Category: Queensland By-Elections

Live coverage

8.45pm. Postals put the LNP back on course, with Janetzki getting 1442 and Thorley on 823 out of 2615 counted. His primary vote is now 46.2%, which will presumably head upwards on late counting. Thorley would need 80% of preferences on the current numbers, and since Janetzki’s primary vote is likely to improve further as more postals come in, he appears likely to get over the line.

7.53pm. The LNP wins the last polling day booth, Rangeville, by 887 to 714 out of 1966 total, bringing Janetzki’s primary vote to 42.7%. This is 11.3% lower than the LNP ordinary vote total from 2015, which projects to a final primary vote total of 44.2%. It would seem that Thorley would win with something approaching three-quarters of preferences, which doesn’t seem implausible.

7.33pm. As anticipated, Middle Ridge is a better booth for the LNP, giving 1098 to Janetzki and 738 to Thorley, out of 2244 formal votes. Janetzki’s primary total edges up to 42.1%.

7.22pm. Thorley wins Harristown 793 votes to 747 for Janetzki, from a total of 2007. The total LNP primary is a perilously low 40.8%, but the two outstanding fixed booths were both very strong for them in 2015, and they should do well on postals.

7.14pm. Tor Street booth is typical of the others, with 331 for Janetzki, 305 for Thorley, 821 total. I’m picking up a rough 5% swing against the LNP, still projecting to around 50%, but the ABC is projecting 9.5%, and Antony will have thought harder about booth relocations than I have. That projects to an LNP primary vote total of 45.9%, which suggests a close final result.

7.08pm. Gabbinbar indeed comes in higher for the LNP, at 749 votes to 458 for Thorley, opening a 41.6% to 37.0% gap on the primary vote.

7.06pm. This by-election has been totally off my radar over the past fortnight, and I’ve given no thought to the fact that it’s the first election held after the restoration of compulsory preferential voting. It would be interesting if that ended up costing the LNP the seat, which is certainly plausible.

7.02pm. Thorley has a slight primary vote lead in Centenary Heights and Darling Heights, Janetzki has one in West Street. Two of the outstanding booths, Gabbinbar and Rangeville, were particularly strong for the LNP at the election. So despite the 39.6% raw primary vote, you still get the LNP to around 50% if you project off the swing.

6.52pm. Glenvale booth in line with the others: Janetzki 473, Thorley 429, total 1200.

6.51pm. Hume Street South booth doesn’t dispel the impression of a close result, with 299 for Janetzki and 266 for Thorley out of a total of 708.

6.49pm. Based on primary vote swings, Antony Green is suggesting an LNP total of 49%, suggesting Janetzki should be safe.

6.47pm. But now a second fixed booth, St Josephs, gives it to Thorley 189 to 186 out of a 472 total.

6.41pm. However, 233 “telephone votes” have heavily favoured the LNP.

6.30pm. The first booth is Toowoomba, and it’s a worry for the LNP, with Thorley matching it with Janetzki at 159 votes apiece out of 409.

6.28pm. I had a bloody hard time finding the results page on the Electoral Commission of Queensland site, but here it is. Nothing reporting yet.

Preview

A by-election is being held today for the Queensland state seat of Toowoomba South, whose former Liberal National Party member, John McVeigh, has now replaced Ian Macfarlane as member for the corresponding federal seat of Groom. The Liberal National Party candidate is David Janetzki, head of banking operations at Heritage Building Society, who won preselection ahead of Sam Wright, a partner at Ambrosiussen Accountants. Labor is not contesting the seat, but the Liberal National Party has cause to be concerned about the prospects of independent candidate Di Thorley, a former mayor of Toowoomba. The Courier-Mail reports of “rumours of polling showing a significant swing against the LNP but not enough to boot it from the seat”.

