Click here for full display of Queensland state election results.
Counting has more-or-less wrapped up for the Queensland election, with a final result of 52 seats for the LNP (up 18 on 2020), 36 for Labor (down 16), three for Katter’s Australian Party (unchanged on 2020, but down one on what they went into the election with), one for the Greens (down one), one independent (unchanged) and nothing for One Nation (down one on 2020, unchanged on what they went into the election with). Apart from a handful of seats where preference distributions are yet to be finalised, my results system, linked to above, has been brought up to speed with all this. This includes my all-but-final estimate of a 53.9-46.1 win for the LNP on statewide two-party preferred. Labor can perhaps take some solace from the fact that this was narrower than the 54.3-45.7 result in its favour in New South Wales last March, which failed to yield a majority there.
Two squeakers were decided in favour of Labor, the closest being Aspley, where incumbent Bart Mellish finished the preference distribution with 17,889 votes to LNP candidate Amanda Cooper’s 17,858, a margin of 31. Labor had to sweat on the distribution to confirm Barbara O’Shea’s win over Greens incumbent Amy MacMahon in South Brisbane, the point at issue being whether O’Shea survived exclusion at the second last count ahead of the LNP. This was accomplished by a margin of 105 votes, or 11,374 to 11,269. MacMahon led with 12,346 votes at this point, but this was immaterial as Labor received 8239 of the preferences flowing from the exclusion of the LNP while the Greens received only 3030.
As an indication of the impact of LNP how-to-vote cards, which had Labor last in 2020 and the Greens last this time, it is instructive to compare this with 2020, when the Greens received 5296 preferences upon the exclusion of the LNP whereas Labor received only 3011: in other words, Labor’s share went from 36.2% to 73.1%. This is only slightly compromised by the fact that not all the votes distributed at this point were LNP first preferences: the LNP had picked up 797 preferences from One Nation on this occasion, and 691 from various sources in 2020.
The ECQ site declares Glen Kelly of the LNP the winner in Mirani, which Stephen Andrew won for One Nation in 2017 and 2020 and contested this election as the candidate of Katter’s Australian Party. Unless I was hallucinating, the ECQ site showed a preference distribution as of early yesterday that showed Andrew had in fact retained the seat by the barest of margins at the final count. However, this has since been removed, and beyond the fact of Kelly’s election, we are told only that “the elected candidate has received a majority of votes” and “the full distribution of preferences will be published upon completion”.
Can we please keep this thread for discussion of the Queensland election. The open thread for general discussion is here.
Why is Callide down as an ALP gain?
Good question. Things went awry in the handful of seats where preference distributions haven’t been published yet, causing false results to appear for Callide and Macalister. Now fixed.
So, after a considerable effort was made to manouevre Palaszczuk out of the leadership, followed by an irresponsible spendathon that would have rebounded on them if they had miraculously managed to retain government, Labor lost the election by a margin of almost 46-54. It would seem that there is a great deal of back-slapping going on at the moment: “we saved the furniture, aren’t we wonderful.” And Miles gets to retain his job for the time being.
To my non-partisan eyes, Miles has always been a bit of a goose and continues to look like one. I suspect he will only retain the role until a viable successor is able to rally sufficient support. 46-54 wasn’t really a good result at all, and Labor was rather fortunate not to lose more seats than it did. These facts will sink in eventually, especially if the Crisafulli Government doesn’t turn out to be Newman Mark II, as many Labor types appear lazily to assume will happen.
PS: I have no idea as to who a viable successor might be. I had assumed that Cameron Dick might be the go, but watching him on the ABC election night coverage, I found myself thinking that even state leaders ideally need to possess a tiny bit of charisma, but that Dick doesn’t seem to have one iota.
What’s the story with this Mellish bloke? Why is he thought by some posters to be so wonderful? He’s a reasonable looking bloke in his early 40s, which is a good start for a potential leader.
Miles comes across to me as a person of substance though kind of socially awkward, definitely a different kind of party leader to the one’s we’re used to. I agree that 54-46 is not a great result but he managed to claw back about 2% during the campaign so I think it’s worth retaining Miles to see how he goes as opposition leader, no point burning through potential leaders when there doesn’t seem to be any particular standout anyway.
