Queensland election: late counting

The late mail on the Queensland state election, at which the precise size of a modest LNP majority remains at issue.

Click here for full display of Queensland state election results.

Friday evening

Another seat has come on to the radar (I am consistently indebted here to comments thread contributors, as I really only have about half-an-hour or so a day to devote to analysing the results at present) in the shape of Aspley, which has joined neighbouring Pine Rivers in trending in Labor’s favour in late counting. This is in fact part of a broader trend, evident to those who have been following the statewide two-party preferred estimate on my results entry page, where the LNP’s two-party lead exceeded 54-46 after the pre-poll voting centres had finished reporting on Sunday, but has since wound back to 53.5-46.5. This is mostly down to absent election day votes, which have recorded fairly modest swings for no obvious reason I can think of.

The situation is Aspley is that the late reporting votes have collectively been only slightly harmful to Labor, whereas projections based on election day and early voting results on Saturday and Sunday presumed they would be more substantially so. Based on how preferences seemed to be flowing when the ECQ was conducting a two-candidate preferred count, I only get to an LNP winning margin of 62 votes. However, I presume only late-arriving postals remain, and this will assuredly favour the LNP. Labor’s hope is that the preferences of late reporting votes were more favourable than election day and early votes.

That said, my expectation that only postal votes remain keeps getting confounded in South Brisbane, the one count I’m monitoring closely: today’s counting saw the addition of 210 absent early votes, 203 absent election day votes, 292 in-person declaration votes and only 109 postals. These were collectively unhelpful for the Greens, who need the LNP to finish ahead of Labor: 270 of the votes counted today were for Labor and 231 LNP, together with 251 for the Greens and 37 for One Nation.

Thursday evening

Today’s counting from South Brisbane saw the LNP catch up 95 votes on Labor through absent early votes, and fall back 19 on in person declaration votes and one on postals. I’m not sure if there’s any more to come in the way of absents, but I believe there will be around 900 postals which should narrow a gap that currently sits at 696 to around 600. The LNP would then need their share of One Nation preferences to be around 50% higher than Labor’s out of a three-way split inclusive of the Greens. As noted below, the difference in 2020 in this seat was 44%. For those of you who have just joined us, the issue here is that Labor wins the seat if they make the final count ahead of the LNP, and the Greens do if they don’t. We presumably won’t know the answer until the full distribution of preferences, which will presumably be late next week.

Wednesday evening

What I had previously rated the slim prospect of Labor getting over the line in Pine Rivers might yet come to pass – indeed, my own results system is calling it for them, but this is based on very rosy assumptions for Labor about how late postals will behave. The ABC also projects a Labor lead, in their case of 50.4-49.6. The ECQ’s way of doing things is not at all conducive to projecting results late in the count – it stops conducting its notional two-preference count and, still more confoundingly, records its initial and check count results for the primary vote separately. I have just switched over from the former to the latter in my results display, which is important in the case of Pine Rivers since a number of corrections in the check count were substantially to Labor’s advantage. However, it also means a lot of results, particularly of absent votes, that were in my system before are not there now, and will not return to it until the check count catches up with them.

Another late turn in counting is that Mirani now looks like going to the LNP rather than One Nation-turned-Katter’s Australian Party member Stephen Andrew, who has done distinctly badly on absent and to a lesser extent postal votes.

The Greens’ chances in South Brisbane took a hit yesterday with the addition of further absent election day results, which my assessment from yesterday had not accounted for. These were evidently from a Labor-friendly area, with 321 (35.9%) of the newly added batch being cast for for Labor and 241 (27.0%) for the LNP, which accordingly widens the gap the LNP will need to close on postals if Labor is to drop out and the Greens are to win the seat.

Tuesday evening

Belated recognition of what’s been evident to comments thread denizens, that the Greens’ defeat in South Brisbane is not indeed an accomplished fact owing to the outside chance that Labor will not make the final count. With four candidates in the count, One Nation are a very distant last on 984 votes, and Labor leads the LNP 9730 to 9043. The two variables in the equation are the extent to which that gap will narrow on last postals and in person declaration votes, and whether One Nation preferences will flow to the LNP strongly enough to close it altogether.

