she said.
"I don't think I'm willing to wait just another three years hoping that the moderates have a voice."
Along with the other candidates now-dubbed "teal independents", Ms Spender is running on a platform of greater action on climate change.
She insists it is one of the top issues that voters in Wentworth are discussing with her.
"People in Wentworth care about the climate but they also care about the economy and know that if we don't act we are going to have very significant issues on both," she said.
Mr Sharma agrees that climate change is front of mind in the electorate.
"People want to know that we are taking it seriously and that we've got a plan to get to net zero," he said.
"I'm obviously a big advocate of that."
But the Liberal MP also concedes there is not a full plan to get to net zero by 2050 "because the technology does not exist at a commercial scale to allow that to happen".
'I used to be a Liberal voter'
The threat from independents has been discussed extensively during the campaign.
But the challenge to the Liberals has not just come from outside. The independents have inflamed internal tensions between rival factions within the party.
Last week, New South Wales Treasurer and moderate faction powerbroker Matt Kean weighed in.
"We've seen the impact of what happens when centre-right parties lose moderate voices," he said at a press conference while standing next to Mr Sharma.
"Look at the Republican Party [in the US] … [it's] now become the party of Trump, the party of Putin sympathisers and anti-vaxxers."
Mr Kean then appealed to voters, saying that was why the party needed to keep moderate voices like Dave Sharma's.
But Allegra Spender says the fault lines in the Liberal Party are what are driving voters away.
"They're saying, 'I used to be a Liberal voter but I can't anymore because it doesn't represent the moderate liberalism that the party used to.'"
The transformation of Wentworth
When Mr Sharma lost to Dr Phelps in the 2018 by-election, the Liberal primary vote fell from 62 per cent to 43 per cent.
While Dr Phelps's independent primary vote was only 29 per cent, after preferences she got across the line and won the seat.
In the 2019 general election, the Liberal primary vote rose to 47 per cent, compared to Dr Phelps's 32 per cent, and that was enough to ward off the preferences to the independent.
ABC election analyst Antony Green says historically the primary vote of the major party candidate has to drop for independents to take seats.
"For the independent to win, they have to force the seat to preferences, force the Liberal vote under 45 per cent," he said.
"They have to get around 30 per cent themselves."
Wentworth resident Licia Heath ran as an independent in the 2018 by-election.
She says the electorate has transformed into a politically engaged electorate since that time.
"It makes Wentworth quite unique, I think, because it's a microcosm of a fast pace of electoral activism and engagement which we will see other electorates move down that path shortly as well," she said.
"If you are a sitting MP and you have a very engaged electorate, it means you are under more scrutiny than you otherwise would be, and I think that's a fantastic thing.
"I think it's symbolic of a health democracy as well."
