Category: Queensland Politics

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”.

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.

Click here for full display of Queensland state election results.

11:47pm I’ve done an article for The Conversation that was based on figures about 35 minutes ago.  The LNP is now up to a 53-35 seat lead over Labor and is winning the 2PP by 53.8-46.2.  This election wasn’t close.

10:04pm With 34% statewide counted, the LNP has won or is leading in 50seats, Labor in 38, the Katters in three, Greens in one and an independent in one.  The PB’s 2PP estimate is 52.7-47.3 to the LNP.  It’s clear now that the LNP will win the election, as the swing to it rises on pre-poll and postal votes.

9:52pm In Maiwar, the Greens will need Labor preferences to beat the LNP, and once again pre-poll votes are better for the LNP in swing terms than election day votes.

9:43pm With 30% counted statewide, the PB has the LNP leading by 47 seats to 41, just enough for an LNP majority. The KAP has three, the Greens one and an independent one. The PB now has a 2PP estimate, which is 52.5-47.5 to the LNP. The ABC is at 51.9-48.1 to LNP.

9:38pm In Macalister, both postals and pre-polls counted so far suggest a stronger swing to the LNP than from election day votes.

9:30pm In Everton, however, the pre-poll booths are better for the LNP in swing terms than the election day booths in that seat.

9:21pm In Cook, the first pre-poll booth is better for Labor in swing terms than the election day booths counted so far in that seat.

9:14pm The ABC has fixed its results issue. With 25.3% counted statewide, the LNP leads the ABC’s 2PP estimate by 51.7-48.3. There are still no results from Hervey Bay.

9:06pm Actually something’s gone wrong with the ABC’s results, as they’ve now retreated to 19.5% counted, while PB is up to 23% counted.

9:02pm With 20.4% counted, the ABC has the LNP leading the 2PP by 51.7-48.3. The PB has the LNP ahead in 45 seats to 42 for Labor with three Katters, one Green and one independent.

8:47pm William has posted The Poll Bludger results. With 19% counted, the LNP is leading or has won 46 seats, Labor 41, Katter three, the Greens one and independents one. There’s no two-party estimate on these results available yet.

8:32pm It looks as if Labor will regain Ipswich West, which they lost at a by-election early this year. Labor leads by 55-45 with 21% counted.

8:27pm With 14% counted, the 2PP estimate is 51.1-48.9 to LNP. The seats won are currently tied at 32 each between Labor and the LNP, with two for Katter. Remember these are election day votes, and pre-poll and postals are likely to be better for the LNP.

8:10pm With 8.5% counted, the 2PP estimate is 51.6-48.4 to LNP, with the LNP on 26 seats, Labor on 18, Katter two and independents one. There are 93 total seats, and it will take 47 to win a majority.

7:57pm With 3% counted, the ABC’s 2PP estimate is 51.1-48.9 to LNP, with the LNP so far winning 11 seats to 3 for Labor.

7:51pm With 2% counted, the ABC’s two-party estimate is 52.0-48.0 to the LNP. These votes would be election day votes, and pre-poll and postals will likely be better for the LNP.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

William Bowe is working for Channel 9, so I’ll be giving live commentary on the Queensland results. Polls close at 7pm AEDT (6pm in Queensland). William will hopefully add a live results link to the top of this post. I will need to do an article for The Conversation tonight.

There were two late polls: a Newspoll reported in the previous post gave the LNP a 52.5-47.5 lead, from primary votes of 42% LNP, 33% Labor, 11% Greens, 8% One Nation and 6% for all Others.

The ABC reported that a uComms poll conducted Thursday from a sample of 3,651 using robopolling, gave the LNP a 51-49 lead. Kevin Bonham has primary votes from this poll, which was not commissioned by anyone. The primary votes are 39.3% LNP, 33.6% Labor, 12.9% Greens, 7.8% One Nation, 2.9% KAP and 3.5% others.

