Albert

Margin: Liberal National 11.9%
Region: Gold Coast Hinterland
Federal: Fadden/Forde/Wright

Candidates in ballot paper order

	MARK BOOTHMAN Liberal National (top) AMANDA BEST Family First MELISSA McMAHON Labor (bottom) JANE CAJDLER Greens BLAIR BREWSTER Palmer United Party

Straddling the edges of Brisbane and the Gold Coast, Albert was among the Liberal National Party’s haul of 44 gains at the 2012 election. It extends from Mt Warren Park and Ormaeu at Brisbane’s southern outskirts to the Gold Coast suburb of Oxenford, with the Pacific Motorway as its eastern boundary. The electorate is characterised by a large number of mortgage-paying young families, and has the state’s second highest concentration of construction workers after Gladstone.

Albert has mostly gone with the government of the day in a history going back to 1950, unambiguous exceptions being a win for Labor in 1972 and the Nationals’ retention of the seat when Peter Beattie came to power in 1998. The winner on the former occasion was Bill D’Arcy, who moved to the new seat of Woodridge in 1977 and was imprisoned for child sex offences in 2000. Bill Baumann held the seat for the Nationals from 1995 to 2001, when he made an unsuccessful bid for the new Gold Coast seat of Gaven. The entry of the Liberals into the race at the 2001 election split the Coalition vote, helping One Nation to finish in second place and Labor to easily win the seat off a 13.4% increase on the primary vote.

The seat was held for Labor for the next three terms by Margaret Keech, who held minor ministerial posts from 2004 to 2009. The terms of a new coalition agreement saw the Nationals vacate the field at the 2004 and 2006 elections, at which Keech inflicted heavy defeats on Liberal candidates with respective margins of 17.3% and 17.0%. Redistribution and a 7.3% swing brought the margin back to 6.5% in 2009, before the killer blow of an 18.4% swing in 2012 delivered the seat to the LNP with 11.9% to spare.

The seat is now held by Mark Boothman, formerly a mortgage broker and currently the member of a large government back-bench. Labor’s new candidate is Melissa McMahon, a recruit instructor at the Queensland Police Service Academy and former army officer.

One day out from polling day, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported that internal polling by both Labor and Palmer United suggest Albert was “in play”. However, the paper also brought results of ReachTEL survey of 1115 respondents on the Gold Coast which indicated the regional swing was short of the 11.9% margin, with the LNP vote down from 58.3% in 2012 to 48.3%, but Labor up only from 23.7% to 29.4%.

Corrections, complaints and feedback to William Bowe at pollbludger-at-bigpond-dot-com. Read William’s blog, The Poll Bludger.

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