Despite clawing back more than a dozen seats in the NSW election, Labor's underwhelming result on the north coast and inner Sydney electorates have left some serious questions unanswered.
Labor Leader Luke Foley insists the election, which delivered up to 14 seats to the ALP, has revitalised the opposition and set it up well for the 2019 election.
"We've gone from a rump in the old parliament to a real opposition," he said.
NSW ALP secretary Jamie Clements said the party "well and truly" achieved its goals.
"We set ourselves a goal of winning between 10 and 15 seats and retaking our heartland," he told AAP.
"We picked up every seat we targeted in western Sydney, the Hunter and the Central Coast."
But a senior Labor source said the party's failure to pick up Lismore and Ballina from the Nationals was a disappointment.
Labor focused heavily on the north coast during the campaign, promising to ban coal seam gas activity in the area.
That attempt to tap into strong anti-CSG sentiments appears to have failed, with the Greens on track to win both seats.
"In the end, we did so much damage to the Nationals on coal seam gas that the Greens were able to sail in over the top of us," the Labor source said.
"But I don't know what else we could have done - we threw everything we had at it."
The Greens have also managed to fight off Labor in inner Sydney seats of Balmain and Newtown.
"They're tough seats for anybody to win if they want to actually govern," the ALP figure said.
"It's very difficult to be ideologically pure if you're trying to govern for the whole state."
Shadow treasurer Michael Daley said the election result suggested NSW voters weren't yet ready to come back to state Labor with memories of the last ALP government still fresh in their minds.
But he is confident the 2019 election will be a different story, with voters in the state demanding results from the Baird government who have "yet to deliver anything".
"They were allowed to skate through this time because they weren't us," Mr Daley told AAP.
"That won't work twice."
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