Queensland election

[Deleted]

Hello. Good to see this forum back.

Results coming in Saturday morning our time. Labor certain to lose, but LNP leader Campbell Newman has a tighter fight to win his seat.

Lots of good stuff from Antony Green here: www.abc.net.au/elections/qld/2012/

Queensland uses optional preferential voting which means Labor cannot rely so strongly on Green transfers as in federal and other state elections.

[Crimson King]

Ok Kris - do your admin duties!

[Deleted]

Oh dear, not an auspicious start. Yes, please move to the right section.

[Richard Allen]

Will be interesting to see how Katter's Australia Party do. Rob Katter is standing in Mount Isa which lies mostly within his dad's Federal electorate of Kennedy. Sitting MPs Shane Knuth (Dalrymple) and Aidan McLindon (Beaudesert) should also be strong candidates. Could also do well in other rural seats especially Gregory.

[timrollpickering]

There's a streak of rural populist conservatism in Queensland that has traditionally either been harnessed by the Nationals or by third forces (particularly One Nation). With the Liberal Nationals now a single party led by a Brisbane politician (the first such conservative Qld leader in nearly a century) that strand could go to Katter's the Australian Party.

Oh and for those wonder, the younger Katter has his own hat:

[Deleted]

Live coverage here:

www.abc.net.au/news/abcnews24/

Latest results here:

www.abc.net.au/elections/qld/2012/guide/latest.htm

Massive swings to the LNP, Campbell Newman looks like having no problem winning his seat.

[Deleted]

Labor could be down to single figures.

[Richard Allen]

ABC are projecting that the final results will be

LNP: 77
Lab: 8
AP: 2
Othr: 2

Katter and Knuth were both comfortably elected in Mount Isa and Dalrymple but the AP did not do so well in the rural south as the rural north.

[Richard Allen]

Further to the previous post AP came fairly close in Hinchinbrook and Mulgrave both of which are mostly within Kennedy.

[timrollpickering]

Mar 24, 2012 10:20:02 GMT Richard Allen said:

Katter and Knuth were both comfortably elected in Mount Isa and Dalrymple but the AP did not do so well in the rural south as the rural north.

Dalrymple is the partial successor to Tablelands, which returned One Nation longer than anywhere else.

The AP have lost Beaudesrat (rural southen Queensland) and thus their state leader Aidan McLindon. This also reduces them to a northern outback party.

At some stages it seemed even Anna Bligh would go down but she looks to have survived. Already speculation about the leadership has begun with suggestions they should look outside the parliament.

[Richard Allen]

Katter has claimed that his party has also won Thuringowa (another seat within Kennedy). They are currently second on first preferences by around 800 votes and if they can retain second place after Grn and FFP transfers then ALP transfers should see them take the seat. If the ALP take second spot after Grn and FFP transfers it will be an easy LNP gain.

[timrollpickering]

www.abc.net.au/elections/qld/2012/guide/thur.htm

Primary Count Name Party Votes % Vote Swing
Steve Todeschini KAP 7,007 30.8 +30.8
Bernie Williams GRN 753 3.3 -0.5
Adrian Britton FFP 590 2.6 +2.6
Craig Wallace ALP 6,197 27.2 -22.1
Sam Cox LNP 8,238 36.2 +2.3
.... OTH 0 0.0 -13.1
Informal 671 2.6
Total Votes 23,456 75.28

Progressive Count After Preferences Candidate Party Votes % Vote Swing
Sam Cox LNP 9,670 55.7 +14.1
Craig Wallace ALP 7,706 44.3 -14.1

I'm not sure if "Progressive Count After Preferences" is what it says on the tin or if at this stage it's just an indicative Two Party Preferred count. IIRC the Quensland electoral commission abandoned 2PP counts after the three horse race in 1998 so I don't know what the source of figures are.

[timrollpickering]

Twitter reports counting irregularities in at least one booth.

[toryjim]

When is the next Aussie general election due?

[timrollpickering]

Mar 24, 2012 18:19:52 GMT @trident said:

Mar 24, 2012 10:20:02 GMT Richard Allen said:

ABC are projecting that the final results will be

LNP: 77
Lab: 8
AP: 2
Othr: 2

Katter and Knuth were both comfortably elected in Mount Isa and Dalrymple but the AP did not do so well in the rural south as the rural north.

Good God - eight seats! I wonder if this is the heaviest defeat ever for a sitting government anywhere in Oz?

Off the top of my head the worst in seat numbers was Labor in South Australia 1933 who got just 6 seats (for the official party; there were several splinters), in a 46 member parliament, tied with Labor in the ACT in 1995, when they got 6 albeit out of just 17 (so it hardly counts). I've glanced through the various Wikipedia articles and, discounting the ACT, cannot see many other cases of sitting governments getting single figure results. Even the Queensland Labor Party managed 11 out 75 in 1957.

There may be some elections with worse results from the Ministerialist era when party labels were rather looser but I think %wise this is the heaviest defeat for an organised party government.

[timrollpickering]

Mar 24, 2012 22:13:05 GMT @trident said:

Labor's result is catastrophic but one could argue that we have just seen a sharp, sudden return to normality after 23 years.

Not sure you can say "normality". Queensland tends to go in for long epochs of government with only minor interruptions, ending in landslides.

The two Coalition parties - the Liberals and Nationals - always had an uneasy relationship. There were lots of three-cornered fights in individual electorates resulting in transfer leakage, because Queensland doesn't require voters to mark preferences all the way down the ballot paper.

Well that was brought in by Labor in part because it would damage the conservative parties. Not that either side can complain - the voting system was changed four times in a hundred years and the apportionment three times in twenty-three, all on "winner takes all and sets the rules" basis.

But also the Coalition arrangement doesn't really work when the parties are potentially co-equal. In the other states and federally there's no real chance of the Nationals ever being more than a distinctly junior partner so at best all that's at stake internally is the proportion of cabinet places (although this was one of the ongoing issues that contributed to the WA Nationals split in the 1970s). In Queensland, however, it was a very real question who would be the larger party in government - the Leader of the Opposition, the party with most votes or with most seats - and the parties often didn't have a clear answer, upping both the external pressure and internal tension.

[Richard Allen]

Mar 24, 2012 21:06:22 GMT toryjim said:

When is the next Aussie general election due?

The next election must be held by the 30th November 2013

[timrollpickering]

Mar 24, 2012 22:31:13 GMT Richard Allen said:

Mar 24, 2012 21:06:22 GMT toryjim said:

When is the next Aussie general election due?

The next election must be held by the 30th November 2013

Yes for the Reps *, but the Senate * can't be held before August 2013 and must be held by the end of May 2014. It could be messy if the House has to go early & solo.

(* For pedants the Senators for the Territories are elected at the same time as the House not the Senate. All due to a Labor leader who only implemented part of their planned upper house changes - sound familiar?)

[timrollpickering]

Pretty much. This happened in 1963-1974 when a tiny Reps majority in the 1961 election led to an early election and the two houses had separate elections thereafter with the Senate generally more hostile to the government than it would have been at a simultaneous election. The double dissolutions of 1974, 1975 and 1983 would have each caused the problem to return, due to the way the Senate term is reset, but early House elections were held that fixed it.

[Andrew_S]

Anna Bligh has resigned her seat in South Brisbane which is slightly odd given that only 63.7% of votes have been counted in her constituency so far in yesterday's election. From comments on online newspaper sites, a lot of people are furious about having to pay for a by-election so soon.

South Brisbane result page:
www.abc.net.au/elections/qld/2012/guide/sbri.htm