Category: Queensland Politics

State polls: Tasmanian EMRS and Queensland Resolve Strategic

A Tasmanian poll offers both federal and state voting intention, while a regular Queensland state poll records a reverse for One Nation.

Two state polls that have been published this week:

• Pulse Tasmania reports on the quarterly EMRS poll, which features federal as well as state results from Tasmania. The former have Labor on 29%, One Nation on 26%, Liberal on 17% and the Greens on 15%, with a conventional two-party measure having Labor leading 57-43. The report provides no federal result for the Greens, who polled 11.1% at the election. The state results have Liberal up a point on last quarter to 26%, Labor down one to 23%, One Nation up two to 21% and the Greens up two to 16%. Jeremy Rockliff’s lead over Josh Willie as preferred premier has substantially narrowed, from 44-25 to 37-30. All three party leaders have weakened on net favourability, with Rockliff down three to minus seven, Willie down ten to minus 14 and Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff down 11 to minus 16. The poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday from a sample of 1000.

• The Brisbane Times reports the bi-monthly Resolve Strategic poll for Queensland has the Liberal National Party up four to 34%, Labor up one to 25%, One Nation down four to 20% and the Greens 10%. David Crisafulli’s lead over Steven Miles narrows from 44-20 to 41-22. The poll combines the Queensland responses from the pollster’s last two national surveys, conducted from July 6 to 11 and August 9 to 16, with a sample of 868.

Queensland state redistribution finalised

Final boundaries for Queensland’s state redistribution confirm the basic thrust of a proposal that did more favours for the LNP than Labor.

The state redistribution for Queensland has been finalised, making only one substantial change with minimal political repercussions. This involves maintaining the Logan City seat of Waterford, after the proposed boundaries published in March had most of the existing seat going to Woodridge and a new seat of Marsden being created largely from territory at the southern end of both. The final boundaries split most of what was to be Marsden between Woodridge and a seat that will maintain the name of Waterford, though the latter has a distinctly more southern orientation than under the old boundaries, while the former has acquired an ungainly shape. Also affected is Logan immediately to the south, which largely involves reversing changes from the proposal.

I am yet to calculate new margins for the boundaries, but Ben Raue of The Tally Room has done so, and he rates that Waterford now has a 13.5% Labor margin, compared with what have been 16.1% in Marsden, and 14.9% in Woodridge, compared with what had been 13.2% on the proposed boundaries. Apart from the fact that the seat whose name was to be changed to Pimpama will keep its name of Coomera, other changes of purely local interest.

The other major changes of the redistribution, which have tended to favour the Liberal National Party, are left intact. There will again be a seat of Caboolture in Brisbane’s outer north, an earlier incarnation of which was a usually Labor-held seat that was among of the 11 won by One Nation in 1998; and a new notional Labor seat will be created in the Ipswich region by dividing Bundamba and Jordan into Springfield, Redbank and Greenbank. Boundary changes in the Gold Coast have pulled the rug from under Meaghan Scanlon, who is widely touted as a future Labor leader, in her seat of Gaven.

UPDATE: I have a spreadsheet with my full accounting of post-redistribution estimates, though I have not engaged in the subject process of reconciling seats with mixed two-candidate preferred splits, of which there are many.

DemosAU: Labor 32, One Nation 27, Coalition 20 in New South Wales

Now a New South Wales state poll finds the Coalition looking down the barrel of One Nation.

The Daily Telegraph reports a DemosAU/Premier National state poll of New South Wales has the inevitable One Nation gain since the last such poll in February at five points, pushing them to 27%. The Coalition are a distant third following a three-point drop to 20%, with Labor down two to 32% and the Greens down two to 13%. The poll was conducted last Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1038. The full release contains detailed breakdowns plus further questions, and should be up on the pollster’s site fairly soon.

There were also two state results from Resolve Strategic last week that I didn’t feel inspired to cover at the time, both combining results from two of the pollster’s monthly national surveys, which were conducted from May 13 to 16 and June 8 to 13:

• In Victoria, a slightly less bad result for Labor than those published last week by DemosAU and Freshwater Strategy, their primary vote down one to 26% with the Coalition down three to 26%, One Nation up three to 24% and the Greens up two to 12%. Jess Wilson’s lead over Jacinta Allan on preferred premier is unchanged at 39-20. No exact sample size is provided, but it would have been around 1000.

