Category: Queensland Politics

Queensland: Resolve poll, Hinchinbrook by-election, electoral reforms

Positive signs for Steven Miles in a poll, negative ones at a by-election, and new laws relaxing restrictions on political donations and tightening ones on prisoners voting.

The Brisbane Times reports state voting intention results from Resolve Strategic for Queensland, which are seemingly being published bi-monthly now, combining the Queensland samples from two of the pollster’s monthly national surveys. This series has lately been reporting what might be thought a surprisingly encouraging result for Labor, given the Hinchinbrook by-election result (on which more below): the Liberal National Party is on 33% (steady), Labor 30% (down two), the Greens 11% (up one) and One Nation 9% (steady). David Crisafulli’s “net likeability” is down a point to plus 16, while Steven Miles’ maintains an improving trend in increasing seven points to plus 5. Crisafulli lead as preferred premier narrows sharply from 39-22 to 35-34. The report says the sample was 869, but a note under the accompanying graphic says 803.

The count for the Hinchinbrook by-election has been concluded, with Wayde Chiesa of the Liberal National Party prevailing over Mark Molachino of Katter’s Australian Party by a margin of 3.7%, a swing to the LNP of 16.9% compared with the October 2024 election result. The LNP primary vote was up 13.0% to 41.2%, with the KAP down 16.3% to 30.1% and Labor down 5.7% to 8.4%.

In further Queensland news, Attorney-General Deb Frecklington announced yesterday that the government would introduce electoral law legislation, which would not at this stage encompass the promised return to optional preferential voting. It proposes:

• Winding back the ban on property developer donations introduced by Labor in 2018 so it applies only to local government elections. Such had been the recommendation of the Crime and Corruption Commission in 2017, but the previous government extended the ban to state elections.

• Quadrupling donation caps presently amounting to around $4800 to a party and $7200 to a candidate by having them apply over a financial year rather than a four-year period.

• Extending the disqualification on prisoners voting from those serving terms of three years or more to one year or more. This is interesting in that an attempt by the Howard government to extend the existing three-year disqualification at federal level to all prisoners regardless of their sentence was overturned by the High Court in the case of Roach v Electoral Commissioner (2007).

• Removing the requirement for the Electoral Commission of Queensland to oversee preselection ballots, which in the estimation of the Courier-Mail “applies uniquely to the LNP as Labor directly appoints candidates through its union-based factions”.

Hinchinbrook by-election live

Live results and commentary from the Queensland state by-election for Hinchinbrook.
Projected 3CP Projected 2CP Win Probability

Click here for full display of Hinchinbrook by-election results

End of evening. With only late-arriving postals and provisional votes to be counted, Liberal National candidate Wayde Chiesa holds an insurmountable 3.8% vote ahead of Katter’s Australian Party candidate Mark Molachino, whose party’s vote is down from 46.4% to 30.2%. As was noted often during the commentary below, large regional effects were evident: the two-party swing was 12.4% in the booths at the Townsville end and 30.0% further north. The KAP two-party vote was 11.1% stronger at the former end this time, whereas at the 2024 election it was 6.4% weaker. Support for One Nation remained fairly modest despite almost tripling on the 2024 result, while the Labor vote was well down off a low base, making their determination to field a candidate all the more puzzling.

8.48pm. Primary votes are in from the two pre-poll booths, and the one in Ingram (“Returning Officer Hinchinbrook”) has delivered what my system deems to have been a killer blow to the KAP: out of a substantial 5348 formal votes, the KAP is down there 38.8% and the LNP up 31.2%. The Deeragun early voting centre, at the Townsville end, records a swing of only about 10%.

8.32pm. I now see the real reason my projection ticked back to the KAP, namely that 3393 postal votes reported. However, it’s now tipped back over 80% LNP win probability, I think because of new TCP numbers resulting in a revision to the preference projection. Still nothing from the two big pre-poll centres.

8.25pm. The latest update caused my LNP win probability to fall quite substantially to 74.4%, which I think is down to one TCP result having given the KAP a better flow of preferences than elsewhere. After a fair bit of variability, the ABC’s and my TCP projections are now in accord at 52.1-47.9 in favour of the LNP.

