GhostWhoVotes reports the final Newspoll of the campaign has the LNP’s two-party preferred lead at a towering 60.8-39.2 (the decimal place being a feature of Newspoll’s final pre-election polls, for which they usually up the sample to about 1800), in line with the general impression elsewhere. The primary votes are 50 per cent for the LNP and 28 per cent for Labor. The results from the Newspoll at the start of the campaign were 47 per cent and 30 per cent, for 58-42 on two-party preferred. The poll also echoes last weekend’s Galaxy poll, as it does in all other respects, in showing Katter’s Australian Party has succeeded in its campaign period awareness-raising efforts: they are up five points to 9 per cent. The Greens are doing correspondingly poorly, down three points to 6 per cent, which compares with 8.4 per cent at the 2009 election. Also in common with Galaxy, Anna Bligh’s personal ratings have slumped, her approval down four to 36 per cent and her disapproval up seven to 51 per cent. Newman is respectively up two to 47 per cent and up three 40 per cent, and his lead as preferred premier has blown out from 50-41 to 58-36.
UPDATE: Full results here. Brisbane and rest-of-Queensland breakdowns are provided which, terrifyingly for Labor, show the carnage to be concentrated in the city where most of the damage awaits to be done: a swing of as much as 15 per cent (which is exactly Anna Bligh’s margin in South Brisbane), compared with about 8.5 per cent elsewhere.
Late news:
• Dennis Atkins in the Courier-Mail on the pressure the LNP was under mid-campaign:
Newman had been resisting internal urging to tackle the pecuniary interest issues for months, despite Labor having started their campaign against him seven months before the election. Now the party – with the steely James McGrath in the campaign director’s chair – and its leader had hit prime time, the stakes were so much greater, particularly because the target audience for Labor’s campaign was the voters of Ashgrove. After some intense internal discussion, Newman was convinced to announce on the second last Sunday that he and his wife would divest or blind trust their interests and, for good measure, declare he wasn’t a crook. There was another, until now, undisclosed tell-tale sign that the Labor campaign was biting. In the week before Newman made his bold announcement, the LNP team cut a high-risk ad. It was Lisa Newman, to camera, declaring her husband was a good man and saying these attacks were not just wrong but deeply hurtful to her family. It never saw the light of day but the fact it was made shows just how much pressure the Newman campaign in Ashgrove was under.
But then:
By the time Labor was getting traction on all this, two events derailed the whole thing. First, Bligh stood up in Caboolture and said she had no “material” to back the claims made against Newman. This was the “I got nothing” moment and sent the parties’ lines in their polling analysis bonkers. It was all going the wrong way for Bligh and the just-on-time right way for Newman. Two days later, the CMC offered the coup de grace, giving Newman an effective clearance and leaving Bligh high and dry … The timing of the CMC’s announcement – late on a Friday – left Labor tactically stranded. They couldn’t turn around their advertising buy for the weekend which meant the heavy negative spots on Newman kept running and the positive Bligh-to-camera burst didn’t get up until the last three broadcast days of the last week. When the ad ban came in at the end of Wednesday, Labor was left without what little paid media support they had and the small drag they had on the swing evaporated.
• Jamie Walker and Sarah Elks of The Australian report an LNP source says Katter’s Australian Party has “no chance” of winning any seats other than Mount Isa and Dalrymple.
• The Morning Bulletin newspaper has conducted its own poll of 330 respondents in its home seat of Rockhampton, probably with no great expertise, but with primary vote figures of 38 per cent for Labor candidate Bill Byrne, 37 per cent Gavin Finch of the LNP and 10 per cent for Shane Guley of Katter’s Australian Party. Retiring Labor member Rob Schwarten won the seat in 2009 with a two-party margin of 17.9 per cent.
• Bundaberg’s NewsMail has conducted an even more doubtful exercise involving 100 respondents in Burnett: 40 in Childers, 30 in Bargara and 30 in North Bundaberg. They found 42 supporters for LNP candidate Stephen Bennett, 23 for Labor’s Stuart Tomlinson and just 16 for incumbent Rob Messenger, who probably didn’t make the wisest career move when he quit mid-term to become an independent and declined to throw his lot in with Katter’s Australian Party.
• In a regular campaign feature where the Courier-Mail’s chief writers offer their verdict on the state of the campaign, Dennis Atkins goes nuclear: “The LNP will have the biggest majority in Queensland history – somewhere between 70 and 80 seats – I think nearer the latter. Labor will be reduced to 7 to 15 seats, closer to the former.” Madonna King tips “15 seats or less” for Labor. Koren Helbig and Sarah Vogler are more conservative, respectively tipping the LNP to win “as many as 70 seats” and Labor to to win fewer than 20. Steven Wardill likewise goes for a relatively modest “LNP 63, Labor 20, Independents 4, Katter’s Australian Party 2”. The general consensus is that Katter’s Australian Party should win Mount Isa and Dalrymple, but no more (Nanango is generally rated the third most likely prospect). Nobody is tipping any of the three sitting independents to lose, but I think the $2.50 on the LNP to unseat Peter Wellington in Nicklin is worth a flutter (albeit that it came down from $3 overnight). As for my own tip the other day that Labor would win 19 seats, I would like everyone to know that I wrote on Twitter shortly after: “Suspect I’m being slightly kind to ALP.”