• In Queensland, the Liberal National Party was steady on 30%, with Labor down four to 24%, One Nation up seven to 24%, and the Greens down one to 10%. David Crisfaulli’s lead over Steven Miles as preferred premier was out from 42-26 to 44-20, and his net likeability rating is down three to plus 16, with Miles down six to minus 11. The sample for this poll was 868.

DemosAU: LNP 34, Labor 25, One Nation 24 in Queensland

After a close escape at the Stafford by-election, another poll points to a weakening position for state Labor in Queensland.

We can expect quite a bit in the way of state polling over the coming weeks, with today’s Freshwater Strategy result for Victoria to be joined soon by another result for the state from Resolve Strategic, and DemosAU/Premier National promising a round of state polling as per its quarterly schedule. The first of the latter is a result for Queensland that has One Nation gaining three points to 24%, which comes at the expense of Labor, down three to 25%, rather than the Liberal National Party, steady on 34%. The Greens are likewise steady on 10%. A conventional two-party preferred result has the LNP leading Labor 58-42, out from 56-44 in the last poll and from 53.8-46.2 at the October 2024 election. David Crisafulli holds a 47-30 lead over Steven Miles on preferred premier, out from 43-32. The poll was conducted May 27 to June 3 from a sample of 1033. Voting intention breakdowns and further results on state direction and issue salience are available in the full report.

Further Queensland electoral news:

• The final result of the May 16 Stafford by-election was a 1.4% winning margin for Luke Richmond, who retained the seat against a 3.8% swing. Liberal National Party candidate Fiona Hammond outpolled Richmond 40.3% to 30.8% on first preferences, but in the absence of One Nation the minor party and independent vote was overwhelmingly left-wing, with preferences flowing accordingly.

• The Queensland Redistribution Commission will release its final determination of the redistribution of state electoral boundaries in “mid-2026”. With the Ipswich region seat of Jordan to be divided between the new seats of Springfield and Greenbank, the Courier-Mail’s George Street Beat column reported on a push within the Left to force Charis Mullen, the Right-aligned member for Jordan, to run for the less safe seat of Greenbank so as to make Springfield available to Ipswich councillor Pye Augustine.

• The Sunday Mail reports expectations that LNP members John-Paul Langbroek (Surfers Paradise), Ros Bates (Mudgeeraba) and Fiona Simpson (Maroochydore) will retire at the next election.

Stafford by-election live

Live coverage of the count for Queensland’s Stafford state by-election.
Projected 3CP Projected 2CP Win Probability

Click here for full display of Stafford by-election results

1.00am. The ECQ uniquely publishes preference flow data by candidate on the night, from which we learn that 86.4% of Greens votes favoured Labor over the LNP despite the lack of an active recommendation on their how-to-vote card. Labor got 81.6% of preferences from Liam Parry of the unregistered Queensland Socialists; 60.2% from Legalise Cannabis; 24.4% from Family First; 62.7% from Animal Justice; 36.5% from independent Damian Smart; and 33.6% from Libertarians.

10.56pm. I’ve finally fixed what was screwing up my probabilities, which were essentially behaving as if only a few hundred votes had been counted. So it is no longer countenancing the possibility of a Greens win, which was obviously never on the cards, and getting towards calling it for Labor without going all the way, as I believe is appropriate.

10.40pm. With little further ado, its TCP results are now in, and they added only 181 to the Labor lead, though at 768 votes it’s almost certainly enough.

10.30pm. At long last, the Chermside South pre-poll has reported its 6833 primary votes, which have both major parties higher and the Greens lower. If the preferences flow as they have been elsewhere, they should add about 300 votes to a Labor TCP lead that’s currently at 587, which should settle the deal for them.

9.21pm. I don’t have all the data on this I would like, but I would roughly guess that there will be about 3000 late-arriving postal and the LNP will make up about 400 to 500 votes on them. The only other category of vote outstanding after Chermside South pre-poll is in will be in-person declaration votes, which favoured Labor 267-138 in 2024.

9.21pm. The TCP count has caught up with the primary vote count, and Labor has a seemingly handy 587-vote lead. However, neither result has reported from the Chermside South pre-poll, which Labor won 54-46 in 2024 compared with an overall result of 55.3-46.7. If Labor can hold their ground there, they can probably be favoured to hold out against the late-arriving postals.