A solid win.
meher baba it ended up a comfortable win rather than the thrashing expected before the abortion recovery. That’s some positive for Labor folks to hold onto.
I would love to see some polling on how many and the demographic of people who had their vote influenced by the abortion scare.
Repeatedly saying something doesn’t mean it happened.
The ALP would have been pretty happy with that result 6 months ago. But I think it’s going to be very difficult for the ALP to come back due to the geographical distribution of the seats they are left with, which makes this fundamentally a different result to previous losses.
I don’t believe Steven Miles will ever be Premier. He can only convince the already converted, and that’s only about 30% of the population of Queensland these days. In fact, I struggle to see a left-faction dominated ALP being much of a threat outside Brisbane at all.
Oakshott Country it wasn’t just the abortion issue, although it did resonate, but how Crisafulli handled the issue and the fact one stupid candidate inferred the LNP meant to change things once elected. It all fed into well run scare campaign.
“To my non-partisan eyes, Miles has always been a bit of a goose and continues to look like one.”
meher baba
Which, of course, is why the Courier Mail & Channel 7 news, etc, spent four years relentlessly painting Premier Palaszczuk as a dizzy party girl & Premier Miles as a giggling half-wit.
They’ll be delighted to know their efforts weren’t wasted.
It’s interesting that the Queensland ALP is feeling so relaxed about 46-54.
Trump-Harris looks set to be around 52-48 and the Dems are weeping, wailing and rendering their garments and what have you.
Even Howard-Keating in 1996 was only 53.6-44.4.
I think a lot of the complacency on the Labor side comes from a belief that Crisafulli will be Newman 2.0! But what is he isn’t?
BTW Addie Pray, I have been and remain a big fan of AP so I mustn’t have copped the full dose of the media bias you are alleging. Anyway, didn’t most of the negative stories about her that emerged over the last couple of years originate from inside the ALP?
DavidWH
I don’t doubt you but is there evidence?
Reproductive rights are important to everyone but may only be an issue of the first degree to a small cohort of the electorate. There remains a significant proportion of the electorate who support less liberal abortion laws.
I think you are right, meter. They won perhaps 10 more seats than I would have expected a few months ago, but they got smashed and I can’t see that they really have any plan or pathway to winning anything outside of Brisbane. I’d be paying a lot of attention to what happened in Bundaberg. Tom Smith appears a good local member, but I’m sure the new hospital was absolutely central to him retaining the seat.
I’m absolutely convinced the fundamental problem for the ALP in Queensland and nationally is an adherence to a model of a two-tier model of government service delivery, where folks living in multi-million dollar homes in our inner cities get excellent service delivery, and the rest of us get something else. It’s particularly toxic in Queensland, where mining royalties make up such a large proportion of state government revenue. The only member of the ALP who i have heard something resembling an understanding of this is Cameron Dick.
Oakeshott the quick and significant change in the polls was a strong indication that the fear campaign worked. But not just because people were against changing the law but due to how Crisafulli handled the issue.
Quite possible DavidWH but if Labor plans further campaigns on those lines without firm evidence they may end up like Kamala.
OC: “Quite possible DavidWH but if Labor plans further campaigns on those lines without firm evidence they may end up like Kamala.”
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Well, as I pointed out earlier, ending up like Kamala wouldn’t be so bad for Queensland Labor in the next election. It would represent a 2 per cent swing in their direction. 🙂
Meher: yes I was a fan of AP as well but she was subject to a hatchet job by local murdochracy and would have lost. The final straw for AP was being tracked down on a well earned holiday by Murdoch’s courier and subjected to front page photos and stories as if she was some kind of Skase type figure. I think after three election wins and years of hard thankless grind with media nipping at her the whole time she’d just had enough.
OC: it is quite possible change will occur to the abortion laws. Only three LNP members voted for the decriminalisation and the Katter party will be forcing the issue in the next parliament. Meanwhile the LNP said the state Labor party would end bulk billing with a heavy rotation of ads to this affect. Which out of these two scares do you think is more plausible?