8.13pm. TCP results from seven booths have dropped, without changing the outlook much.

8.03pm. Regarding those preferences: it may be noted that One Nation’s how-to-vote cards favoured the LNP over the KAP.

8.00pm. Two substantial booths have reported on the TCP, greatly improving the data from which to project the outcome, and my system is interpreting it as good news for the LNP, whose win probability is back well above 80%. I note that the ABC’s projection, which actually had the LNP falling slightly behind for a moment there, has now substantially revised in their favour — presumably because it’s no longer going off preference estimates that may have been flattering the KAP. The note of caution surrounding what the two big pre-poll booths might do remains relevant though.

7.46pm. With most election day primary votes in now, the race has tightened considerably — early projections based off big swings in rural booths have proved deceptive. Still more data needed on TCP, though the biggest imponderable is probably the two big pre-poll centres.

7.36pm. There are now five booths in from the Townsville end, and while they are less bad for Katter’s than booths further north, they don’t quite get them where they need to be. Their remaining hopes involve a stronger result on pre-polls and a better flow of preferences than is currently being projected off a low base of data (only “Telephone Voting – Early Voting” is in on TCP).

7.25pm. My projection is now going off actual preferences rather than estimates — specifically, by projecting from one booth where 149 votes slightly favoured the LNP. Which suggests my preference estimates weren’t so far off the mark, and pushes the LNP win probability back over 90%.

7.18pm. I’ve just revised by Labor preference estimate in favour of Katter’s, so expect improvement in their favour with the next results update.

7.18pm. Ten booths in — I’m projecting an LNP TCP of 58.1% but the ABC’s only gets it to 54.4%. The difference is our respective guesses about how (mostly) Labor and Greens preferences will flow.

7.16pm. Nine booths now in on the primary vote, still nothing on TCP, and the swing has moderated a little – my projection of the LNP primary vote is in from a bit over 47% to 43.6%. It may be notable that the difference has been made by the first booth from the Townsville end of the electorate (Deeragun), where the swing is about 10% and not as high as 30% as it’s been in some of the rural booths. The possibility that the Townsville booths will maintain that pattern means it can’t be called yet. One Nation look too far behind the KAP in third to be a shot of making the final count.

6.54pm. After what seemed to me a slow start, we now suddenly have six small booths in on the primary vote, with hugely encouraging results for the Liberal National Party – there were strong Katter areas, but their vote has fallen by more than half, with a lot going to One Nation and slightly more to the LNP. One Nation have at least a prayer of getting ahead of the KAP, and I’m not ruling either of them out yet, but unless we’re seeing substantial regional variability this is looking like an LNP gain.

6pm. Polls have closed for the Hinchinbrook by-election, occasioned by Katter’s Australian Party member Nick Dametto’s departure for a successful run at the Townsville mayoralty. The electorate contains a number of small rural booths, so first results should presumably in well within the hour.

Hinchinbrook by-election minus one day

A look at tomorrow’s Hinchinbrook state by-election in north Queensland, a complex contest in one of the three seats held by Katter’s Australian Party.

Tomorrow is polling day for Queensland’s Hinchinbrook by-election, which will fill the vacancy caused by Katter’s Australian Party member Nick Dametto’s successful bid for the Townsville mayoralty. Dametto’s move was launched with evident confidence that the party could retain the seat in his absence, but their candidate Mark Molachino has faced a determined campaign from the Liberal National Party. The by-election also offers some sort of litmus test for the resurgence of One Nation, which made little headway against Dametto at the 2024 election, polling only 4.6% of the vote. Perhaps surprisingly, Labor is also making the effort to field a candidate in a seat where they scored 14.0% of the vote last year.

The LNP campaign has made much of Molachino’s past as an ALP member, and also of Premier David Crisafulli’s connections to the electorate, which encompasses his old home town of Ingham. Crisafulli is notably close to his party’s candidate, Wayde Chiesa, the connection extending to his role as chief financial officer of Southern Edge Training, of which David Crisafulli was the director until two months before it collapsed in 2016. Both have been muscling up on law-and-order, the LNP campaign emphasising tougher bail laws and the KAP promoting its showpiece “castle law” policy, which would allow residents facing home invasions to use “whatever force necessary”.

