DEPUTY Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce crisscrossed his electorate yesterday, travelling 400km to desperately shore up votes in what has been one of the most bitter battles of the election.
He even brought out his four teenage daughters - Bridgette, 19, Julia, 18, Caroline, 16, and Odette, 13 - to help with last-minute campaigning.
New England has been the setting for an intense battle -between Mr Joyce and former independent Tony Windsor, who held the seat for 12 years before resigning in 2013. 
It has even become personal, with hard-hitting television advertising campaigns and vandalised billboards.
But both men were on the same page on one thing yesterday - they both voted at their former primary schools.
While Mr Joyce hit the road from Aberdeen to Armidale, Mr Windsor - who famously joined forces with Rob Oakeshott in 2010 to support Julia Gillard's minority government - stayed around Tamworth.
Mr Windsor voted in the morning at -Werris Creek Public School, where he and his wife Lyn had attended kindergarten.
Mr Joyce headed back to his home town of Woolbrook, and the tiny school where he was school captain in 1978, to vote with his wife Natalie as well as his parents, Jim and Marie.
"I don't see it as a reflection of me but of the nation that someone can be the deputy prime minister and start here," Mr Joyce said.
"I have a great sense of attachment to the place I grew up in. I know the place like the back of my hand, I know the people." Mr Joyce said the campaign was going to be tight and the difference could be one vote.
"It's going to be a tight election. I'm certain nothing more needs to be done, there is nothing more I could have done," Mr Joyce said.
But he was confident the Coalition would get across the line. If elected, the first job on the agenda was to look after dairy farmers, he said. But tomorrow he plans to go to church, mow the lawn and take a "chook, wine and salad up the river for a picnic with my family".
In a rare interview, his daughters said they were extremely proud of their dad, who to them was "just our dad,â€‚not the Deputy Prime Minister".
"We are so proud of him. He has come out of small town accountancy firm to become the Deputy PM - it's a big difference," Julia said.
"When people come up to him in the street and say he's doing a good job, there is a sense of pride for us - 'That's my dad'." Win or lose, Mr Windsor said: "You haven't seen the end of me." Asked if he would stand again if he didn't win, he said: "I wouldn't rule anything out.
"I'm serious about some of these issues - they don't end on a certain Saturday and you don't have to be in politics to prosecute them." Mr Windsor said there were significant issues affecting his region, including groundwater systems as well as communications systems.
"Agriculture is crucial to our future and unless we start to address some of these things in the country, we will be the ones who are the victims, we will pay the penalty," he said.
Mr Windsor last night banned News Corp journalists from his campaign headquarters. Asked why, he said: "Well, I don't want them here." The Australian published a story in the last week of the campaign alleging that Mr Windsor was a schoolyard bully 50 years ago.When asked whether his decision was counter to democracy, Mr Windsor said: "We pay the rent on the office. The ABC is very welcome."