I predict that most people who have predicted the outcome of the Qld elections* (note plural) will be wrong.
There are different regional elections occurring today, with entirely different issues, the only issue that nobody is discussing is a carbon tax.
For the first time in living memory in Queensland, I think we have an election with a swing sodetermined that no Labor seat can be considered ‘safe’ in the Mackerras sense. There is a tiny outside chance that Bligh could even lose hers since the vicious, below the belt personal/family attack strategy has been clearly identified with Anna Bligh rather than a broader ALP strategy.
The government deserves every single loss in this election.
I am with David WH: 70:14:2:3 (LNP/ALP/KAP/IND)
I’m happy with a benevolent dictatorship in the interim, until the ALP actually attracts real people again.. Not union egos and exALP envelope-lickers..
So ru, what are your LNP sources telling you today?
Exit polls out on Skynews shortly a/c Mr Speers.
Mexbeemer @ 90, Gregory may share a border with Mt Isa but the sitting member, Vaughn Johnson, is a rather Katter-like likeable larrikin himself, so I don’t see people dumping him for a Katter candidate. But a few of the northern seats will be interesting.
As far as the majority of seats go, it will be all over in 60 or 90 minutes of counting (if the Newspoll is anywhere near right, Labor will hold 7 or 8!), but for the Far North there may be a few seats where LNP and KAP are both on 33-40% of the vote, and we’ll have to wait till late to get an estimated 2PP vote. My tip – whoever is ahead on 1st prefs will eventually win, because the number who bother to give 2s and 3s will be at an all-time low. But we won’t know till the polling clerks do as s 127(5) of the Electoral Act suggests (it starts with “if the Commission considers it appropriate” but they generally do it), and run an indicative 2PP count – and they never do that until latish in the night.
[Exit polls out on Skynews shortly a/c Mr Speers.]
It’s only 4.30 in Qld!
[So ru, what are your LNP sources telling you today?]
Fiona Simpson will have trouble finding the funding to flood proof the roads she promised. 😛
MW
There is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship. Dictatorships are malevolent by definition and malign in operation.
I’m going to guess a rather different outcome to most here.
25 for labor and don’t care about the rest.
I get the feeling there’s been a lot of well funded sandbagging done by Labor in winnable seats, in some cases to the cost of even having booth workers in seats that are not winnable. There have been lots of phone calls and huge amounts of literature in some winnable ones such as the one where I live (Greenslopes). There were heaps of booth workers where I went to vote – even a Green who I suspect may have been “lent” to the Greens by Labor.
I think these were tactics which were very successful at the last SA elections and they may work again here. I may be proven wrong but if not, you heard it first here.
[“Having a Brisbane based LNP Premier also helps the Katter Party significantly.”]
I agree with this…. QLD is a very decentralised state with a seemingly very Brisbane focused governments.
Bligh got away with it because the LNP were a rabble, but I think everyone north of the Sunshine Coast is sick of it.
[Exit polls out on Skynews shortly a/c Mr Speers.]
Brittany has probably forgotten about daylight saving and is prematurely exiting.
The Greens vote here is probably a bellwether for their next federal election. I admit that in an election about leaders where one is liked and one is not liked, it becomes a two-horse race, but BOTH the ALP and Greens are down. This means strong bleed to coalition.
Itis fair to say that the Greens have done appallingly badly at coming across as a mainstream party. As such, it has now totally absorbed the dems vote, which was clearly inflating the rise for about 7 years and the Australian public have seen the true colours of the Greens and generally don’t like it.
I don’t think the Greens will attract double digits for elections much anymore. If it shrinks to 5% nationally, i predict that the powderkeg of power in this minor party will cause a split. They have had their day.
From five most marginal electorates. Nominate issues of most importance:
COL 69%; Delivery of state services 63%; carbon tax 44%; mining tax 35% newmans businessdealings 17%.
It wasn’t an open question, according to Speers.
The issues were chosen from a prompted list. Not an open question.
Mr Kroger and Mr Brough are busy conflating COL with the carbon tax.
[“I get the feeling there’s been a lot of well funded sandbagging done by Labor in winnable seats, in some cases to the cost of even having booth workers in seats that are not winnable.”]
Disagree, Labor have given up on a majority of their seats. Out of the 3 seats here in Townsville have only really seen posters and campaigning for the Townsville Labor member, the others have seemingly been written off as the too hard basket and been no shows.
Maybe things are different down in Brisbane but I doubt it, best save the money for the 2015 campaign.
