Queensland 2020 Live

LABOR HAS WON THE QUEENSLAND ELECTION

EXPECTED RESULT (APPROX) ALP 50-52 LNP 34-36  KAP 3 GRN 2 PHON 1 IND 1 

LABOR 2PP LIKELY TO EXCEED 53%

Seats expected to change hands:

Whitsunday (NQF loss, probably to LNP)

South Brisbane (ALP loss to Greens)

Caloundra (LNP trailing ALP)

Pumicestone (LNP trailing ALP)

Incumbents struggling:

Bundaberg (LNP trailing ALP)

Hervey Bay (LNP trailing ALP)

Nicklin (LNP slightly trailing ALP)

Labor appear likely to beat Greens in Cooper and McConnel as difficult for Greens to bridge gap to second, but will look at this in more detail on Sunday.

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LATE NIGHT WRAP: DECISIVE LABOR WIN

Labor has been re-elected in Queensland with a primary vote swing to it, currently running at over 5%.  Probably there has been a swing from One Nation to both majors, but also a swing from the LNP to Labor.  There will be a 2PP swing in Labor's favour, with estimates of 2-2.5% doing the rounds.  It looks like being a rather bigger win than polls predicted.  

In seat terms Labor has lost only South Brisbane, with McConnel still in some doubt.  Labor has lost nothing to the LNP, not even in the northern seats where it was considered at risk.  Gains have been few too, with the LNP saving most of the first line of targets but having some unexpected losses or close shaves on higher margins.  Overall, Labor should increase its majority.  

There are fewer seats in doubt than 2017, and the collapse of the One Nation vote has seen the fascinating four-cornered contests that created such interest in post-counting then disappear, replaced by 2PP affairs.   The week ahead will probably be a quieter one than usual.

The election overall highlights the historic pattern that it is hard for any party to win state elections while in government federally.  Unless very old or very troubled, opposite-party governments seldom lose, and Annastacia Palaszczuk's had the assistance of a global pandemic.  Palaszczuk's government has managed the pandemic in a sometimes harsh but highly effective manner in keeping the state safe, and was able to show up the LNP as flakey on the issue.  

Existing crossbenchers elected at the last election as such romped back in, but potential new ones found the going difficult, with only one (Amy McMahon) having succeeded at this point. 

I'll be back tomorrow sometime with a postcount thread. 

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12:13 Looks like the LNP have only just held onto Currumbin.  

11:26 Oh hai, Bundaberg has just appeared in the projected ALP win list so whatever was in the ABC projection just had a dramatic overwrite.  (The answer here turns out to be ... Legalise Cannabis preferences! They have 5.5% to the Greens' 2.6%.  Also, the One Nation flow has probably moderated,)

11:00 Pace of comments will slow over the next hour or so, then I'll post a wrap just after midnight.  Still a few seats where the count is very very slow and need to see some more figures from those. In case the ABC switches off the projection, note that Labor are currently ahead in the Bundaberg live count but projected to finish way behind.

10:24 66% counted in Cooper now (probably it for the night) and the Greens have dropped to 2% behind the LNP.  Out-of-electorate prepolls may help them, absents will help them, postals won't, and there are a lot of postals still to come in Cooper.  Difficult to catch up.  Likewise in McConnel, 2.6% behind with 62% counted, though some hope on preferences there.  Greenslopes is now completely out of the question.

9:57 Just lost a bunch of my recent comments by having too many of the same window open.  So anyway, the missing preferences have arrived.  Labor has had a big boost in many electorates and is now clearly winning.  Labor is not close to losing seats to anyone but the Greens, and may only lose one seat to them as the Greens have dropped to third in Cooper and McConnel.  It is very hard to see how Labor don't win a majority.  

9:22 Still in the lull awaiting prepolls and postals.  Still the case that Labor are not projecting behind in any seat where they are competing with the LNP, though Townsville is very close.  The LNP seem to have lost two seats to Labor and are trailing in two of their own, Coomera and Hervey Bay.  

