We are almost here folks - the end is nigh.

Yes, we are talking (again) about the federal election this Saturday and the most important decision our community will make this year.

As of last Saturday, exactly one week before polling day, almost 2.4 million people had cast their vote early.

That’s around 400,000 more people than at the same period of the election campaign in 2022. And this also takes into account the Anzac Day and Easter holidays that reduced the length of pre-poll days in the lead-up to the big day.

The pre-poll vote number will grow as the trend for early voting has increased. It seems the democracy sausage is losing out to people’s desire to avoid the queues, traffic and the tradition of running the gauntlet of volunteers shoving how-to-vote cards in your face.

As we predicted, there has been almost wall-to-wall coverage of our electorate across national news publications. Here’s just a snippet:

“How a sense of betrayal brought a major complication to a battleground seat” from Nick O’Malley at The Sydney Morning Herald is a profile piece on the big three contenders being Labor incumbent Fiona Phillips MP, Liberal contender Andrew Constance and Climate 200-backed Berry local Kate Dezarnaulds.

In particular, the article focuses on Constance and his "backflip" on climate action following the Black Summer fires of 2020.

Sinead Mangan at ABC News has highlighted Gilmore as one of the "Five seats that could change the course of the election" and profiled the plight of Kristy Alleson who has been forced to move house 13 times in three years.

The housing crisis in Gilmore is very real and housing affordability and rental protections are at the top of her agenda.

This follows a recent report from Cotality (formerly Corelogic) that the electorate of Gilmore is the 19th-most unaffordable electorate in Australia.

“A holiday destination for some, but no one is coasting in Gilmore, Labor’s most marginal seat” writes Caitlin Cassidy and Jordyn Beazley, for The Guardian.

Their piece focuses on the Black Summer fires of 2020, climate policy and the renewable energy debate.

It also highlights an element that The Bugle has previously focused on – the Independent factor – with Dezarnaulds suggesting that she had about 13% of the vote, prior to her campaign’s official lunch.

If she doesn’t end up as one of the last two standing, her preference flow may determine the winner.

Our colleagues at The Illawarra Mercury have continued the focus on the Black Summer fires and climate policies more broadly in the “Gap widens in knife-edge seat of Gilmore, one of Australia’s most marginal”.

They have highlighted polling conducted by YouGov during April 17 and 24 that showed Labor coming in at 54 per cent on a two-party preferred basis, compared to 46 per cent for the Coalition.

Interestingly, in a dramatic flip from the 2022 results, Phillips attracted 36.2 per cent of the primary vote compared to 33.5 per cent for Constance.

If this analysis is realised, it would represent an almost 10 per cent drop in his favourability since the 2022 election.

Throughout all the coverage and content focusing on our community, there has been one constant: 373.

That is the number of votes that stood between Phillips and Constance in 2022.

Your vote will determine tangible outcomes related to housing, climate policy, cost of living.

These issues will have a profound impact on all of us, over the next three years and beyond.

The Bugle’s View is if you are not one of the 2.4 million people that has already voted in this election, please make sure you make a (formal) vote on or before this Saturday - the Gilmore electorate is one of the few places in the country where it really will matter.