Prince planet I give both scares a minuscule chance of happening.
As bulk-billing is a federal responsibility, I can’t think of any reason for this to have credibility
Oakeshott Country the LNP scare was that the government change in how GP’s would be treated for payroll tax would lead to GP’s exiting the bulk billing process due to increased operating costs. It may have has a small element of truth in it but then so does the abortion scare.
Both are typical political strategy that all political parties are guilty of. Only the loyal supporters argue it’s not so.
I think you are right David but scares are a part of every campaign from both LNP and Labor. They serve to reinforce people’s perceptions of each party and also sometimes are a bit of insurance to make sure the changes aren’t made. When people are looking for a change it’s often all they have. I had no issue with the LNP or Labor’s campaigns.
Agree Princeplanet. William put straight on this quite a few years ago. I’m not as naive now as I was back then.
“It’s interesting that the Queensland ALP is feeling so relaxed about 46-54.
Trump-Harris looks set to be around 52-48 and the Dems are weeping, wailing and rendering their garments and what have you.”
@meher baba
Swings are bigger in state politics then federal politics in Australia generally. Federal politics voters stick closer to political ideology while in state politics they vote for who they think can get the job done. That’s why your comparison with Queensland state election results with results in America which have different demographics and different issues is so aimless and stupid.
State elections tend to have more variations in 2PP compared to national, as voters are less “rusted on” for their party and vote more based on service delivery, competence, vibes etc. 1996 and 2013 were blowouts for the Coalition by Federal election standards while having 2PP in the 53s, meanwhile we’ve had several recent state elections that were higher for one side and one of them (NSW) didn’t even yield a majority despite getting into the 54s.
So this result is, by state election standards, and particularly considering the position of Labor going into the election, a respectable loss.
I will be surprised if Miles is still leader in 4 years time, but as the QLD Labor left rules the roost up there, you would assume the next leader will be Shannon Fentiman.
Bart Mellish only got back by 30 votes, he was very lucky.
Mark Bailey, my mate, he is Shadow Health Minister, he’ll give Tim Nicholls a tough time.
Crisafulli will get a long honeymoon from a supportive media, it will hard at first for Labor to get much traction against that.
Adda @ #26 Sunday, November 10th, 2024 – 1:01 pm
The NSW primaries were ALP 37 LNP 35 Greens 10 Others 18
Combine this with optional preferences and the 2PP has less meaning
(I presume the 2pp only includes those votes which pick between the 2 parties and excludes those that exhaust before the choice is made)
DS: unlike many I was impressed with Miles stamina and youthful appeal – he surprised me. I think he will get a couple of years to see if he can make an impact and if not they will look at other options. I know that Mr Crisifulli will get a good run off the local media but I also think he will have his work cut out for him on crime especially in the regional areas. They will expect immediate results and the complex issues with youth crime up north will be super hard to untangle. The other issue is regional grievance which I think was even a bigger issue than crime. I talk to people all around the state especially larger centres and they constantly complained about Brisbane SEQ getting the best end of the stick. They will be expecting some action on this front and with big new stadiums and Olympic costs this might disappoint. On the positive side I do think the Olympics hamstrung AP and Miles. They couldn’t move without being wedged by the greens with MCM ready to jump on any bandwagon. I think the LNP will be able to push through the Gabba which to me is the most sensible option.
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-pressure-valve-does-defeat-of-same.html
The Pressure Valve: Does The Defeat Of Same-Party State Governments Help Federal Governments?
William
There is a problem with the Maryborough page as well.
I think you are wrong on expectations for rapid change with respect to crime. I think most understand it is very complex, more so in regional areas we’re I think it’s less social media driven, more long-term disadvantage. Crisafulli was foolish to make the promises he did.
That’s a really interesting piece, Kevin.
“It would seem that there is a great deal of back-slapping going on at the moment: “we saved the furniture, aren’t we wonderful.” And Miles gets to retain his job for the time being.”
