Politics is a funny game, particularly in the seat of Gilmore on the south coast of New South Wales where a Family First candidate is set to play a crucial role in the result. Except nobody knows who she is.

After a redistribution the seat, held by Liberal MP Joanna Gash, is now notionally Labor with a margin estimated between 0.2%-0.4%. Family First will direct its preferences to the Liberal Party and even its expected few hundred votes could prove vital to Gash’s chances.

But Family First’s Elizabeth Cunningham has been dubbed by one newspaper as the “invisible candidate”. Her own party has questioned her candidacy. The Australian Electoral Commission says she’s a “factory worker”. She lives outside of the electorate somewhere in Sydney, but having refused to reveal herself publicly, we don’t know much more.

As Electioneering reported over the weekend, it seems Cunningham was recruited by the Family First State Council with little input from senior party executives. A source said that it was possible mistakes were made choosing to run the candidate, and that the party was learning from its experiences over the past few weeks. They said Family First would be reviewing the decision after initially choosing the candidate in “good faith”.

Family First state director Phil Lamb said it was important for a minor party to run candidates in as many marginal seats as possible, and to do so it was sometimes necessary to look outside the area. A senior party source admitted “if the community sees that we’re fielding a candidate from outside the electorate, it could prove a disadvantage to the party”.

Gash says the election will be “a very close call” and she isn’t going to speculate about the outcome. “There are new areas in the electorate at this election, and we’re going to have to work hard to win,” she said.

She says it’s important to live in the area and represent the local community. Questioned why she would then be supporting a Family First candidate from outside the area, she responded by saying it was a matter of precedent and policy.

“We have always exchanged preferences with Family First and the Christian Democrats,” she said. “We go on policies when deciding preferences and we are more aligned with those two parties.”

It’s understood only individual members of the Family First State Party Council have contact details for Cunningham. These are the same members who initially recruited the candidate. A party source said that repeated requests had been put forward for the candidate to contact the State Party Office, and that the party was hoping she would be more forthcoming over the next few weeks.

Gash points to the Greens preference deal with Labor, saying “it could also carry them over the line”. But the Greens candidate Ben Van Der Wijngaart is a well-known member of the local community, the deputy mayor of Kiama Council and the Greens candidate at both the state and federal elections since 2004. Gash says any internal party politics were “issues for Family First”.

Gash says while she has some input into decisions about preferences, any deals are primarily arranged between the political parties. She said she wasn’t aware of any conversations between the two parties about the Family First candidate and how the nature of Cunningham’s candidacy would play out. Comment was sought from Liberal Party officials but none responded by deadline.

The Liberal Party campaign office responded to a request for comment by saying the party is preferencing Family First ahead of the Labor Party and the Greens in all electorates and this was consistent across the country.

*This article first appeared on Electioneering, a project from Express Media giving eight young writers the chance to blog on the election campaign