Courtesy of The Australian, Newspoll adds more weight to the impression of a Labor recovery in Queensland, cutting the LNP’s two-party lead to 52.5-47.5 from the 55-45 the pollster recorded a month ago. The LNP primary vote has nonetheless held steady at 42%, with Labor’s three point gain to 33% drawn from a one-point drop for the Greens to 11% and a two-point drop from others to 6% (possibly influenced by a changing in response options after candidate details became available), while One Nation is steady on 8%. Steven Miles is up four on approval to 45% and down three on disapproval to 48%, and now leads David Crisafulli 45-42 as preferred premier after trailing 46-39 in the last poll. Crisafulli is down six on approval to 43% and up nine on disapproval to 46%. The poll was conducted last Friday through to yesterday from a sample of 1151.

Some further recent horse-race calling:

• The Courier-Mail today relates that “leaked Labor polling” shows the party set to run third in the Townsville seats of Mundingburra (LNP 34.5%, KAP 27.4%, Labor 24.9%) and Thuringowa (LNP 33.4%, KAP 25.1%, Labor 23.7%), both of which they hold, and then deliver victory to Katter’s Australian Party on their preferences. However, it also suggests Stephen Andrew, who has defected to Katter’s Australian Party from One Nation, will struggle in his seat of Mirani to hold off the LNP, whom he trails 40.8% to 21.4%, with Labor on 18.7% and One Nation on 16.5%. It also suggests independent Sandy Nelson will rely on preferences to hold out against an LNP surge in Noosa, trailing 42.0% to 36.9% on the primary vote with Labor on 9.1%.

• On Wednesday, Hayden Johnson of the Courier-Mail suggested the Labor slump in Townsville may have prompted Rob Katter’s backdown on introducing a bill to wind back liberalised abortion laws, which has caused such grief for the LNP during the campaign. The party’s high hopes for Mundingburra in particular stood to be jeopardised by a conservative line on abortion, given Townsville’s youthful demographic profile. Elsewhere in the Courier-Mail, Madura McCormack reported Labor’s Townsville collapse was confirmed by “sources across all three parties”.

• Former Labor state secretary Cameron Milner, now a lobbyist with a side hustle criticising the party from the right for News Corp, also reckons Katter’s Australian Party “looks the goods in Cook and Mulgrave”, since here too Labor is set to drop to third. Milner also goes so far as to rate that Keppel “has already elected James Ashby” of One Nation. So far as Labor losses to the LNP are concerned, Milner says the Labor casualty list will certainly include Barron River, Mackay, Townsville, Thuringowa, Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, Nicklin, Caloundra and Pumicestone, likely to be joined by Aspley, Mansfield and Redcliffe, with several more besides listed as possibilities.

• Hayden Johnson of the Courier-Mail further reported Labor’s inner urban recovery meant the Greens had “quietly whittled down to four” its list of target seats from an initial seven, leaving McConnel, Cooper, Greenslopes and Miller as the seats it hopes to add to its existing complement of Maiwar and South Brisbane. “Labor hardheads” go so far as to say “the Greens will crash on election night”, leaving Grace Grace and Jonty Bush intact in McConnel and Cooper. Miller also “isn’t in doubt”, though nothing specifically was said of Greenslopes.

Further indications of a Labor recovery in Queensland from a Resolve Strategic poll in the Brisbane Times, putting them fully nine points higher off a dismal mid-year starting point to record 32% of the primary vote, with the Liberal National Party down four to 40%. The pollster breaks with its usual practice of not dealing in preferences, finding the LNP leading 53-47 on a respondent-allocated measure and 52-48 using preference flows from past elections – a strikingly narrow lead considering Labor in New South Wales failed to get a majority with 54.3%. Notably, the poll has response options reflecting the candidates in the respondent’s electorate, thereby removing the all-too-popular generic independent response and causing the independent result to drop from 9% to 2%. This did not yield a dividend for minor parties: the Greens and One Nation, who have candidates in every seat, are respectively down one to 11% and up one to 9%.

A leadership approval question emphasising “performance in recent weeks” produced a distinctly favourable result for Steven Miles, including in comparison with the recent YouGov poll whose survey period partly overlapped (October 10 to 16 for that poll, October 14 to 19 for this one). Miles registered a combined very good and good rating of 48%, with poor and very poor at 38%. While this had the edge on David Crisafulli’s 44% and 37% lead, Crisafulli retained a slight 39-37 edge on preferred premier, though this was greatly reduced from his 40-27 lead in the mid-year poll, which was conducted from July through to September. The sample for the poll was 1003.

