Queensland 2024 Election Night Live

2020 Election Result ALP 52 LNP 34 KAP 3 Green 2 PHON 1 IND 1

At 2024 Election ALP 51 LNP 35 KAP 4 Green 2 IND 1

Substantial swing to LNP, 2PP likely to exceed 53% and may reach 54%

LNP has won election with a small to moderate majority (probably 50-53 seats won)

Seats expected to change (some not absolutely confirmed):

LNP to ALP: Ipswich West

ALP to LNP:  Aspley, Barron River, Caloundra, Capalaba, Cook, Keppel, Hervey Bay, Mackay, Maryborough, Mundingburra, Nicklin, Redcliffe, Pine Rivers, Rockhampton, Townsville, Thuringowa

ALP to LNP or KAP: Mulgrave

Incumbents struggling:

ALP trailing LNP on projection: Pumicestone

Greens trailing ALP: South Brisbane (but may be saved if ALP falls to third)

Close ALP incumbent seats: Gaven

Close KAP incumhent seat: Mirani

Close Green incumbent seat: Maiwar

Complicated seats:

Mulgrave (possibility of KAP win from third)

South Brisbane (possibility ALP could be knocked out saving Greens)

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Live comments - refresh for most recent comments

END OF NIGHT WRAP: DECISIVE WIN FOR LNP

It was a slow start to the night for the LNP, consistent with the idea that there was a late swing back to the Government, but as the prepolls started to come in projected Labor leads fell over, first in a trickle then a rush.  The result is a decisive win for David Crisafulli's party, who will probably have a majority of around seven to thirteen seats (majority = government seats minus all others).  Two-party preferred estimates are around 54-46 (I have not yet checked these myself), but the strong similarity of the current primaries to the final Newspoll which had a last-election 2PP of 52.5 suggests that there could be some preference flow shifting in the mix.  The result may not be the carnage that was looming through the year but given the campaign wobbles and the late-narrowing polling the LNP would be pleased with the scale of the victory.  

As widely expected the damage was largely done outside Brisbane though late in the night even that firewall was breached with the apparent losses of Aspley, Capalaba and Pine Rivers.  The nature of Labor's inner-city campaign seems to have appealed to Green voters and the Greens have had a lacklustre result at best, not getting near winning their target pickups and with a challenge ahead of them to retain at least South Brisbane.  Katters Australian Party on the other hand have retained their three seats from the last election and are borderline in two more seats I will cover tomorrow.

Coverage will resume tomorrow, perhaps around midday perhaps some earlier - at this stage I will be covering Mulgrave, Mirani, South Brisbane, Pumicestone and possibly others.

11:40 Mulgrave will get my attention tomorrow but KAP have come up in the live count and look a serious chance here.

11:20 I've been spending a lot of time just looking at seats and shovelling them from the ALP-trailing into the expected-LNP win category.  So I have the LNP on 48 that look solid, with 5 more where they have some kind of lead on projection or the real count; they could plausibly win the lot.

10:33 The LNP could yet get 50 here or even more, leading in 53 on Pollbludger projections though some very narrowly.  In Mirani they are now narrowly ahead in the live count and therefore should win.  Greens are now even struggling to keep a lead in Maiwar and are at risk of being completely wiped out.  That said I am not sure why the ALP is projecting them behind.

10:30 More seats are firming up for the LNP and I am moving more and more into the expected win category.  This includes Aspley and Redcliffe which have fallen backwards rapidly on prepoll.  ECQ has announced counting through to 11 pm and perhaps some a little longer.  

10:10 Steven Miles has said the LNP is unlikely to have a majority!  I am not sure what the evidence for that would be at this stage.  

10:00 In Mulgrave, KAP are tracking for about a 10% deficit to Labor and the LNP and would need to make that up on 35.7% of votes from minor candidates splitting three ways.  The three way split could make it tough but almost every candidate's preferences should flow to KAP.

9:49 In Redcliff, the PB projection has the LNP now winning easily,  The ABC projection however has Labor retaining with little swing from the live count.  I cannot make sense of the ABC projection there.  

9:39 An improvement for Labor in Caloundra.  This seems to have been caused by a prepoll (Baringa) that was quite bad for the LNP against the run of all other play in this seat.  This EVC however didn't exist in 2020.  

9:28 The prepoll blue wave continues to knock more and more Labor seats into trouble, now Rockhampton.  The LNP have to be really unlucky to not get a majority from here.