My highball estimate of the number of outstanding postals is 1300, which will put the lead at about 10120 to 9580 if they behave the way postals have to this point, with One Nation on about 1030. When One Nation was excluded in the seat in 2020, 62% of their votes went to the LNP, 18% to Labor and the balance to the Greens. Applying that to the above will close the gap between Labor and the LNP to barely more than 100.

In person declaration votes are less likely to be helpful to the Greens – of 688 formal votes in 2020, 215 were for Labor (31.25%) and only 107 for the LNP (15.55%), compared with respective overall vote shares of 34.42% and 22.84%. The situation is nonetheless worth monitoring, and will be the focus of whatever further updates I provide over the coming week or so.

Sunday evening

Counting today caught up with the incomplete early voting centres, leaving three consequential categories of vote type unaccounted for: absent early votes, absent election day votes, and around a quarter to a third of the postals which will trickle in between now and the cut-off point next Wednesday. My results system isn’t giving 18 seats away, but it rather errs on the conservative side in late counting. Only where the projected margin is inside 1% do I reckon the late counting to be worth following in detail, though a surprise may well emerge somewhere or other.

That means Maryborough, Pine Rivers and Pumicestone, all with the LNP ahead by respective margins of 1.0%, 0.4% and 0.7%. As will shortly be explained, even here the odds are fairly substantially against a late reversal. Leaving them out of the equation gives the LNP 50 seats, Labor 34, Katter’s Australian Party four, the Greens one, independent one and three in doubt. To deal with the latter in turn:

Maryborough. If 2020 is any guide, there should be a swag of over 5000 absent early votes here, giving Labor at least some hope of closing a gap that currently stands at 14903 to 14088, a deficit of 815. The surprise would be considerable though, as they only broke 54-46 Labor’s way in 2020, compared with nearly 62-38 overall. Absent election day votes were more favourable to Labor, though below par overall, and there should be less than 1000 of them. Then there’s a further 2000 postals that will surely favour the LNP, so this probably won’t stay on the watch list for long.

Pine Rivers. The LNP leads 14488 to 14894, or by 406, to which upwards of 2000 outstanding postals should add around 200. There should be around 2000 absent early votes and 1300 absent election day votes, which collectively scored similarly to the overall result in 2020.

Pumicestone. Here the LNP lead is a formidable 962, or 14916 to 13954. My system is not giving this away because absent early and absent election day votes, of which there should respectively be around 5000 and 1000, broke around 59-41 in their favour in 2020, compared with 55-45 overall. However, that suggests a Labor gain of only around 300, and even that should be partly offset by around 2500 late-arriving postals favouring the LNP.

Saturday evening

After what initially looked like a remarkably weak result for the Liberal National Party early in the evening, the Queensland election in many ways played to script, once late-reporting pre-poll votes were shown to have swung harder than votes cast on election day. The LNP appears headed for a modest majority in its own right, built largely on a long-anticipated regional backlash against Labor that encompassed all three Townsville seats, the Cairns and Cape York Peninsula seats of Barron River, Mulgrave and Cook, and further northern Queensland losses in Keppel, Mackay and likely Rockhampton.

Labor perhaps did better than expected in regional seats further south, potentially pulling off an upset win in Bundaberg. However, they appear likely to lose Hervey Bay, Caloundra, Nicklin and Maryborough, whose retiree-heavy population delivered the party rare victories in 2020. However, my results system is not giving any Labor seats away in Brisbane, although they are behind the eight-ball in Aspley, Pine Rivers, Pumicestone, Redlands and, somewhat surprisingly, Capalaba. Labor has its nose in front in its only Gold Coast seat, Gaven, and will more than likely recover its by-election loss of Ipswich West.