With a week to go, yesterday’s Courier-Mail reported a YouGov poll found Labor in an improved position compared with the last such poll in July, while still heading for defeat. Conducted from last Thursday through to Wednesday, the poll credited the Liberal National Party with a two-party lead of 55-45, in from 57-43, from primary votes of Labor 31% (up five), LNP 41% (down two), Greens 11% (down three) and One Nation 11% (down two). Steven Miles has also all but eliminated a substantial deficit on preferred premier, with David Crisafulli’s lead in from 40-27 to 37-36. Piecing together information from the report and an accompanying line chart, it looks like Miles is up three on approval to 34% and steady on disapproval to 44%, while Crisafulli is down two to 38% and up nine to 32%.

The poll helpfully includes breakdowns into five broadly defined regions, with caution due for the small sub-samples this produces from an overall sample of 1503. Based on my own assumptions as to how seats might have been characterised, this suggests Labor stands to lose the election in “regional”, which an accompanying map suggests encompasses the coast north of the Sunshine Coast (plus, I’ve assumed, Toowoomba), and “outer metro”, from what I calculate as swings of around 13% and 9% respectively. Conversely, the poll finds Labor holding steady on two-party preferred terms in “inner metro”, although it has lost about three points to the Greens. Labor faces swings of 3% to 4% in “coastal” (meaning the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast”) and “rural”, where it has little existing support to lose. While I would treat the result with caution, the numbers for “rural” suggest Katter’s Australian Party is shedding support to both the LNP and One Nation.

On top of its YouGov poll, Courier-Mail conducted an “exit poll” on Tuesday targeting 100 voters apiece at early voting centres in ten key electorates. While the scientific precision of the exercise might be doubted, the results were nonetheless striking in showing Labor down by between 4% (in McConnel) and 22% (in Rockhampton, where it may be losing votes to independent Margaret Strelow). Still more remarkably, the LNP was up by between 9% and 27%, excluding an outlier result for Cairns. There was little encouragement for the Greens in its target seats of McConnel and Greenslopes, which would have been won by the LNP on the numbers published, though the margins of error are naturally very wide. Comparing like for like (which the Courier-Mail’s tables didn’t do), Labor was down 13 points on 2020 and the LNP up 15, with the Greens down two and One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party little changed.

The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column relates “concern mounting about seats in Brisbane’s greater south” from Labor sources, but optimism about Meaghan Scanlon’s chances of retaining Gaven, the one seat Labor holds on the Gold Coast. Hayden Johnson of the Courier Mail says both sides expect Labor to hold out against the regional tide in the seat of Cairns, and that “some in Labor” consider Aspley in Brisbane’s inner north, where its margin is 5.2%, to be “50-50”.

Following a week in which abortion unexpectedly took centre stage of the Queensland election campaign, The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports the issue “has helped Labor’s cause in Brisbane, where it faces losses to the LNP and the Greens”. The evidence for this would appear to be Labor internal polling suggesting Grace Grace is well placed to retain the Greens target of McConnel, outpolling them 27% to 24% with the LNP on 34%. This is quite a bit different from polling the column published from a different source last week, which had the Greens on 37.9%, the LNP on 27.4% and Labor on 27.2%. A “senior Labor insider” is further quoted saying a party that feared a near wipeout regionally, leaving it only with Gladstone outside of Brisbane, now sees “glimmers of hope in Cairns, Rockhampton and Maryborough”.

The other big event for the week was the closure of nominations and ballot paper draws, revealing a decline in the total number of candidates to 525 (5.6%) from 597 (6.4%) in 2020. A breakdown from Antony Green shows Labor, the LNP, the Greens and One Nation are contesting all seats, Family First is putting in its biggest effort in some time with 59 candidates, with lesser numbers from Legalise Cannabis, Katter’s Australian Party, Animal Justice and the Libertarians.

Also of note: the website Australian Election Forecasts, operating off an admittedly shallow pool of data, calculates an 85.8% chance the LNP will have a “clear path to government” compared with 4.4% for Labor, the median predicted outcome being 55 seats for the LNP, 29 for Labor, three each for the Greens and Katter’s Australian Party and one independent.