Bitter battle for every vote: can million-dollar promises bring a sea change to Corangamite?

Gayle Anderson shuffles behind the counter of the Moriac general store, which her grandparents opened in the small town south-west of Melbourne almost a century ago.

She comes back with a stack of glossy political flyers that locals have left behind in their postboxes.

But candidates certainly want the voters of Corangamite, one of the most marginal seats in the country.

The electorate takes in the west of Geelong, the Bellarine peninsula and the boom surf town of Torquay, as well as more rural areas to the north, including Inverleigh and Bannockburn.

It has been subject to a significant redistribution since the 2019 election, cut from more than 5,400 sq km to 1,500 sq km to counteract a huge increase in population.

When Guardian Australia visits the electorate, there is only one prepolling centre open, at a new $13.5m stadium built for the thousands of families moving to housing estates north of Torquay.

Asher is there first, doing step-ups on a wooden box near the door of the stadium, in between speaking with voters.

Coker can now get in the ear of early voters first. Asher has to make do with being the last person they see before they go inside.

It is a skirmish that illuminates the battle for the seat: every vote bitterly contested, often in hand-to-hand combat.

Beeson is less complimentary of the Morrison government. In mismanaging the pandemic response, it failed to follow business management principles she learned in high school, she says. And she does not trust the prime minister.

Taylor Ibrahim leaves the stadium soon after Beeson. She is still clutching a fistful of how-to-vote cards.

She had to navigate about a dozen volunteers on the way in, including one handing out cardboard ukuleles plastered with anti-Morrison messages and urging voters to put Asher last, authorised by Victorian trades hall.

Ibrahim, 21, really did not know who to back. The Barwon Heads resident had a few clear priorities though, which she says are common to her and her friends: action on climate change, policy to address student debt, and opposition to vaccination mandates.

Coker and Asher continue touting away behind Ibrahim. Sometimes, a voter looks shocked to see them, as if a headshot on a how-to-vote card has magically come to life.

In a conversation with Coker punctuated by breaks while she speaks to voters, including some with curly questions such as where, exactly, Labor will get all the nurses it plans to put into aged care, and to volunteers taking her coffee order (white with half a sugar), she says the campaign has gone well, but she is taking nothing for granted.

In the eight elections prior to 2019, Corangamite was won by the party that formed government.

Labor has only won the seat five times, but three of those victories have occurred since 2007. That is to say that Corangamite was, until recently, a fairly safe bet for the Coalition, and the party would love to take it back: it has poured tens of millions of dollars into election promises, and the prime minister has visited multiple times during the campaign.

The pandemic has shown people why the federal government matters, Coker said, and the people she has spoken to care about the things Labor are campaigning on, including the health and disability sector.

Asher agrees with a suggestion that most of those responsibilities generally lie with local and state governments, but insists these are the issues people raise with her.

She denies a local campaign helps distance her from Morrison, who is not as popular in Victoria as in other states.

North-east of the stadium, above the sea of Colorbond and concrete pockmarking the outskirts of Torquay, and over the Barwon River, John Chisholm is walking down the main street of Ocean Grove, killing time before a haircut appointment.

Chisholm says it is always a quandary considering whether to vote based on who is the best local member, or on who you would prefer as prime minister.

Chisholm, a semi-retired lawyer, says he supports a federal anti-corruption commission and strong action on climate change.

Climate change is also front of mind for Taylah Stolk, who is making coffees in a cafe along the main drag of Inverleigh.

Ocean Grove and other towns on the Bellarine peninsula are well-known tourist haunts with populations that have been growing since SeaChange hit TV screens in the late 1990s. Inverleigh, to the north and west, is a historic town largely supporting nearby farms, that has only recently seen a significant increase in population.

Unlike Chisholm, Stolk has not been closely following federal politics. At 20, it is also the first time she will vote, and while she is uncertain which party will have her support, the environment is her main focus.

Sitting at a table outside, local Victoria Guthridge and her friend Terhi Meek, who lives just outside Corangamite in the nearby town of Shelford, have been discussing the election when we intervene.

Meek is originally from Finland but recently became an Australian citizen, meaning she is about to vote in the country for the first time. She has been struck by the negativity of federal political campaigning, compared with her homeland.

The policies of the Morrison government do not address what Guthridge considers important: climate change, making the childcare system cheaper, strengthening the healthcare system, improving how women in politics are treated and broader gender inequality, and introducing a federal anti-corruption commission.

As a nurse, she said she had a clear interest in the labour movement as it had increased her wages, but that tax cuts proposed by the Coalition would leave her family better off.

Anderson is selling the business, which had several owners after it was founded and before she took over, and her experience of the pandemic will shape her vote.