I think they are very happy to have saved both Mellish and Scanlon, and even more happy about smashing the Greens in the inner city. Losing seats to the Greens would have made things extra hard for them to get back into power any time soon. Now I think they have a feasible chance in 2028 unless Crisafulli starts kicking a lot of goals.
There is a growing trend of Labor trending more and more inner city/leafy suburb left wing and they are losing more and more seats in regional Queensland. Mackay and Rockhampton gone this time.
Labor gave up being the party of the people years ago and are now the party of the elitism intellectual. Over 40 000 new public servants employed in the past nine years, yet in regional Queensland people are smashing their cars up on the highways as the government has no workers to fix potholes.
The minor hospitals are now essentially departure lounges where anything worse then a black eye they trundle you onto a plane to be sent hundreds of kilometres away to be seen to.
And the state debt over 130 billion dollars continues to grow, yet no one seems to know where the money is going as services are going backwards. No doubt there was large amounts of soft corruption. That being stuff that while being made legal by the government is ethically wrong.
I do not know how the new government plans to get things back on track. I know the solution is going to have to be the removal of laws and regulations stifling development of the state and retraining bureaucrats to do something else. Labor seems to have employed lots of people who do nothing but dig virtual holes and virtually fill them in.
Labor gave up being the party of the people years ago and are now the party of the elitism intellectual.
@Jolly Jumbucks
Really? You call the LNP party of the people on the eve of 2020 state election then past and present LNP presidents Dave Hutchinson, Gary Spence and Bruce McIver enjoying festivities with billionaire Clive Palmer on his Brisbane River superyacht cruise.
Thanks William for consolidating all the information concerning the outcome of the QLD state election. A number of the electoral commissions do not pull together the primary and 2PP figures, the swings for and against etc, and list the seats showing the primary, 2PP and other details as you have. Moreover, I wonder why the ECQ had unofficial and official primary vote figures and why it quickly removed from the site the estimated 2PP for each seat only to reveal them closer to declaration day.
Overall the AEC is the gold standard for everything in this regard!
What was supposed to be a monumental loss for Labor became a respectable one thanks primarily to the abortion issue and the vulnerability of the LNP leader to handling issues from left field. In securing 36 seats, Labor is well placed for the next state election in 2028. Apparently, winning 36 seats is about twice as many as what insiders thought it would be. Also One Nation didn’t win a seat and the Greens managed one seat despite a respectable 9.89% primary vote state-wide.
While it’s not the done thing to draw federal implications from a state election outcome, some consideration can be given to it given that QLD rejected a long term Labor government that had its challenges.
Labor’s state wide primary vote [PV] was a creditable 32.56% for a losing side in 2024. At the 2022 federal election, it was a risible 27.42%. Even Labor’s metropolitan PV in 2022 [ie for 13 of the 30 federal seats] of 31.91% was less than the state election figure. While it is not easy to identify the metro figure for the state election, Labor’s Brisbane PV would have to be fairly solid, suggesting it won’t lose any more QLD seats at the 2025 federal election and may be pick up one or two from the Greens and threaten to win a couple outside Brisbane. I have in mind Longman, Flynn and Leichhardt.
At the 2024 state election, the broad Left vote [ie ALP+GRN] was 42.45%. In 2022, it was 40.36%. In other words, the Left didn’t go backwards despite the state government’s unpopularity.
Political Nightwatchman says:
Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 4:12 pm
Really? You call the LNP party of the people on the eve of 2020 state election then past and present LNP presidents Dave Hutchinson, Gary Spence and Bruce McIver enjoying festivities with billionaire Clive Palmer on his Brisbane River superyacht cruise.
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You bring up one outlier and consider that the norm.
Explain to me why Labor have lost seats they have held for since near forever, and it is not just a one off. Labor state and federally have been losing seats in regional Queensland now for decades.
State Labor has what a total of three seats outside SEQ. Cairns, Bundaberg and Gladstone.
Isn’t that a telling damnation of this modern version of the Labor party? They are now the party of elitism and fake left wingism. I call it fake, because look at real left wingism like the USSR and they were very very pro development, while this urban centric Labor party is very much shut everything down, we can bureaucrise our way to wealth.