Toowoomba South covers the areas of the city located 130 kilometres west of Brisbane to the south of the Warrego Highway, with most of the town centre accommodated by Toowoomba North. Whereas Toowoomba North was in Labor hands from 2001 to 2012, and earlier for a term after the 1989 election, Toowoomba South has been held by the National Party and the Liberal National Party since the 1974 landslide. The present division of Toowoomba into northern and southern electorates dates back to 1972, and replaced an arrangement of Toowoomba East and Toowoomba West that in turn went back to 1960, before which the city was encompassed by a single electorate. Prior to the 1974 landslide the city had leaned somewhat to Labor, who had held both of its electorates since 1966.

The seat was held for the Nationals and then the Liberal National Party from 1991 to 2012 by Mike Horan, who passed largely untroubled by the challenges of One Nation in 1998 and the Peter Beattie landslide in 2001. After the 2001 election he served as Nationals leader until February 2003, when he was deposed by Lawrence Springborg. The redistribution before the 2009 election led to suggestions Horan should make way for up-and-coming MP Stuart Copeland, whose seat of Cunningham had been abolished. But Horan remained set on serving another term, and Copeland ran unsuccessfully in the new seat of Condamine as an independent. With Horan’s retirement in 2012, Toowoomba South passed to John McVeigh, previously a Toowoomba councillor and agribusiness management consultant. McVeigh won immediate promotion to cabinet as Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister, and maintained the position through to the government’s defeat in early 2015.

If the LNP retains the seat, it will maintain parity with the Labor minority government, which won 44 seats out of 89 at the election last January but has since lost two to the cross bench. The cross bench consists of two Katter’s Australian Party and three independents, including the two former Labor members and one who was elected as such. The candidates in ballot paper order are Ken Elliott (Katter’s Australian Party); David Janetzki (Liberal National Party); Di Thorley (Independent); Rob Berry (Independent); Alexandra Todd (Family First); Ken Gover (Greens). Live coverage of a sort will be featured here after the close of polling booths at 6pm.

	#	%	Swing	2PP (proj.)	Swing
Bob Andersen (Liberal National)	7,967	33.4%	-18.6%	36.7%	-20.3%
Sally-Anne Vincent (Family First)	951	4.0%
Anne Boccabella (Greens)	2,846	11.9%	+2.1%
Anthony Lynham (Labor)	12,105	50.7%	+17.1%	63.3%	+20.3%
.
FORMAL/TURNOUT	23,869	76.6%
Informal	474	2.2%	+0.1%
Booths reporting:	14 out of 14

Sunday

The table above shows raw figures in the first two columns for the primary vote, then uses booth matching over the next three columns for the primary vote swings, two-party preferred result and two-party swing. However, these figures are entirely derived from the polling day booth results, and are unaffected by the 2742 pre-polls and 2946 postals which have been added to the count, which are included in the first two columns. Here the swing has been slightly lower – respectively at 16.0% and 14.7% by my reckoning, compared with the 20.3% shown based on polling booth results. So it would seem in the final analysis that the swing is unlikely to have a two in front of it. An interesting new feature of the declaration vote breakdowns is “uncertain identity”, which no doubt has something to do with the new voter identification regime. There are as yet no results listed, but presumably this will change over the next week as the ECQ investigates the declaration votes of those who showed up at the polling booth without the required ID.

The map to the right shows booth-level two-party results from both the March 2012 state election and yesterday. The swing was highly uniform throughout the electorate with the exception of the Chermside booth, where it was only about 6%, and the Prince Charles Hospital booth, where it was 31% (not shown because with only 223 votes cast it falls below the 250-vote threshold I use for inclusion). The waters in Chermside may have been muddied by the fact that it attracted voters who at the general election voted in nearby polling booths in other electorates.

The chart to the left offers some historical perspective by detailing polling booth results (so no postals, pre-polls, absents or other declaration votes) in Stafford from this and previous election. I did this half in the expectation of showing that 2012 rather than yesterday was the extraordinary result, but what emerges is that it was a very good result for Labor by any measure. It should be particularly encouraging for them that they were about 6% up on two-party preferred from a winning election in 2009, although I should caution that Labor did seem to suffer a bit of a backlash in Brisbane’s inner north on that occasion.