9.11pm. The Stafford pre-poll has reported its TCP result and it’s pushed Labor to a 121-vote lead, though they have in fact gone backwards slightly on my projection, which has them winning 50.4-49.6.

9.07pm. The LNP has a 17-vote lead on the TCP count, with three election day booths plus the Stafford pre-poll only having reported the primary vote. Those booths are unlikely to change the TCP much when they report. The big question is whether Labor does well enough on the Chermside pre-poll when it reports to give them a buffer sufficient to hold out against late-arriving postals, which will assuredly favour the LNP.

8.25pm. I should also note that I rolled the Brisbane CBD pre-poll booth, which is not in operation at this by-election, into the Stafford pre-poll result for purposes of historical comparison, which was a) a bit inelegant, and b) gave that booth a baseline for comparison that was stronger for Labor than it should have been, since they did well on the Brisbane CBD result. This means the swings from the booth are a bit better for Labor than the results just cited, and gives them hope for a strong pre-poll dynamic that will carry over to the Chermside pre-poll when it reports. On the other hand, Labor won absents 57-43 in 2024 compared with 55-45 overall and there will be none of those this time, an anomaly my system doesn’t factor in. So swings and roundabouts, in other words.

8.18pm. The Stafford pre-poll booth, with 6254 votes, has gone as Labor might have hoped, with Labor down 7.5% compared with 10.8% on election day booths, and the LNP up 1.9% compared with 3.6%. Which at the very least keeps them in the race.

8.05pm. The postals are now in on TCP, and they have indeed pushed the LNP to a quite handy 52.7-47.3 lead that the remaining election day booths are unlikely to change much. My system is likely flattering Labor a little because they did well at the 2024 election on absents and the Brisbane CBD booth, which aren’t in play this time. They can still win if they do well on pre-polls, which may not report until later in the evening, but you would rather be the LNP at this stage.

7.52pm. 3656 postals have just unloaded, and they have swung more gently than most of the rest of the votes so far (Labor down 5.6%, LNP up 4.8%), such that my system now has it neck and neck. They are still strong for the LNP in absolute terms though, as postals usually are, so they may have the effect of pushing the LNP into the lead on the TCP count (on which they continue to trail) when they report their TCP result.

7.39pm. Twelve of 14 election day booths are now in, and all you can say with confidence is that everything is riding on the pre-poll booths, which may not report for some time.

7.38pm. TCP blockage cleared, and now my system is projecting preference flows off an actual TCP count, Labor is getting 70% of them rather than 67%. That’s far from decisive, but it slightly moves the needle in their favour.

7.34pm. The Grange booth was one of Labor’s less bad results. Touch wood, the TCP results blockage should be fixed in the next update.

7.30pm. Actually, it looks like there are TCP results but my system is failing to read them. Looking into it.

7.27pm. The Stafford Heights booth is slightly better for Labor than its performance generally so far. The LNP is still slightly favoured, but the uncertainties noted in my 7:17pm update remain. Still nothing on TCP — my estimates are giving Labor 80% of Greens preferences, which is less than I’d normally have because of their open HTV card.

7.24pm. Chermside East is a bit better for Labor than the other two Chermside booths, but everything in the previous update’s assessment still stands. Still nothing on the TCP count.

7.17pm. Chermside West booth almost as bad for Labor as nearby Chermside South. Labor’s hopes are for a better flow of preferences than I’m estimating, a stronger dynamic in booths nearer the city that are yet to report, and a better trend on pre-polls.

7.12pm. The large Kedron West booth is less bad for Labor than Chermside South, but still bad enough — probably enough for them to lose narrowly if it proved representative, and certainly not good enough to get them back ahead on the projection. A lot depends on preference flows though, and there is still nothing on TCP.

7.06pm. Bad result for Labor from Chermside South booth gives the LNP a projected lead. A lot depends here though on the accuracy of my preference estimates, there still being no TCP results.

7.00pm. The first actual booth to report is Stafford West, and it’s living up to suggestions of a tight result: Labor down a dangerous 8.5%, but LNP only up 1.8%. Still nothing on the TCP count.