It was a disappointing night for the minor players, particularly for the Greens, who far from expanding their inner urban footprint have been defeated in South Brisbane, where they were not granted a repeat of the LNP’s decision to preference them ahead of Labor in 2020, and fell well short in their other target seats, leaving them only with Maiwar. Talk of Katter’s Australian Party sweeping all before it proved off the mark, although they retain their firm grip on Traeger, Hill and Hinchinbrook. Stephen Andrew, who defected to the party from One Nation, is fighting off a challenge from the LNP in Mirani. One Nation emerged empty-handed, and Sandy Bolton in Noosa remains the parliament’s only independent.

This post will be progressively updated over the coming days on late counting in seats in doubt, of which there are a good many. Quite a few pre-polling centres had yet to report as of the close last night, so we should see large numbers added to the count today.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

576 comments on “Queensland election: late counting”

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  1. Dr Bonham – wow, thanks for swinging by this thread again. I see you were here this morning.
    I agree with others, this particular QLD thread has brought out some of Australia’s major players.
    Your thoughts on the earlier poster who suggested that the “National LNP 2PP”, may be underestimated since late August. Is it fantasy or is there substance?

    We’ve all become used to “86.7% of Greens voters preference Labor 2nd”, but is it your reading today that this is holding up or is the loyalty perhaps slipping. There has clearly been a major division between the Labor and greens over the past few months., and we’ve seen the Green preferences play a different card in both the NT and QLD.
    Is it possible the newspaper 2PP’s may be underestimating the LNP 2PP?
    Should we perhaps pay a bit of attention to those polling outfits who provide a “respondent allocated” 2PP.
    Thanks for dropping by Dr.B. It’s a great thread and you’re obviously very welcome.
    Jeepers posters, this thread just keeps going and going

  2. paul A – what we should pay heed to first of all here re federal preference flows here is the 74% flow from One Nation to LNP. That’s up about 6.5 points. ON is polling 7.1 nationwide according to BludgerTrack. If a similar preference shift in ON occurs nationwide that’s a 0.45 point shift in the 2PP by itself. But it might not. A similar shift was also seen in Fadden by-election but that’s also Queensland.

    The record high flow from the Greens to Labor in 2022 might well not be repeated but Qld doesn’t provide any new evidence on that front. I’ve seen lots of elections where the Greens and Labor fight each other a lot but the preference flow doesn’t change a lot. Wouldn’t surprise me to see it drop back a few points which if so knocks Labor down another 0.3 or so.

    There might be swings the other way. For instance the generic “other” includes an allowance for UAP but they might not run and it might be people who would have voted for them are already mostly saying One Nation. The IND to ALP flow could also plausibly increase but that was actually almost completely useless to ALP in terms of actually winning seats last time.

  3. Can’t remember who said it but it was suggested that this was a good election for the ALP to lose. I genuinely think the complete opposite. This is a great election for the LNP to win. There is a huge amount of latent positivity around Queensland and Brisbane in particular at the moment. The economy is booming, inflation is coming down, there was just a run of three surpluses in a row. The budget is in a good condition despite what right wing media will have some people here believe, especially when you’re considering debt alongside assets and potential revenue. With friendly media coverage I can see Crisafulli settling in for the long haul if he’s able to replicate Brisbane City Council and keep the crazies in his party at bay.

    As a Labor man, I’m not feeling too good about this. Crisafulli moved to Brisbane years ago, has moderated somewhat and seems to be learning from both the mistakes of the past and the success of Schrinner and co.

  4. Yeah, it is better when we talk psephological things and we don’t stoop to name calling and political arguments, which is why this thread works so well.
    Contrast with the U.S thread, that one is a cesspit really.
    Is Crisafulli a moderate or a Campbell Newman clone? Good question.

  5. Queensland governments tend to work in epochs – Labor from 1915 until 1957, the Nats from 1957 until 1989, Labor from 1989 to 2024 (maybe) – only in 2028 will we know if there has been a definite break with the Second Labor Epoch. 2012 looked as though it would be but that did not come to pass.

  6. Hi Blackburnpseph,

    Nats had a massive gerrymander for all those 1957 until 1989 years.

    The good old days of Joh!