Another way of putting the result in perspective is offered by the chart to the right, which seeks to illustrate the extent to which by-election swings provide a pointer to the result of the next election. Drawing on federal and state by-election results over recent decades, it shows the government swing (which is usually negative) on the X-axis and the overall swing recorded at the subsequent election on the Y-axis. The linear trendline that runs through the middle is not brilliantly predictive, explaining only 42% of the variation, but the relationship is there, and for a 20% by-election swing it implies a swing of 8.7% at the following election. While this is a seismic shift in absolute terms, it still leaves the LNP out in front by 54-46. If such a swing was uniform, Labor would emerge with a still fairly modest 27 seats in an assembly of 89 – although importantly, one of those seats would be Ashgrove.

Saturday

7.51pm. Stafford Heights two-party result added.

7.39pm. All that remains for the evening is two-party results from the Stafford Heights booth and perhaps a few pre-poll numbers. The projected swing to Labor is now over 20% – a disastrous result for the LNP by any standard.

7.20pm. All booths now in on the primary vote, and the result is fairly clearly looking worse for the LNP than Redcliffe, which would be gravely alarming for them.

7.03pm. At around the time I thought results would start coming in, they’re actually well on their way to finished. Preference shares: 52.1% to Labor (41.4% in 2012), 14.4% to LNP (20.3%), 33.5% exhausted (38.3%).

7.01pm. Gympie Road booth added, swing now 18.9%.

6.58pm. Stafford West booth has reported, and the swing is staying above 18%.

6.55pm. There are now enough two-party votes that I’m no longer going off 2012 preferences, and the Labor swing is now even higher – over 18%.

6.49pm. I very seriously understimated how fast this count was going to be. Six normal booths in plus a pre-poll, and the result is looking very similar to Redcliffe with a swing of around 16%. It can most assuredly be called for Labor now.

6.48pm. Chermside has reported 2PP: four votes to LNP, nine to Labor, 12 exhaust.

6.45pm. I’m doing some experimental probability calculations for my own amusement, and I presently have Labor’s win probability at 94.05%.

6.42pm. Newmarket booth added on primary vote. Whereas I only had the swing at Chermside at about 6%, being right on what Labor required, here it’s 18.8%.

6.37pm. Two-party result from Prince Charles added: of the non-major party votes, 16 went to Labor, five to the LNP, and eight exhausted.

6.33pm. A far more moderate result from the 382 votes at Chermside, where I’m rating Labor up 9% and the LNP down 3.5% – although a number of booths from 2012 aren’t in use this time, so such comparisons are problematic.

6.23pm. Only 216 votes from Prince Charles hospital booth, so quicker off the mark than I thought. The results are … interesting. My two-party preferred projection is at this stage based on the preference allocation from the 2012 election.

6.10pm. Polls have closed at Queensland’s Stafford by-election and counting is under way. This post will follow the count as the results come in, with the above table showing raw primary votes and percentages, and booth-matched two-party preferred projections and primary vote swings. This being a highly urban electorate, all the booths will be large and take a while to count, so I wouldn’t hold my breath on any results being in before 7pm.

Update: July 18

Bumping this post to the top of the batting order ahead of the big day tomorrow. Developments:

• The main news story to emerge from the campaign has been the Courier-Mail’s revelation last Thursday that Labor candidate Anthony Lynham owed money to Queensland Health after it overpaid him amid a troubled rollout of its new payroll system. This led to Labor claims that the government had leaked private information against him, resulting in a fiery exchange between Campbell Newman and Annastacia Palaszczuk at en estimates committee hearing earlier this week.

• Tuesday’s estimates committee hearings also heard from acting Electoral Commissioner Yvette Zischke about the progress of the new voter identification regime at pre-polling. Zischke reported that few if any of the roughly 1200 voters who had cast pre-poll votes had failed to meet the requirement, remembering that any who do may still cast a declaration vote to be admitted to the count if the Electoral Commission deems the voter to be eligible.