Labor have been going full stupid for decades now. Paradise Dam, Traveston Dam. What about that graphite solar sun generator in cloncurry or whereever it was. That Quarantine centre. $250 million totally and utterly pissed against the wall. The pioneer dam has now been shown to be a totally stupid thing, even the hidden report now released has sunwater saying it should not go ahead.
I really do not know how people can still defend Labor. This last mob have been the most stupid inept wasteful government Queensland has ever seen. The only thing they were really good at was self promotion. Hell even reddit was plastered with Qld government taxpayer funded ads prior to October.
John Anderson as pointed out earlier it’s hard to compare state results with federal results. It would be more accurate to compare the state result of 2020 to 2024 where the Labor+Green vote fell from 49.1% to 42.45% which is a significant reduction.
The key to this result is that the LNP primary vote held up ok even when the 2PP fell late in the campaign.
Davidwh, your point is obvious but it’s not the point I wanted to make. It’s the woeful ALP PV that actually held up on the 2022 federal result, where many pundits expected something in the 20’s. Labor has been on the nose in QLD for a couple of decades. I was wondering if things were going to get worse. I think Labor can expect to do better in 2025 in the Brisbane area and maybe around Caboolture, Gladstone and Cairns.
Longman is due to flip. Terry Young has held the seat for two terms so it’s time.
Storms imminent for Brisbane.
“As an indication of the impact of LNP how-to-vote cards … it is instructive to compare this with 2020 …”
LNP voters can be relied on to just follow orders … er, instructions.
Jolly Jumbuck: “Labor state and federally have been losing seats in regional Queensland now for decades.”
And yet, Labor won 11 of the previous 12 state elections.
An extraordinary result for a party that has been losing seats for decades … 🙂
Jolly Jumbuck: “This last mob have been the most stupid inept wasteful government Queensland has ever seen.”
Yeah, let’s gloss over the institutionalised corruption and backwoods bible-bashing of the Bjelke-Petersen era.
I’m already seeing a pattern in the new government where Mr Bleijie is going be the guy who tries to prosecute a case of incompetence and wastefulness on the previous government. Mr Crisifulli has made the right noises so far and he really needs to close this stuff down. Post covid inflation had meant everything private and public has spiralled in cost eg: the LNP council electric buses doubled in cost, the BCCs pedestrian bridge blew out in cost the privately funded queen’s wharf casino went up by billions. Everybody knows about this so people don’t want to hear the point scoring stuff, they want the LNP to eradicate crime and ramping and with several high profile criminal incidents in just the last few days – they will have their work cut out for them.
“Trump-Harris looks set to be around 52-48 and the Dems are weeping, wailing and rendering their garments and what have you.”
Because Trump won at all, and it’s the Presidency of the United States, not because of the specific margin.
Qld Labor probably expected a bigger wipeout after being in government so long – in the end the margin being about the same as NSW where the opposition looks competitive already, yes they’re sanguine about it.
As for abortion as an issue, the LNP with help from the Katters brought it on themselves, but now they’re in government and they’ll be judged on what they actually do or don’t do.
Labor retained about 7 seats they appeared to have lost prior to the campaign. To assume the lnp govt is Newman mark 2 is not certain. But to assume Labor cannot win back govt either is a false assumption.
Most times transposing state to Federal results means nothing
There should be a system in place similar to nz . Single seats in parliament using preferences can get a fair result but there is no guarantee that it will. A party list vote would allocate extra seats to reflect the voters’ wish. All you need to do is set the quota say 5 to 15% to share in that list. 2001 or 1974 or 2012 in Queensland would not be possible in actuality.
Labor needs to win back 6 seats to reduce the LNP to minority, and 11 seats for them to regain a majority. It’s doable. Especially now that there’s 4-year terms so an electorate that would have previously only been annoyed in 2027 if Crisafulli governs like Newman 2.0 would be absolutely furious in 2028.
That said, Labor does need to do some pretty serious work to try and win back the regional cities. Balancing that with holding its Brisbane base won’t be easy. Steven Miles should spend a lot of time in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Maryborough, etc. for the next 4 years.