    Fortunately, I can say I was only a baby through the early part of that, then Dad headed for NSW with the family, so we missed all of that.

  7. South Brisbane looks like it’s very much in the doubtful category now, Antony Green is estimating final first preference vote shares of 32.2% for Labor and 31.4% for the LNP. One Nation’s 3.3% primary is reported to split 72.4% to the LNP in South Brisbane so when they are excluded, based on these figures you end up with 33.7% LNP with Labor on a maximum of 33.1% of the 3PP vote. So it looks very much up in the air whether the LNP gets excluded before 2PP and even if they make the 2PP whether Labor or Greens gets elected.

    https://antonygreen.com.au/qld2024-preference-flows-and-vote-by-type-compared-to-2020/

  8. For a brief period on Sat night, it looked maybe the Greens had been eradicated from Queensland politics for a minimum of 4 years. Now reading above, they may be status quo from 2020 to 2024. All because the LNP increased its vote in South Brisbane by just enough. Strange things happen sometimes.
    Also, thanks to Nadia for bringing increased expertise to the site.

  9. G’day all, I think we should get some more clarity on South Brisbane and Pine Rivers today. Not that any of it alters the overall outcome, but nonetheless individual seat counts are interesting in their own statistical sense.

  10. Brucemainstream: no election is ever good to lose but if you’ve got to lose its best to do it while leaving surpluses and no stink of corruption. Mr Crisifulli is making all the right noises but the LNP is still the LNP – they will want to do LNP type things otherwise what’s the point of being there. It may well turn out that they have turned the corner and are now a modern progressive alternative to Labor that will also sweep Brisbane next time, who knows the future? But governing is hard work and even a supportive media is not enough to quell dissent in the days of social media discontent. So we will will see how the brainstrust of the LNP ministry negotiates the slings and arrows of straddling Qlds increasingly turbulent city country divide.

  11. Princeplanet: good morning mate!
    Steven Miles at least can pick a decent sort of shadow ministry from 34 or 35 MPs, most of the experience and talent is still there.

  12. mj: That 72.4% in Antony’s post is a 2CP split, further down he says “The information I have been given is that One Nation preferences are splitting 65% LNP, 20% Labor and 15% Greens.”

  13. As a Labor man, I’m not feeling too good about this. Crisafulli moved to Brisbane years ago, has moderated somewhat and seems to be learning from both the mistakes of the past and the success of Schrinner and co.
    His first problem is Katter’s Born Alive Bill.
    Have a conscience vote, go back to opposition in ’28.
    Guessing he’ll have to appoint the leaders of the ginger group to the Ministry and use threats to deter backbenchers crossing the floor.
    ————————————————–
    It’s a National Party heavy Government, no doubt about it.
    The lesson from Schrinner and Quirk is that public interactions with the BCC are likely to be pleasant.
    That’s not the case with the State Gov’t, where interactions with the QPS are unlikely to be cordial.
    Palaszczuk kept them on a tight leash, hence the youth crime wave.
    Crisafulli will let them loose.

  14. My useless calculations from current ECQ figures for South Brisbane. Assuming ON prefernces per posts above 65% to LNP, 20% to ALP, and postal rejection rate stays the same.

    If all postals received and no more absences, LNP over ALP by ~85

    If 90% of all postals received and no more absences, LNP over ALP by ~15

    I have no idea how many postals are usually received, or how many more absences might come in.

    Could end up being a single digit margin either way, and then presumably a recount?

  15. I love a seat like South Brisbane with three candidates on roughly one third of the vote. Speaks to a healthy democracy. (It also shows off the benefit of preferential voting vs FPTP)

  16. Just looking again at South Brisbane,
    From the ECQ website :

    * 5362 postals issued
    * 3655 returned, of which 50 have been excluded for various reasons. (Usually no date or unwitnessed).

    So a raw figure of remaining postals would be a max of 1700.
    Some people apply for a postal, and then change their mind and decide to vote in person. So as a rough guess, maybe cut off another 700 postals. I’d say probably we should have around 1000 postals to count, which have to be received by 5PM Tues 5-Nov, to be included.

