There is a groundswell in Warringah and – worryingly for Abbott – the disparate groups are coordinating

If the posters popping up around Manly and sales of anti–Tony Abbott T-shirts are any gauge, the member for Warringah has a fight on his hands.

“There’s a huge amount of grassroots activity. Organisations are popping out of the ground everywhere. And we are finding each other,” says Louise Hislop, the convenor of Voices of Warringah.

One couple have started the @thinktwicewarringah Instagram account, which is responsible for a series of posters going up around the electorate.

“Tony, it’s time. 👋🏼 The fight has only just begun! An electorate which has been taken advantage of. Tones won’t be happy with us 😬,” says the note on their site.

The posters themselves feature some of Abbott’s more memorable quotes under the tagline “First Sharma, now Abbott” – a reference to the unprecedented defeat that the Liberals suffered last month in the Wentworth byelection.

One of the leaders of the campaign, who asked to be anonymous, said: “We are young professionals who are fed up with Tony. He doesn’t represent the youth in the electorate – or anyone much.”

The group started off postering at night but are now busy in all their free time because the feedback has been so supportive, they say. “It’s grown very fast. We started a week ago but we now have volunteers putting up posters from Dee Why all the way to Mosman.”

The momentum is going to get to fever pitch Nathan Thomas

Mark Kelly, who has been making surfboards in Manly for 20 years, is behind the production of T-shirts and a Facebook page, Let’s not reelect Tony Abbott.

“I started it in March this year with a friend and we have 1,200 people now,” he says.

“I’ve sold about 150 ‘Time’s up Tony T-shirts’. I have been delivering them by hand and I’ve got a whole lot of orders from Mosman.

“It’s a really nice experience because I have some really great conversations. He’s just really pissed a lot of people off because he’s just far too rightwing for them.”

Nathan Thomas, a former young Liberal and activist for marriage equality, has reactivated his organisation People of Warringah.

“There’s a lot of things happening, and the momentum is going to get to fever pitch,” he says. “There are lots of really impressive people on board this time.”

Campaigns like this can sometimes be the work of a few dedicated individuals who appear to have deeper roots than they have. But, ominously for Abbott, his opponents are collaborating and they appear to have the three essential elements to run a political campaign: money, coordination, and boots on the ground.

Hislop helped run the 2016 campaign against Abbott by the independent candidate James Mathison. The host of Australian Idol came into the race relatively late but still managed to win 11.4% of the vote.

The success of Kerryn Phelps has made it seem like Warringah is a possibility Richard Walker

Compared with 2016, Hislop says, this time feels entirely different. “The mood has changed. It’s like a secret society – everyone is reaching out to each other.”

In 2016 Abbott was still a wronged prime minister who had lost the leadership to Malcom Turnbull; in 2019 his role in deposing Turnbull and scuttling his efforts to address climate change will be fresh in the minds of voters.

Importantly, all the groups are caucusing to ensure that they get the best independent candidate or at least prevent a Melbourne Cup field. The groups plan to hold their own informal preselection process in coming weeks.

The education campaigner Jane Caro came out of the blocks early and the Northern Beaches mayor, Michael Regan, hasn’t ruled himself out. But there are rumours of even more high-profile candidates in the wings who will require little introduction to the electorate.

The internal debate is now about whether to announce the candidate before Christmas, or to wait until closer to the election.

Warringah is both similar and different to Wentworth.

In the 2016 election Abbott won handsomely with 61.5% of the two-party-preferred vote, beating the Greens candidate, Clara Williams Roldan, who leapfrogged Labor in the preference count to finish second.

But the primary vote tells a more nuanced and potentially worrying story for Abbott in the light of the Wentworth byelection. In 2016 Abbott attracted 51.6% of first preferences, down nine points on his 2013 result, while the ALP got 14.8%; the Greens 12.2% and the independent 11.4%.

If the independent can suppress Abbott’s primary vote to below 40% and come second ahead of Labor and the Greens, then a repeat of the Wentworth phenomenon is possible.

The ReachTel poll of 854 Warringah voters, undertaken for GetUp in September, suggests Warringah is now marginal. It put Abbott ahead 54% to 46% two-party-preferred, but found his primary support was at 39.3% against an unnamed independent who attracted 13.6% of the vote. Labor had 24.5%, the Greens 12.3%, and One Nation 4.3%.

The boots on the ground for door-knocking and handing out flyers at polling places will come from the activist groups Get Up and Stop Adani. These groups usually run on issues but produce how-to-vote guides supporting candidates whose policies align with their priorities, such as climate change action or stopping new coalmines.

GetUp initially did not have Warringah on its hit list but added it after the ReachTel polling and in light of the Wentworth result.

We almost can’t keep up with the interest and enthusiasm Josh Creaser

“The success of Kerryn Phelps has made it seem like Warringah is a possibility,” says GetUp’s Warringah coordinator, Richard Walker, who has been carrying out phone banking and has made 4,000 calls so far. (There are about 103,000 enrolled voters in the seat.)

“The first question we ask is: ‘What would you say to Tony Abbott if he was sitting in front of you now?’ The answers are often humorous,” Walker says.

He has also been buoyed by the number of people who say they would vote for an independent candidate. “I had seven men in Mosman who said they would vote independent instead of Liberal,” he says.

GetUp is handing out flyers throughout the electorate and at Manly wharf, inviting people to a community meeting on 20 November in Manly. The group is hoping to attract at least 200 volunteers who can then round up more people for a major door-knocking exercise on 8 December.

Stop Adani Warringah is already in full swing. Its convener, Josh Creaser, says Adani’s claims that it is weeks away from funding its giant coal project in Queensland has added new urgency to the cause. There are now groups in Queenscliff, Freshwater, Beacon Hill and Allambie, while two more are about to form in Mosman and Frenchs Forest.

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Creaser says there were 120 people out door-knocking last weekend, which he says is extraordinary given that the election is likely still six months away.

“We almost can’t keep up with the interest and enthusiasm. I see a lot of similarities with Wentworth,” he said.

The money part of the Warringah campaign is still a work in progress, but the former prime minister’s son, Alex Turnbull, has pledged to help fund an independent in Warringah and there are several wealthy former Liberal supporters who are part of the North Shore Environmental Stewards who will help fund an Abbott rival.

Of course, the former prime minister is a fighter. He held a fundraising event at Doltone House in Sydney last Thursday attended by 650 people and is said to have raised a substantial war chest.