You know Labor are in the brown stuff when they have to roll out Kevin Rudd AFTER Labor telling us he was going to be banned from campaigning(Gillard was taking over apparantly but that seemed to last all of 5 minutes)
GeeWhiz
Please provide a link to where Labor is supposed to have banned Mr Rudd from campaigning in Queensland?
Or are you making it up?
Boerwar. As usual, you talk through your boder. Singapore is perhaps the closest and most successful ‘benevolent dictatorship’ in our modern era. The people’s action party has ruled continuously since 1959 and almost every commentator on the planet regards Singapore as a ‘single party state’. Yet it is renowned for being free of corruption, low in crime, taxes (less than 7% of gross for the median wage earner) and has the highest rate of state sponsored home ownership in Asia. Malevolent? Singapore? Arse dialogue, Boer.
Of course I was using the phrase metaphorically, of course Qld is still a democracy, but just as with Joh, Beattie and Bligh, with no upper house, what your party wants, it gets.
When the ‘dictator’ takes liberties with the electorate or lies about asset sales or gets stinky with nepotism, then the voters revolt and we get a new dictator, who must at least appear to be benevolent or he/she doesn’t get a shot.
[PvO making stuff up, Andrew Fraser seen as next leader.]
Fraser said 18 months ago he will retire from politics in 2016. Don’t these people have any background knowledge?
[“Please provide a link to where Labor is supposed to have banned Mr Rudd from campaigning in Queensland?”]
After the leadership challenge Rudd was told not to campaign in QLD and that Gillard was taking over.
http://smh.com.au/nsw/rudd-opts-for-low-profile-20120310-1uruq.html
Make of it what you will though, we know a lot of ALP voters here still think Rudd “retired” from the PM’ership 🙂
I’m confused here with people saying that KAP will win two seats namely Thuringowa and Mt Isa, finishing with two seats.
They already hold two seats. Do people think they won’t hold them or what. I thought they were a good chance for at least 4 seats and a possible 5.
Boerwar:
Kroger is a woeful commentator, and he’s a Victorian. Surely Brough wasn’t the only QLD Lib Sky could find.
GW
[Kevin Rudd has retired from his starring role in the Queensland election. The newly minted backbencher will watch from the audience as the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, introduces the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, at Labor’s official campaign launch at the Brisbane Convention Centre today.
Mr Rudd has kept a low profile since losing the federal Labor Party leadership challenge to Ms Gillard a fortnight ago.
Where security guards were once needed to keep the media at bay when Mr Rudd stepped out in the must-win seat of Ashgrove, he has scaled back his involvement to a few select appearances at events around his electorate.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/rudd-opts-for-low-profile-20120310-1uruq.html#ixzz1q0wPgO47%5D
So, Mr Rudd was not told to stop anything. He made a choice of his own accord. He was not banned from campaigning. He continued to do so.
Ergo, the link you have provided demonstrates that you have made four incorrect statements.
c
I try not to let the charisma factor unduly influence my judgement of people. I do find it difficult to get past Mr Kroger’s persona to the substance of what he is saying.
[Make of it what you will though, we know a lot of ALP voters here still think Rudd “retired” from the PM’ership]
Nobody ‘here’ thinks that.
Hey Kroger if you are going to make commentary on seats learn how to pronounce them.
Small uptake of HTVs on Brissie booths in North West. Bins full of them now. People came in knowing just hownthey want to vote.
Some very very experienced and varied members now coming into QLD parliament: ex CEOs, businessmen and women, youth workers, Social workers, Doctors, Lawyers, Builders, Teachers, ex Navy, ex Army…. Not a single pimple faced party hack staffer, not a single union thug… A far more representative collection of men and women from all walks of life… Hey! Just like a real democracy should probably be!!!!!
I love Mal Brough :kiss: without him Slippery would not be in da robes. 😆
MW
There is no need to get abusive.
[Boerwar. As usual, you talk through your boder. Singapore is perhaps the closest and most successful ‘benevolent dictatorship’ in our modern era. The people’s action party has ruled continuously since 1959 and almost every commentator on the planet regards Singapore as a ‘single party state’. Yet it is renowned for being free of corruption, low in crime, taxes (less than 7% of gross for the median wage earner) and has the highest rate of state sponsored home ownership in Asia. Malevolent? Singapore? Arse dialogue, Boer.]
As it turns out, I spend rather a lot of time in Singapore and I always take the trouble to catch up with the local issues and the local politics.
I can tell you that Singapore is not a dictatorship. In fact, the ruling party got rather a significant touch up in the last election and significant measures introduced in the latest budget reflects the fright that they got.
Mick Wilkinson – “The Greens vote here is probably a bellwether for their next federal election.”
Complete crap. The QLD state vote for the Greens will not be indicative of their Federal vote. The 2009 state election result was only 8.37% but in 2010 their first QLD senator was elected. I expect the Greens vote to go down today, but still expect them to either win, or be very close to winning a QLD senate spot next federal election.
New thread.