As reported in The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column, One Nation’s how-to-vote card is notable for having Chiesa ahead of Molachino, which high-profile One Nation figure James Ashby attributes to “former Labor Party people always doing the dirty on us”. The LNP has One Nation ahead of the KAP, while the KAP card is split between options favouring the LNP and Labor, both with One Nation second. Also in the field are Amanda Nickson, whose how-to-vote card order boils down to Katter’s, One Nation, Labor, LNP; independent Steven Clare, who was One Nation’s candidate for Thuringowa at the state election; and Aiden Creagh of the Greens.

As always, this site will feature live reporting of results and commentary from the close of polls at 6pm tomorrow (7pm AEDT).

Miscellany: housing and Queensland polls (open thread)

Pre-election federal polling and a recent state poll from Queensland suggest few are happy with anyone on housing policy.

Nothing to relate over the past week in the way of federal polling, but past time nonetheless for a new post. We do have, courtesy of the Macquarie University Housing and Urban Research Centre, a deep dive into attitudes towards housing policy from before the May election, drawn from the Australian Cooperative Election Survey conducted by Accent Research. It finds only 16% were satisfied with the Albanese government’s housing policies, with 34% dissatisfied and 32% neither, although the high level of consistency of these results by age group, housing tenure and property investment status suggests the dissatisfaction takes on a variety of forms. On the causes of the problem, the report offers the perhaps unsurprising finding that “older and right-leaning voters” blame immigration, while “younger and progressive voters identify high interest rates, high prices and low wages”.

DemosAU does have a state poll for Queensland, which comes too soon after last week’s Resolve Strategic and RedBridge Group polls to get its own post (on a semi-related point: still no date for the Hinchinbrook by-election). In contrast to those two, it finds David Crisafulli’s Liberal National Party government well on top, despite a surge to One Nation at the expense of both major parties. The LNP has a two-party lead of 54-46, essentially the same as the 54.2-45.8 election result last year, from primary votes of LNP 37% (down by 4.5%), Labor 29% (down by 3.6%), Greens 12% (up by 2.1%) and One Nation 14% (up by 6.0%). Crisafulli leads Steven Miles 44-23 on preferred premier. Further questions find the government highly rated for handling of the Olympics but rather a lot less so for housing and cost-of-living, which also register as the two most salient issues facing the state. Extensive demographic breakdowns are available in the full report. The poll was conducted October 13 to 20 from a sample of 1006.

UPDATE (Essential Research): Had I held back a few hours I would have had a new poll from Essential Research to lead with: it has Labor up a point to 36% and the Coalition down one to 26%, and the ongoing One Nation surge pushing them well clear of the Greens, respectively up two to 15% and down two to 9%, with a steady 6% undecided. Labor holds a 50-44 lead on the 2PP+ measure, in from 51-44. Anthony Albanese is up a point on approval to 45% and down two on disapproval to 44%, while Sussan Ley is steady on 32% and up two to 43%.

A question on who should lead the Liberal Party produces indecisive results, with 42% professing themselves unsure and 12% favouring “somebody else” over six designated options: 13% for Sussan Ley, 10% for Andrew Hastie, 10% for Jacinta Namatjira Price, 7% for Angus Taylor, 4% for Allegra Spender and 3% for Tim Wilson. Forty-eight per cent felt the party should adopt more progressive positions, 24% more conservative.

Albanese’s meeting with Donald Trump was rated good for Australia’s long-term interests by 37%, bad by 18% and indifferent by 26%. Support for net zero by 2050 is at 44% with 27% opposed, and a monthly national mood reading improves a bit after a sharp downturn last time, with right direction up a point to 35% and wrong track down four to 46%. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1041.

Queensland: polls, Hinchinbrook by-election and redistribution latest

Two polls suggest the Crisafulli government is floundering a year after coming to office, as a by-election and redistribution loom.