6.49pm. Three results in on the primary, none of them from static booths — telephone voting, pre-poll telephone voting and mobile voting. Consistent with a close result, though I’m projecting a narrow Labor lead. This is based on preferences estimates though, in the absence of any numbers on the TCP count.

6.37pm. Another minor result, 308 votes from Telephone Voting, is better for Labor, the LNP swing being only about 4%. My system has been a bit slow to update so far due to bugs, but I should get them sorted shortly.

6.30pm. The Mobile Polling booth result came through promptly, with only 106 formal votes, but they’re encouraging for the LNP as far as they go with a 12.7% increase on their primary vote and little change on Labor’s.

6pm. Polls have closed for Queensland’s Stafford state by-election, first results of which are likely to come through in about three-quarters of an hour. For what it’s worth, a Courier-Mail straw poll of 150 voters conducted at booths this morning found 43.3% saying they had voted LNP and 32.7% Labor, which would point to an LNP win if accurate, though the margin of error would have been 8% even allowing for a genuinely random sample.

Stafford by-election minus two days

A previous of Saturday’s Queensland state by-election for a seat in Brisbane’s north where Labor is grimly defending a 5.3% margin.

The third by-election in as many weeks takes place in Queensland on Saturday for the state seat of Stafford, vacated by the death on April 4 of Labor-turned-independent member Jimmy Sullivan. The by-election is a return to simpler times in being a straightforward contest between Labor and the Liberal National Party with the Greens as the biggest party on the sidelines, One Nation having opted not to run in a seat that is too close to the city to be convivial territory for them.

The question is thus whether a Labor opposition enduring the doldrums that typically follow being evicted from office can defend a margin of 5.3%. David Crisafulli’s government is at a correspondingly favourable point in its life cycle, although it has been enduring an ill-timed ministerial scandal over recent weeks. The Greens have placed a speed bump in Labor’s path by declining to direct preferences on their how-to-vote card — this typically makes a difference of about 5% to the flow of their preferences to Labor, which is non-trivial in the context of a seat where its vote share at the 2024 election was 18.1%.

The closest we have come to an opinion poll is a straw poll of 300 voters conducted at the electorate’s two pre-poll centres by the Sunday Mail, which found 41.7% saying they had voted for the LNP, 36.7% for Labor, 12.7% for the Greens and 8% for independents. This compares with 2024 election results of LNP 38.1%, Labor 38.8% and Greens 18.1%, or 39.6%, 39.3% and 17.0% specifically among pre-poll votes. The accompanying report oddly claimed this put the LNP “on track for by-election upset”, despite the movements being inside the Labor margin. The independents include Liam Parry, part of the unregistered Queensland Socialists, who has been in the news as the first person charged for using the proscribed “from the river to the sea” chant at a pro-Palestine rally in March.

Resolve Strategic: LNP 30, Labor 28, One Nation 17 in Queensland

As the Stafford by-election approaches, a poll finds Queensland’s LNP government losing ground to Labor amid a relatively subdued result for One Nation.

Nine Newspapers’ online publication the Brisbane Times has the bi-monthly Queensland state poll from Resolve Strategic, combining the Queensland responses from its last two monthly polls. It records a four-point drop in support for the Liberal National Party government, now on 30%, which has unusually little to do with One Nation, who are up only one point to 17%. Labor is up two to 28%, and the Greens are up one to 11%. David Crisafulli retains a strong net likeability (meaning favourable minus unfavourable, and ignoring neutral) of plus 19, down from plus 21, while Steven Miles is down from minus three to minus five. Crisafulli leads 42-26 on preferred premier, in from 44-23. The poll was conducted between March 8 to 14 and April 12 to 18 from a sample of 870.

We will perhaps get an insight into the accuracy of all this when the Stafford by-election is held on May 16, which has been brought on quickly following the death of Labor-turned-independent member Jimmy Sullivan on April 9 – although the contest has been deprived of one point of interest by One Nation’s announcement that it will not field a candidate. The two major parties have moved quickly to endorse candidates: Labor’s is Luke Richmond, the party’s assistant state secretary and a former ministerial chief-of-staff and official with the Right faction Australian Workers Union, while the LNP has again endorsed its candidate from 2024, Fiona Hammond, who formerly served Marchant ward on Brisbane City Council and has more recently been government relations manager at an engineering consultancy. The closure of nominations and ballot paper draw are on Friday.