• I had a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday reviewing the by-election, with a particular focus on its implications for Campbell Newman in his neighbouring electorate of Ashgrove.

• The normally reticent Antony Green told ABC Radio in Brisbane last week that he anticipated a decisive double-digit swing to Labor.

• Tune into Poll Bludger after 6pm tomorrow for live coverage of the results, and subscribe to Crikey for my post-match review on Monday.

Update: July 4

Palmer United has indeed declined a field of candidate, leaving a refreshingly straightforward field of four encompassing, in ballot paper order, Bob Andersen (Liberal National), Sally-Anne Vincent (Family First), Anne Boccabella (Greens) and Anthony Lynham (Labor). A ReachTEL automated phone poll of 632 respondents in the electorate, conducted on Tuesday night for the union-affiliated Workcover Protection Coalition, found strongly negative results for the government with respect to the Crime and Misconduct Commission, the appointment of Tim Carmody as the new Chief Justice and the performance of Jarrod Bleijie as Attorney-General, but unfortunately did not gauge voting intention.

Overview

With the final year of his term well under way, Campbell Newman’s Liberal National Party government faces a by-election in the inner northern suburbs seat of Stafford on July 19, now just under three weeks away. The election is of particular interest for two reasons – it will be the first test of the new voter identification laws that appear likely to be followed similar measures from the federal government, as I discussed in a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday; and it takes place in an electorate neighbouring Campbell Newman’s seat of Ashgrove, which I’ll have more to say about over the coming weeks. This is second by-election the government has faced this year, the first having been held on February 22 in the outer northern Brisbane seat of Redcliffe. This served the government with the unhappy precedent of a 17.2% swing to Labor and victory for its candidate Yvette D’Ath, who had herself been unseated as the member for the corresponding federal seat of Petrie the previous September.

Numbers indicate 2012 state election booth locations and the Liberal National Party two-party preferred vote. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

The electorate of Stafford covers suburbs in Brisbane’s inner north about six kilometres from the city, from Alderley and Grange north to Chermside and Stafford Heights. It existed in name between 1972 and 1992 and again after 2001, having been renamed Kedron in the interim. The two seats between them were held by Labor from 1989 to 2012 on margins of between 7.3% in 2009 and 22.4% in 2001, before a 14.4% swing delivered it to Liberal National Party candidate Chris Davis in 2012. Davis was sacked as Assistant Health Minister in May after he sided with doctors in a pay dispute, and polled his constituents on the government’s contentious changes to the Crime and Misconduct Commission (the results of which can be viewed on the ReachTEL website, together with a further poll he commissioned after his resignation which showed him to be viewed a lot more favourably than Campbell Newman). After a further falling out with the party over the government’s move to lift the disclosure threshold on political donations, Davis announced his resignation from parliament on May 25.

Labor’s candidate at the by-election is Anthony Lynham, a maxillofacial surgeon who was preselected two months before Davis’s resignation. Lynham had emerged as a critic of the government in his capacity as a spokesperson for Queensland Coalition for Action on Alcohol, accusing it of being unduly influenced by the hotel industry. The LNP has endorsed Bob Andersen, a senior psychologist with Queensland Health. Andersen became a bit of a hit on social media after failing to look duly pleased when Newman introduced him as the party’s candidate. The Greens candidate is Anne Boccabella, who has run a number of times in neighbouring Brisbane Central. The Palmer United Party has been prevaricating over whether it will run a candidate – all will be revealed when nominations close on Thursday.

	#	%	Swing	2PP (proj.)	Swing
Andrew Tyrrell	177	0.7%
Sally Vincent (Family First)	586	2.5%	-2.1%
Len Thomas	2,513	10.6%
John Marshall (Greens)	950	4.0%	-2.7%
Gabriel Buckley	230	1.0%
Yvette D’Ath (Labor)	10,375	43.6%	+12.9%	56.2%	+16.3%
Talosaga McMahon	317	1.3%
Liz Woollard	279	1.2%
Kerri-Anne Dooley (Liberal National)	8,353	35.1%	-14.1%	43.8%	-16.3%
FORMAL/TURNOUT	23,780	71.7%
Informal	655	2.7%	+0.3%
Booths reporting:	13 out of 13

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9.49pm. The two-party results from the pre-polls have now been added. I’ve switched off booth-matching, so all swings shown above compare the current result with the final total from 2012.