A few things to report from the Sunshine State:

• The Brisbane Times has a result from the Queensland components of the last two monthly national Resolve Strategic polls, with a sample of 868. This has statewide primary votes of LNP 33%, down one from the July-August period; Labor steady at 32%; Greens steady at 10%; and One Nation up one to 9%. This compares with election results of LNP 41.5%, Labor 32.6%, Greens 9.9% and One Nation 8.0%, and would pan out to around 51.5-48.5 in favour of Labor with typical preference flows, compared with 53.8-46.2 to the LNP at the election (though that game may change somewhat if the government abolishes compulsory preferential voting as promised). David Crisafulli scores a net likeability rating of plus 17, down three from the previous survey period, while Steven Miles is at minus two, down one. Crisafulli holds a 39-22 lead as preferred premier, out from 40-25.

• The Courier-Mail reports a RedBridge Group-Accent Research poll targeting only south-east Queensland credits Labor with a two-party lead of 52-48, compared with what RedBridge calculates as a result of 50.3-49.7 in favour of the LNP across the corresponding area at the election held a year ago. A graphic in the print edition says the primary votes are 35% each for the LNP and Labor, 13% for the Greens and 11% for One Nation, though the accompanying report says the LNP are actually on 36%. I believe I can infer the corresponding results from the election were LNP 40.4%, Labor 35.9%, Greens 12.1% and One Nation 6.1%. The sample was 1013, but the only indication of the field work period is that it was before the government’s “energy road map” was unveiled last week.

• There is still no date for the by-election for the North Queensland seat of Hinchinbrook, which will be held due to Katter Australian Party member Nick Dametto’s plan to run for the mayor of Townsville. The LNP has confirmed a candidate in Wayde Chiesa, former regional chief executive of Regional Development Australia, described today by The Australian as the “hand-picked” candidate of David Crisafulli. The report also relates Crisafulli appointed Chiesa chief financial officer for a training firm of which he was sole director from December 2015 to April 2016, which collapsed two months after Crisafulli’s departure owing creditors $3 million. Dametto’s successor as KAP candidate will be former Townsville deputy mayor Mark Molachino, whom the LNP has been keen to point out was an ALP member from 2017 to 2024 – which Rob Katter reckons to be sour grapes because Molachino allegedly rejected the LNP’s own overtures. Labor’s candidate remains to be announced, but Steven Miles confirmed last week there would be one.

• A redistribution to update electoral boundaries that have been in place at the 2017, 2020 and 2024 elections is under way, but all the Redistribution Commission will give away about the publication of proposed boundaries is that it will be “early 2026”. The submissions have been published: as well as advocating a return to purely geographic seat names, the LNP is calling for the abolition of the rural seat of Hill, held for Katter’s Australian Party by Shane Knuth, and the inner urban seat of Toohey, held for Labor by Peter Russo, to accommodate new seats in Ipswich and Caboolture. The Greens concur on the latter point, but want the scrapped seats to be Toohey’s southern neighbour Stretton, held for Labor by James Martin, and the Townsville seat of Thuringowa, held for the LNP by Natalie Marr. Labor agrees on the need for a new seat in Caboolture but makes no suggestion as to what should be abolished.

Resolve Strategic: LNP 34, Labor 32, Greens 10, One Nation 8 in Queensland

A new poll finds an apparent improvement in state Labor electoral fortunes now running the full length of the eastern seaboard.

Nine Newspapers’ Queensland title the Brisbane Times has a poll of state voting intention from Resolve Strategic, which like this week’s Victorian poll combines responses from the last two monthly national polls, in this case from a sample of 801. As with polling since the federal election in New South Wales and Victoria, it records remarkable movement from Coalition to Labor – the Liberal National Party is down fully eleven points from the previous result, which combined polling conducted from January through April, to 34%, barely ahead of Labor who are up ten to 32%. The Greens are down two points to 10% and One Nation is steady on 8%. That implies a Labor two-party lead of about 51-49, although such calculations will be complicated if the government follows through on its plan to introduce optional preferential voting.