Weekend federal miscellany (open thread)

Matt Canavan fails to improve on his loseable position on the Queensland Senate ticket; Anthony Albanese knocks talk of an imminent expansion of parliament on the head; and much else besides.

I’ve spent the last week or two scouring media that had gone unattended during the South Australian election, so I’ve got a huge amount of verbiage to unload over the coming week or so. This will include lengthy round-ups of news from New South Wales and (especially) Victoria as soon as I have poll results to attach them to, and dedicated posts on the Victorian state by-election for Nepean on May 2 (for which the ballot paper draw was conducted yesterday) and the Farrer federal by-election a week later.

For starters, here’s the federal electoral news that’s unrelated to Farrer:

• New Nationals leader Matt Canavan has been left
stranded in the uncomfortable second position on the Queensland Liberal National Party’s Senate ticket for the next election. State council declined to deviate from the established practice of allocating the top position to a Liberal, in this case James McGrath, who retained the position in the face of a challenge from former Petrie MP Luke Howarth. There remain suggestions that Canavan might end up running for the lower house seat of Capricornia, where Michelle Landry is expected to retire. Third on the ticket is Adam Stoker, solicitor and husband of former Senator and now state MP Amanda Stoker. Another nominee for the third position was Joanna Lindgren, who had a year-long stint in the Senate in 2015 and 2016. However, The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column relates that the party’s applicant review committee rejected her due to “posts to her private Facebook page”, which had not been a problem for her last year when she ran for the lower house seat of Blair.

• Anthony Albanese told parliament last week that he was “satisfied with the current number of seats in the House of Representatives”, after reports in February that Special Minister of State Don Farrell was holding talks with other parties about an expansion. Nine Newspapers reports Albanese “left the door open to making changes after the election, and also did not rule out adding Senators in the NT and ACT”.

• The distraction of the South Australian election meant that I didn’t pay it enough attention at the time, but the DemosAU MRP poll from a month or so offered some highly detailed breakdowns from its bumper sample of 8484, together with its headline seat projection of Labor 83, One Nation 52, Coalition nine, Greens one and others five. This includes a finding that around 55% of Coalition voters from 2025 who are over 35, live in rural and regional areas and didn’t finish high school now support One Nation, as do an even half in outer metropolitan areas. The equivalent figures for Labor are a bit under half that. Modelled party vote estimates find the Liberals gaining seats from Labor and teals in Sydney and (especially) Melbourne, while losing nearly everything they currently hold to One Nation, who get ten seats from Labor besides.

• Fox & Hedgehog has published a review of its performance at the South Australian state election, which modestly assesses that its performance did not quite match YouGov’s while equalling DemosAU’s and outpointing Newspoll’s, though all four in fact did more than adequately. Contrary to conventional understandings of social desirability bias in polling, seemingly too many respondents are reported having voted for One Nation in 2025. This is matched by under-reporting of past vote for other right-wing minor parties, suggesting that many had in fact voted for Trumpet of Patriots or the like.

• Clive Palmer, who finally appeared to give up after last year’s election, said last month he would contest the Gold Coast seat of Fadden at the next election as part of what will resume being called the United Australia Party.

• James Massola of the Sydney Morning Herald related last month that former Liberal MP and state party president Jason Falinski, who lost his Sydney seat of Mackellar to teal independent Sophie Scamps in 2022 and did not recontest in 2025, was “widely expected” to contest the seat at the next election.

• Former Liberal MP Keith Wolahan, whose seat of Menzies was swamped in the unexpectedly forceful metropolitan wave in 2025, offers an impeccably data-driven analysis of the party’s electoral woes.

• Political science academic Murray Goot argues against the notion, often claimed by its champions, that compulsory voting is a moderating influence on Australian politics.

• I presented the case against first-past-the-post during an appearance on Perth radio station 6PR on Tuesday.

Finally, in non-federal news, a third by-election is on the horizon following the death on Thursday of Jimmy Sullivan, leaving vacant the inner northern Brisbane seat of Stafford. Sullivan won the seat for Labor in 2020 and 2024, retaining a 5.3% margin on the latter occasion in the face of a 6.6% swing to the LNP. He was suspended from the Labor caucus shortly after the election and expelled in May 2025 amid a reported domestic violence incident, for which no charges were laid.

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