The general picture was different. The blue majority in the Hastings-based electorate had been cut by a third from its peak of 9660 three years earlier, and Ms Lorck says now she hoped to knock the majority down to under 6500. As it happened, it was also one of the smaller Labour deficits - 33 National MPs around the country had bigger winning margins, three winning by more than 20,000 votes.
For Ms Lorck it was only the start of a four-year campaign targeting Vote 2017, which she sees now as quite winnable. If she does, a victory would make her the first woman to win a general electorate seat representing the people of Hastings or Napier.
She's particularly strong on education, and on family, something she's got right for the electoral race, for all five of the girls are part of the campaign. The eldest two - Tabitha, 21, and Brittney, 19 - are now able to vote, and a third will be eligible in 2020 when Ms Lorck would hope to be seeking re-election.
"Education is what leads a child to lifetime success," she says. "They deserve to be able to do the best they can. I'm extremely passionate about that, and Labour has the strongest policy of all in education."
It has to be in the right environment, hence big concerns for the housing crisis, and the need for everyone to have warm, safe and stable accommodation.
She says she's done the homework, and the groundwork, out door-knocking, street-corner meetings and meeting thousands of people, something she says inspires her most, as she learns of the things that affect and worry them most.
"People ask where I get the energy from," she says. "I get it from meeting people. I am a grassroots campaigner, with a very down-to-earth approach of putting people first.
"I think people are really committed to local issues," she says. "This is where we can make change, this is where we can see results."
With a history of 25 years in communications and business, she says she's represented most sectors, including being involved in other people's campaigns, not the least being that of man-about-the-house Damon Harvey as he won a place on the Hastings District Council last year.
"But running for Parliament is like no other," she says. "The last [general] election prepared me so well for this one."