David Crisafulli’s lead over Steven Miles as preferred premier has narrowed, though less dramatically, from 44-22 to 40-25. Crisafulli in fact records a two-point improvement to plus 20% on “net likeability” compared with the pre-election poll (this measure was not included in the poll from earlier this year), while Steven Miles is up twelve to minus 1%.

DemosAU: 55-45 to LNP in Queensland

Nine months after its election, Queensland’s Liberal National Party government predictably maintains a dominant position in a new state poll.

DemosAU has published state and federal voting intention results for Queensland, the latter of which I will cover in a post later this evening. The state poll is the second such since the Liberal National Party’s election win last October, and credits them with a two-party lead of 55-45, out from 54-46 in the February poll and comparing with a 53.8-46.2 result at the election. The primary votes are LNP 40% (unchanged on the last poll, down 1.5% on the election), Labor 28% (down two on the last poll and 4.6% on the election), Greens 13% (up one and 3.1%) and One Nation 12% (up two and 4.0%). A further question finds the recent state budget rated as good by 24% and bad by 19%, with 57% unsure. The poll was conducted July 4 to 9 from a sample of 1027.

Also from Queensland, a state redistribution process has just commenced, of which Ben Raue of The Tally Room offers a useful summary.

State polling: NSW, Victoria and Queensland

State Labor governments afloat in New South Wales and sinking in Victoria, while a new conservative government enjoys its honeymoon in Queensland.

Four recent state poll results from the three largest states:

• DemosAU had been a handy supplier of state-level polling lately, its latest entry being from New South Wales, where Labor is credited with a two-party lead of 54-46. This compares with 54.3-45.7 at the March 2023 election, and is a happier set of numbers for the Minns government than most of its mid-term polling. Labor is nonetheless only 33% of the primary vote, compared with 37.0% at the election, but the benefit has been yielded by the Greens, up from 9.7% to 14%, with the Coalition down from 35.4% to 34% and others on 19%. Chris Minns holds a 42-24 lead over Mark Speakman as preferred premier. The poll was conducted last Thursday to Saturday from a sample of 1013.

• The bi-monthly Resolve Strategic Victorian state poll, combining 1000 responses from the last two monthly national polls, is only slightly better for Labor than a diabolical result last time: they are up two points to 24%, with the Coalition down one to 41% and the Greens up one to 14%. Two-party preferred gets hard to estimate with the non-major party vote at 35%, but I make the Coalition’s lead to be between 53-47 and 56-44. It will likely be the lead story on The Age website come morning, but in any case you can see the numbers through its Resolve Political Monitor feature (click on “VIC” near the top of the page). Demos AU also had a poll last week for Victoria, conducted March 17 to 21 from a sample of 1006, which had the Coalition leading 52-48 on two-party preferred from primary votes of Labor 25%, Coalition 39%, Greens 15% and others 21%. The November 2022 election result was 54.8-45.2 to Labor, from primary votes of Labor 36.7%, Coalition 34.5% and Greens 11.5%. Brad Battin led Jacinta Allan for preferred premier in both polls, by 36-23 in Resolve Strategic’s case (out from 36-27 last time) and 43-30 in DemosAU’s. DemosAU found 60% holding that the state was headed in the wrong direction, compared with 25% for the right direction.

• As reported in the Courier-Mail on Monday, RedBridge Group has the first Queensland state poll since the October election, recording the new Liberal National Party government with a lead of 56.5-43.5, from primary votes are LNP 44%, Labor 27%, Greens 12% and One Nation 10%. The result at the election in October was 53.8-46.2 in favour of the LNP from primary votes of LNP 41.5%, Labor 32.6%, Greens 9.9% and One Nation 8.0%. David Crisafulli is rated favourably by 46%, neutrally by 25% and negatively by 17%, while Steven Miles is at 26%, 22% and 39%. The poll was conducted March 17 to 25 from a sample of 1507.

In other Queensland news, the first signs of progress on a state redistribution that must be held at some point this year, with the Courier-Mail reporting Attorney-General Deb Frecklington has floated three names for the redistribution commission: two uncontroversial, the other John Sosso, who has held senior public service positions under various conservative governments, presently serving under Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie as director-general of the Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning.

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