9:06  Pumicestone and Redcliff now into the danger zone.  In Mirani, the dropoff in the Labor primary and rise for the LNP is now suggesting Andrew might be too far behind to catch up on preferences, but there's a long way to go.  

8:53 The pattern in Mulgrave hasn't changed a lot, it has to be a good chance KAP will win from third on current figures unless the primaries change greatly.  

8:38 LNP jumps ahead off prepolls and postals in Capalaba in Poll Bludger projection out of nowhere!  ABC website is running way behind - this is an issue in many seats.  

8:34 Hervey Bay finally on the board with LNP ahead.  

8:33 At a quick look at prepolls in several seats the swing is coming up - will it convert to seats?  

8:30 KAP not completely out of it in Cook but probably too far behind Labor to make second - this is a seat that will still bounce around a lot.  

8:27 Some prepolls and postals starting to appear, for instance in Macalister.

8:15 Stephen Andrew is improving in Mirani.  He just has to stay in second and at the moment should not have too much trouble with that.   Note that if the LNP don't win anything at all above their apparent floor of 43, Labor could still win the election.  That said I can't currently get them to a minority that doesn't rely on KAP.  

8:02 Overall at the moment the LNP is losing one seat and winning or leading in ten Labor seats, but one of those is Mulgrave where it's not clear it's them who would win. On the other hand they might win Mirani.  Excluding close seats that puts the LNP on something in the range of 43-45.  There is nothing from Hervey Bay which is another possible gain, but given the remarkable Labor lead in Bundaberg I would not take it for granted pending numbers.  So to get a majority the LNP is probably looking at winning as many of the doubtfuls here as possible but also overturning the projected narrow ALP leads in seats that are projecting closely: some candidates are Aspley, Pumicestone and Pine Rivers.  For whatever reason there's a difference between the ABC and Poll Bludger on projections in these with the latter having them about 1% better for the LNP.  

7:48 Anyone know why there are no votes in Hervey Bay?  As for Mirani, Stephen Andrew has dropped back and is way behind on primaries at present, but he can win even from third by using One Nation preferences to jump Labor then Labor preferences to jump the LNP.  

7:42 Keppel is off the Complicated Seats list for now, Ashby doesn't currently appear competitive.

7:35 Antony Green has just beaten me to my game and mentioned the mess in Mulgrave where there is currently no candidate above 25% and there may be, for instance, an option for KAP from third.  

7:30 The Greens aren't getting anywhere in Cooper (going backwards actually) and presumably not in McConnel either though very few votes, even Maiwar is not all that solid just yet though they are leading.

7:25 As counting progresses, Ashby is falling back in Keppel and unless he picks up from somewhere it is looking more like a two-party contest.  

7:19 Stephen Andrew is competitive in the first booth with a relatively small vote for One Nation.  Nick Dametto appears fine in the early booths in Hinchinbrook so it is looking like KAP should at least hold their three seats.  

7:15 Seats where Labor is struggling are starting to add up but so far only into the zone of rough equality and not to the election-losing zone.  There are however a few seats yet to show votes and this is assuming the on-day/prepoll trend is the same as 2020. The Greens seem to be in trouble in the early booths in South Brisbane where the LNP preferencing against them means they need to gain.  The party has never lost a single-member Australian seat that it won at a previous general election - could this be the first?

7:06 At this stage Labor is trailing on PB projections in a bunch of northern seats, but not too many anywhere else.  Strelow is not getting enough in Rockhampton so far.  

7:03 Pretty close so far, ABC 2PP estimate still falling, now down to 51.2.  

7:00 In current Keppel figures, the LNP is only marginally ahead of Labor and Ashby.  If they beat one of them they should win the seat unless Labor voters totally ignore the card to spite the ALP, but Labor will come up on Greens preferences.  Let's see if Ashby stays in touch as the count proceeds, Keppel is tonight's first inclusion in the Complicated Seats list! On early numbers Labor are probably losing Keppel to somebody.

6:54 There seems to be some weirdness on the ABC website with Aspley, which has a projected 65-35 2PP to LNP off primaries that are roughly level.  Anyway Poll Bludger site is up now in some sense but seems to be missing a lot of data.

6:52 ALP competitive in Ipswich West (which they lost at the by-election) at this early stage.

6:45 The KAP Mundingburra internal poll nonsense isn't amounting to much, they're only on 10% so far.  Sandy Bolton (IND) is off to a good start in Noosa.  ABC estimated 2PP has come down to the low 52s for LNP.  Could be a long night!