    Link: https://www.ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/election-events/2024-state-general-election

    At the right of the screen is a column titled “Election data”.
    2nd tab down is the data on postal votes.

    I think also they do two recounts, and if the numbers don’t come back the same they do a third and final count. I’m actually not too sure what happens if the parties aren’t happy with the final count.
    One of the legal minded posters or big psephs on the site might be able to clarify.

    We may not even get to the final count. The battle could be over who makes the final two.

    Thanks michael too.

    LukeM – yes it’s a thriller this one. Similar to a couple of inner Darwin seats at the recent NT election. Fascinating stuff and the numbers will eventually deliver a winner.

  17. FPTP – The Greens would’ve been declared the winner.

    OPV – If the LNP recommended a “just vote 1”, then they may exhaust and most likely the Greens would hang on. Perhaps speaks to Chrisafulli’s motivation to re-introduce OPV.

    FPV – well playing out live now. Looking like an ALP gain, but extremely tight.

  18. Full recount if the margin is less than 100 in Qld.
    Happened in 2012 in Bulimba.
    Di Farmer 19 ahead, recount turned up an ‘irregularity’, LNP won by 19.

  19. Thanks Badthinker.
    You’re always handy with your electoral law.

    Sorry also, same rule applies at the 3PP stage, or only at the end?
    Per Fargo’s quick calculations it’s looking like being somewhere between 15 – 85 votes. which sounds
    about right

  20. One thousand postals won’t be enough for the Greens. They’ll be hoping for something closer to William’s upper estimate of 1300, and even then they would need a very strong flow towards LNP.

    The Greens need LNP to be at least 30 votes in front of Labor when the declaration votes come in, and preferably more like 60.

    Current flow of postals is 41.53 percent LNP, 30.07 percent Labor. Factoring in a tiny gain for LNP from ON preferences, that’s a difference of a smidgen under 12 percentage points. Twelve percent of 1300 might be just enough to keep the Greens in the hunt.

  21. There is a old saying that a week is a long time in politics and that is true.
    Re Abortion
    if any party or mp wishes to raise the issue they should be able to do so.
    I could not see a justification for not allowing a conscience vote of all mps on this issue. ..
    The current premier during the election campaign should have made this abundantly clear. .. he did not
    Also any mps should have honestly advised their electors where they stood on this issue.. which again did not happen .

  22. Abortion is one of those issues where the major parties usually close ranks and do their best to have a no-policy policy, because they realise if they do anything else they can’t win.

  23. ABC has just updated on South Brisbane.

    Another batch of votes tallying to 332

    * Greens (an extra) 118
    * ALP + 110
    * LNP + 90
    * ONP + 14

    Slipping out of reach of the LNP getting to No.2 me thinks.
    No idea where the ballots have come from.

  24. Nadia,

    211 of those ballots were in-person declaration votes which broke about 10 percent in favour of Labor as expected (I’m getting better at this). The rest were postals where LNP gained just a couple of votes, which isn’t good enough for the Greens.

  25. Thanks AM.
    Will come down to the PHON preferences, but they’ll have to go a lot higher than the current 65%.
    Looking like an ALP gain.

  26. Re South Brisbane irrespective of the margin between 1st and second I suspect this is as Waa suggested on the night an alp gain from greens.
    But what does the lnp do in future continuously shift the destination of their preferences?

  27. Mick, if they’re smart, yes.
    The goal would be to pit Labor vs the Greens at any seat where the Greens are polling > 15%.
    The purpose of this would be to force Labor to divert resources away from outer suburban areas where the LNP is competitive, and back into the inner city.

    As an example, someone posted on an earlier QLD thread that there were Labor volunteers all over Sth Brisbane, Kangaroo point & East Brisbane. Where I voted at my outer northern suburbs booth last Weds, there were no Labor people handing out HTV’s. Not even a tent. There were 2 Greens, and 4 LNP’s, but no Labor volunteers. It’s only one booth, but if repeated across metro Brisbane, it suggests to me that the ALP dragged volunteers into the inner city to go hand to hand combat with the Greens.