The ABC has raised an issue that all preferences for divisions after Mulgrave are missing from the ECQ feed!  Close-ish seats we should reserve a bit of judgement about til we see real preference flows include: Mundingburra, Nicklin, Redlands, Thuringowa, Townsville, Whitsunday.

9:08 In McConnel an important factor could yet be the 2% held by the Legalise Cannabis candidate - I'd expect that to flow pretty well to the Greens, though it will be counter-acted to a degree by One Nation.  It is going to be challenging for the Greens to catch the LNP.

8:57 In Greenslopes the Greens are polling strongly and are almost second.  However I expect them to drop back on non-day votes, so it will be hard for them to make the final two.  

8:30 Stephen Andrew is not completely home yet - he needs to stay ahead of the LNP, but should be able to do that comfortably.  

8:24 Amanda Stoker relaying favourable figures for the LNP in Clayfield where they have been struggling in early counting.

8:20 In Coomera the 2PP swings by booth are wildly uneven.  The LNP is ahead on votes counted; the ABC projection says 50-50.  In Oodgeroo, Claire Richardson is not currently getting into second.

8:15 Labor in front on projection in Redcliffe (finally).  Still very few seats projected to change hands.   Cynthia Liu also now well ahead on projection so I've removed Cook from the Complicated Seat list (which is now empty)

8:10 Nick Dametto (KAP) is smashing it in Hinchinbrook with a 20+% swing.  

7:52 Greens drop to third in McConnel after a big dump of postals, but this now means postals are rampantly over-represented in the McConnel count and the Greens may well come back later in the count - the swings suggest the LNP may yet fall back to third.  Too early to write that one off.  Also, an enormous swing in Cooper (which I rubbished as a prospect yesterday!) on booth votes - so far, Labor down 11%, Greens up 11%, LNP down 7%.  If that holds across the remaining votes the Greens could win the seat, but let's see if it can.

7:48 Very few seats are being projected by ABC to a non-incumbent now,  LNP back ahead in Burleigh and Coomera.  We're now into the infamous pre-prepoll lull, and we still don't really know a lot.

7:45 Greens still doing very well in swing terms in McConnel - again wait for prepolls and postals but at the moment on track to win.  

7:40 Oddly, Yvette D'Ath (Labor Attorney-General) currently projecting just behind in Redcliffe, but that's starting to normalise.  Labor is at the moment projecting ahead in LNP seats Burleigh, Caloundra, Chatsworth, Clayfield, Coomera, Hervey Bay.  Townsville is bouncing back and forth.  This is a slow count night because so few votes are being counted in the booths and we don't know if the current pattern will hold in terms of swings in prepoll.  

7:35 ABC projecting Labor ahead in Buderim (!) and Burleigh off single booths.  A long way to go but indicative of the problems for the LNP on the Sunshine Coast.  Again, need prepolls.  

7:33 Labor off to a very good start in Pumicestone.  

7:26 Labor now ahead on projection in Barron River.  At the moment things look good for Labor overall but that's only off booth projections and we will need to see if this carries through to prepolls, or if the booth votes are unusually skewed.  

7:25 Cook is tonight's first inclusion in the Complicated Seat list!

7:15 Unfortunately only some seats are working on the PollBludger feed, which is fantastic when it works.  

7:12 Another very good booth for the Greens in McConnel, but need to see what happens with prepolls and postals here.  

7:11 Thuringowa looks like being a 2PP contest so far.  

7:03 Several booths in in South Brisbane.  Some have very large primary vote swings from Labor to Green which would be game over for Jackie Trad. No 2PP counts there but with 7% counted Trad is currently well behind on primaries and unless the pattern on prepolls/postals is very different then Trad will be gone by a substantial margin.

7:00 So much according to script so far - Labor struggling in Barron River and Mundingburra though there has been improvement in Townsville.