6:40 Something else where projections off 2017 are useful is Rockhampton!  Independent Margaret Strelow has a nearly 10% swing against her in the North Rockhampton booth which isn't a promising start, she would probably need to increase on 2017.

6:35 The ABC's projected 2PP is bouncing around a lot as early votes come in, and has just come up to nearly 54-46 but could bounce back.  KAP also polling a significant lead in their second seat of Hill.

6:31 Sadly in William Bowe's absence (working for Nine) the Poll Bludger live feed is not currently working.  We're off the mark in Traeger (Robbie Katter getting a pile early on) and Cook (this electorate is extremely variable with some Indigenous booths with huge Labor votes so I'd wait a while for it to settle down)

6:28 The ABC can't compare mobile booths with 2020 but I can compare them with 2017!  A big swing in mobile votes to the LNP in the crucial seat of Aspley, about a 13% swing on 2PP I estimate.  

6:18 First votes off and running in Condamine and Lockyer, both mobile polling booths and breaking heavily to LNP as is doubtless normal for those seats.  As Antony Green is pointing out mobiles didn't exist in these booths in 2020.  

6:00 Polls have closed, first figures can be very fast in Queensland.  Last time there were votes in at 6:17!  It is not unknown for the ECQ website to have issues on the night ... let's hope there aren't any this time.

5:50 We open tonight's coverage of this election with a special award!

Porcupine Fish Award for Ultra-Fishy Poll-Shaped Objects And Reporting

Awarded to Courier Mail for Exit Poll Hype (image credit)

I've never included these in a live thread before but the Courier Mail gets a Porcupine Fish award for its exit poll hype in which it has conducted on-the-day polling in 10 Labor seats with an average margin of 7.6% and then tried to compare the results to statewide polling and the 2020 election and hyped the numbers as an incredible turnaround!  In fact Labor being level on primaries with the LNP in these seats would point to a 2PP swing of around 5% against Labor, but throw in that it is on the day polling and the swing would be another couple of percent, which all else being equal would suggest deep trouble for Labor statewide and probably an easy LNP victory.  The results are of some interest in that they only point to Labor losing about half the seats (though the sample sizes are 200 and we have no idea how representative the chosen booths were or were not), but if Labor is losing half its seats around that margin then it is also most likely losing the election.  It will be interesting to see how the samples hold up when all is done but the Courier-Mail's hype around an obviously slanted sample is ridiculous.  

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Intro (midday Qld time)

Welcome to my coverage of the Queensland 2024 election night count.  Comments start from 6:00 pm, once coverage starts refresh every 5-10 minutes for updates.  For my final polling thread see here.  It's been an unexpectedly lively last few days as a seemingly doomed government has narrowed the gap greatly with an energetic campaign on cost of living issues (translation: promising to give voters stuff) and a seemingly irrefutable scare campaign about abortion.  (I've added brief comments about the latter to the final polling thread.)

The polls if collectively correct suggest Labor will still lose.  There is however a modest degree of doubt. Polls taken early in the voting period may now be already out of date, and Queensland is not the easiest place for polling so polls could be off by an average miss level and still put Labor in with a chance.  (That said, primary voting intention polling in Queensland has usually been OK at state level, unlike federal).  If polls are off by an average miss level the other way, the LNP will win decisively, but it still won't be the landslide expected earlier.  

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 election coverage is the Complicated Seat pile where I put seats where the order of exclusion isn't clear; there are sometimes several of these.

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

The prepoll for this election is massive, around 44% of enrolment.  I expect about 15% in postals, maybe 27% on the day, nearly 1% in phone or mobile voting, and the rest as usual won't show up.  I expect the counting tonight to be substantially incomplete because of out of electorate prepolls which will be a lot of the votes counted over coming days if 2020 is any guide, though the ECQ does only say "all available early voting centre votes (some material may still be in transit)" will be counted tonight.  The low on the day vote and the appearance of late swing in polling suggest we should be even more careful than at other recent elections about calling seats off on-the-day votes alone and it will probably be late at night before some seats become clearer.

I intend these comments as a complementary service to the ABC broadcast and the excellent Poll Bludger results feed, one that aims to spot messy seat possibilities and unusual scenarios faster than the ABC may.   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. 

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

A note that donations to support this coverage are very welcome; I can now accept PayID to my email address as well as the previous PayPal and transfer options (though I cannot reply to say thankyou for those individually unless you send me an email as well - suffice to say all donations are always much appreciated!)  Details in sidebar.