8.30pm. All booths now in on 2PP, and around 4000 new pre-poll votes added on the primary vote. I’m guessing a two-party result for the latter votes is the last outstanding addition for the evening.

8.04pm. All booths in on 2PP now except Scarborough North. The latest additions have slightly moderated Labor’s winning margin.

7.57pm. All booths in on the primary vote, four outstanding on 2PP.

7.52pm. Redcliffe TAFE 2PP added, with four left to go on 2PP, and Scarborough the one straggler on the primary vote.

7.39pm. When I said Scarborough had reported before, I meant Woody Point. Kippa-Ring north has reported as well, as have seven booths all told on 2PP. So the Labor margin of 7% is looking solid.

7.36pm. Bally Cara 2PP result added, which has moderated Labor’s gain on the preference share considerably: now up 3.6%, with the LNP down 6.3%, and exhausted up 2.8%. Still a projected Labor winning margin of 7% though.

7.33pm. Scarborough booth added on the primary vote, leaving only two more to go, but with still only one booth reporting on 2PP.

7.30pm. The pre-poll votes also have 2PP results now, and here Labor’s gain on the preference share is more modest. However, the projection above is based on polling booth results only.

7.29pm. Finally a 2PP result, from Kippa-Ring South, and the projection is now using this result rather than the 2012 election to extrapolate across other booths. This has given a solid boost to the projected Labor margin, with Labor’s share of preferences up 9.7%, the LNP’s down 8.0%, and exhausted down 1.8%.

7.23pm. Andrew Bartlett relates: “Preferences from 86 Greens votes at Kippa Ring booth went 40 ALP, 4 LNP, 42 exhausted.”

7.19pm. Independent Len Thomas, who ran in opposition to anti-bikie laws, has his head above double figures.

7.16pm. Smallish Scarborough North booth added on primary vote, leaving three more to come; still nothing for 2PP.

7.13pm. Clontarf and Redcliffe South push projected Labor margin over 5%. Four booths outstanding on primary vote, and still nothing for two-party preferred.

7.11pm. Biggest booth in yet from Kippa-Ring, which produces a good result for Labor that pushes the projected margin to nearly 5%. Still no preference counts though …

7.09pm. Woody Point South added, projected Labor margin now reaches 4.0%.

7.08pm. Clontarf Beach added, slightly increasing projected Labor winning margin. Still no two-party results though, so this assumes 2012 preference flows.

7.06pm. Bally Cara and Redcliffe TAFE have reported on the primary vote. The former is a retirement village and comfortably the electorate’s most conservative booth. Respective two-party swings are 11.8% and 14.8%, well in line with overall trend and confirming an impression of Labor winning by 3-4%.

7.04pm. 2463 pre-polls added, which I don’t have configured for booth-matching, but the swing on them is perfectly consistent with the overall trend. I gather this is about half the likely pre-poll total.

6.59pm. Second booth in now, from Frawley, and projected Labor winning margin up from 2.6% to 3.5%. Still going off 2012 preferences here, so a small degree of caution advised.

6.52pm. So far, I’m going off the 2012 election preferences. The first two columns in the above table are raw representations of the primary votes, but the swing and two-party columns are based on booth-matched results.

6.48pm. The Humpybong booth is first out of the blocks, and it shows a Labor swing 12.7%, enough to overturn the overall 10.1% by a small margin. This was Labor’s best booth in 2012, or its least bad — the LNP margin was 57-43.

6pm. Polls have now closed, as ReachTEL reports an exit poll shows Labor headed for a comfortable victory. Stay tuned for coverage of results as they emerge, which should start to happen in three-quarters of an hour or so.