6:56  In Cook, KAP are ahead on votes assigned to preferences, but this seat has a massive variation in votes across it because Labor gets 80-90% in some booths.  Give this one time to settle down, but it is interesting.

6:55 Michael Berkman well clear of Labor in second in Maiwar and off to a very good start.

6:53 Early swings to Labor on the southern-ish coasts: Bundaberg, Caloundra, Currumbin - along the lines of the YouGov state poll but is this a vote timing issue or real?  We'll find out later,

6:49 A few percent in in Burdekin and at this stage it is looking like a 2PP contest.  It is also looking healthy for the LNP. 

6:46 Stephen Andrew in Mirani is at this very early stage holding off the One Nation tanking seen elsewhere.  Let's see how this goes but I did mention before the election that crossbencher incumbents often outperform their party swing by a large margin.

6:44 LNP projecting narrowly ahead off very little counted between Townsville.  A  big swing to the LNP is showing in Bonney but that seems to be because of a booth that did not exist before.

6:39 The early swings are much as if One Nation's voters had gone to whichever major party they preferenced last time - not much sign of something that will turn into an overall swing so far.

6:37 Back now, just scanning the horizons ...

6:25 Delayed dinner break  - 15 mins or so.  

6:23 Continually seeing One Nation getting smashed in tiny booths.  

6:21 Large swing to the Greens in a tiny booth in McConnel but this is only 66 votes counted.  

6:17 A few teensy booths in and they are showing swings to Labor and against One Nation but these are booths where scarcely anybody voted.

6:00 No advance word of the existence of an exit poll as yet.  Not sure if there is one.

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Intro (4:55 Queensland time)

Welcome to my live coverage of the 2020 Queensland election count.  Comments will start from 6:00 Queensland time, but apart from covering the exit poll (assuming there is at least one) don't expect to see too much before about 6:30 (I'll be having dinner).  My final comments on the polling for this election were here.  

Through the night I'll be posting live comments in the space above, which will scroll from the top, and the header will keep track of things in a summary sense, though early on there won't be much to summarise.  A familiar feature of Queensland elections is the Complicated Seat pile where I put seats where the order of exclusion isn't clear; there tend to be several of these.  

At the end of the night I will aim to post a wrapup post and then tomorrow I will start a post-count thread devoted to the seats that remain in significant doubt.   Seats will be gradually unrolled on the post-count page through the day tomorrow as time permits.  All assessments are provisional until seats are clearly noted as called.

The breakdown of votes is likely to be: prepolls around 38%, postals around 21%, on the day maybe 30%.  About a quarter of the prepolls are out-of-electorate prepolls and these will not be counted tonight.  Hopefully most postals will be counted tonight - the ECQ has cleared almost 400,000, which I estimate to be about 55% of those that will come back at all, leaving maybe 9% of enrolment in subsequent postals.  There's the potential that if the ECQ does well in counting votes tonight, most 2PP seats will be clearcut at the end of the night, while seats with exclusion order issues or needing realignment will take longer.  I expect the changing voting method patterns to wreak some havoc with projections based on differences between on the day, prepoll and postal in the past and a number of seats may get projected wrongly in the process until (and maybe even after) prepolls and postals have been counted in particular seats.  So early assessments will be cautious.  

There is expected to be a decline in the number of seats where One Nation make the final two, but we'll have to see if that transpires or not.  

I intend these comments as a complementary service to the ABC broadcast, one that aims to spot messy seat possibilities and unusual scenarios faster than they can.   Note that the ABC estimates preference flows where there is no two-candidate figure, so sometimes seats are being given away based on estimates that are not real numbers (they are usually better at documenting this on their website recently than has been the case in the past).  I am hoping the Poll Bludger results facility (see comments here) works because finding individual booth data during counting on the night is often difficult. 

I may or may not have time to clear comments submitted to this site tonight.  I also won't be on Twitter all that much but will try to drop in there now and then.