  28. “Re South Brisbane irrespective of the margin between 1st and second I suspect this is as Waa suggested on the night an alp gain from greens.
    But what does the lnp do in future continuously shift the destination of their preferences?”

    @Mick Quinlivan

    It has it pluses and minuses. The pluses prevents Labor gaining/retaining seats and forces Labor to spend extra resources defending seats. The downside it alienates the LNP membership and some of their backers. The Mining industry refused to get involved in the campaign in 2020 after the LNP announced preferencing the Greens.

  29. Having people at polling booths is over stated in terms of outcomes. Feel good flag waving exercise and great experience but limited value for time compared with talking to people in campaign.
    Most people know who they will support and dont take flyers. Other take for politeness.
    This especially applies for minor parties. Major parties benefit by maybe 1-2% of their vote eg maybe 0.4- 0.8% impact on a 40% vote. Bit of a shame factor involved – wont support them because they didn’t bother to turn up etc.

  30. 》For a brief period on Sat night, it looked maybe the Greens had been eradicated from Queensland politics for a minimum of 4 years. Now reading above, they may be status quo from 2020 to 2024. 

    And was the reason they were possibly eradicated due to Labor picking up Green policies and fighting for “Green” voters?

  31. LNP preferencing Greens sends a message to LNP voters, they won’t do that again.
    The idea was to blast Jackie Trad out, but the way it was done was unpopular with female voters outside South Brisbane too, from personal observation.
    ——————————————–
    Just putting this out there:
    was the way they beat Trad in 2020 such a turn off for the female voter that it hurt the LNP in suburban and inner suburban Brisbane
    seats in 2024?

  32. Mick Quinlivan @ #479 Thursday, October 31st, 2024 – 1:48 pm

    Re South Brisbane irrespective of the margin between 1st and second I suspect this is as Waa suggested on the night an alp gain from greens.
    But what does the lnp do in future continuously shift the destination of their preferences?

    It’s interesting since South Brisbane seems to be a reverse of Surfers Paradise, where Labor came third behind the Nationals and Liberals and switched preferences often, to the point that the Liberals won in 1977 and the Nationals won in 1980.

  33. Badthinker, No one, with the possible exception of a few in South Brisbane, would have given Jackie Trad a passing thought during this election. As far as I am aware her name did not crop up at all.

  34. Parties only recommended preferences to their voters a shift from green to alp to green then back again would wear thin with their own voters. It could be seen as cynical in the extreme. In Vic I think it is irrelevant now once greens win there they hang on with the exception of Lidia Thorpe

  35. Why is Logan not called for Labor? LNP candidate has conceded, and Labor is called by the ABC.

    LNP is in a mathematically impossible situation in the seat, and especially when you look at surrounding seats, 0% chance LNP will win Logan.

  36. More likely there were scandals around interference in the hiring of a high school principal in the electorate after someone else had been told by the panel they had the job,
    a house that her immediate family bough in K. Point that was well under market price [$700k, opposed to $1.2m], 2 streets from the new Gabba precinct, large enough block to build units [transaction was reversed].
    She was a Courier Mail favourite, seemed to be in the C-M every day, mostly photobombing Palaszczuk’s P.R.

  37. Hi Daniel, what do you mean by your question: “Why is Logan not called for Labor? LNP candidate has conceded, and Labor is called by the ABC.”

    Not called by who?

  38. davidwh – the ABC computer has just awarded Pumicestone to the LNP. That puts the LNP on 51 seats.
    Aspley update – the LNP lead is down to 120, the ABC says the seat is still in doubt.

  39. D’s
    Does that count Mirani and Mulgrave and Cook as lnp?
    If so really only Apsley outstanding Labor will be lucky to hold but 120 votes close
    Alp 35 to 36
    Gr 1
    Kap 3
    Ind 1
    Lnp 52 to 53?
    If so the late swing saved 5 to 6 seats for Labor

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