The table below features results from the TNS poll of three Queensland marginal seats published in yesterday’s Courier Mail, not to be confused with Newspoll’s effort in The Australian, along with those of a similar poll TNS conducted in June. Results in bold are two-party preferred figures, the rest are primary vote figures I have arrived at by crudely distributing the undecided vote.
| Dickson | Hinkler | Longman | ||||
| SEPT | JUNE | SEPT | JUNE | SEPT | JUNE | |
| Labor | 44 | 54 | 43 | 49 | 46 | 46 |
| Coalition | 56 | 46 | 57 | 51 | 54 | 54 |
| Labor | 37 | 47 | 36 | 39 | 37 | 39 |
| Coalition | 50 | 42 | 51 | 40 | 45 | 47 |
| Greens | 7 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 7 | 6 |
| Democrats | 1 | 3 | 1 | * | 1 | 1 |
| One Nation | 2 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
| Others | 3 | 3 | 5 | 9 | 6 | 4 |
At the risk of appearing fickle, the bad news for Labor here and in Newspoll has demanded a dramatic revision of predicted outcomes for that state in the federal election guide, with Labor stripped of five out of seven projected gains. That limits Labor’s haul to the Townsville seat of Herbert and the inner southern Brisbane seat of Moreton. This is a very conservative reading of the results and the Herbert and Moreton judgements are stated without confidence. I have also changed my mind again about the outer eastern Melbourne seat of La Trobe, partly swayed by Mark Latham’s loss-cutting decision to pull the plug on federal funding for the Scoresby Freeway, and it is now back in the Coalition column. The combined effect is to turn the tables on the Election Projection scoreboard, which now shows a narrow majority for the Coalition.
