Queensland 2024 Postcount

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Final result LNP 52 ALP 36 KAP 3 GRN 1 IND 1

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Aspley (ALP vs LNP), has been won by ALP, covered below 

Gaven (ALP vs LNP) has been won by ALP, covered below

Mirani (LNP vs KAP) has been won by LNP, covered below

Mulgrave (LNP vs KAP), has been won by LNP, covered below

Pine Rivers (ALP vs LNP) has been won by ALP, covered below

South Brisbane (Green vs ALP) has been won by ALP, covered below

Estimated final result if current leads/expected favourites hold LNP 52 ALP 36 KAP 3 GRN 1 IND 1 

This is my postcount thread for the 2024 Queensland election which has been very decisively won by the LNP, the scale of their victory becoming more apparent late in the night as the prepoll swing was higher than the day booths.   I will be unrolling seats of interest through the day.  With only 66% of enrolment counted on the night it may well be that more seats become more competitive than they looked as counting continues.  I note for instance that Labor's apparent miracle retain in Bundaberg has tightened late at night and is still awaiting a major prepoll.  (Edit: Labor has survived that)

Many of the ABC projections last night were very hard for me to fathom, including the late-night projection of Maiwar as an LNP win.  The ABC has since called the seat a Greens retain.  

The LNP has opened up a large lead in Pumicestone which I was going to cover on this page so I've saved myself the bother for now.  I am also not duplicating William Bowe's coverage of Pine Rivers and Maryborough yet though I may add Pine Rivers at least if it becomes closer. (Edit: added)

Updates will be added for each seat, scrolling to the top, until a seat is considered no longer in serious doubt.  Seats no longer being followed will be moved to the bottom of the page.  

Note on Pumicestone (added Tuesday): Pumicestone has closed up somewhat as Labor has outperformed the day booth swing on day absents and the prepoll swing on absent prepolls.  However the ABC's estimate of the LNP lead is still 503 votes.  There are probably still quite a lot of postals to come (maybe 2500) so it's difficult to see that being overturned.  Update Friday: ABC has called the seat meaning Pumicestone flips sides for the fifth election in a row!

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Aspley (ALP 5.2%)

Has closed up massively - ABC apparently very narrowly ahead

Thursday - final margin 31 votes

Wednesday night - Reported by Antony Green that Labor has won by about 30 votes and the seat will be declared on Thursday!

Wednesday - Very little has changed for a few days but the ABC has now flipped to a Labor lead of about 20 votes based on preference estimates, with a recheck being conducted before the preference distribution.

Friday night: Not only did the ABC projection shrink to 98 votes but the Courier-Mail has published an article saying that Mellish is ahead by 38 according to "LNP sources".  Scrutineers have a closer eye on what is going on in the count than voters can get because of the lack of an up to date public 2CP tally.  

Friday midday: ABC projection now 117 votes.

Thursday evening:  The ABC projection is now just 120 votes.  There will only be a trickle left to count but I have moved this one into a more significant doubt level because in Bundaberg 2020 the ABC projection was out by ... 115.    A recount is a distinct possibility in Aspley because the final margin could well finish inside 100 - there is no mandatory margin for a recount in Queensland but in 2020 Nicklin was recounted for an apparent margin of 78.  

Thursday morning: Current ABC projection is 221 votes.  Probably only about 1000 votes to come if that.

Aspley in north-east Brisbane is a 2017 Labor pickup and a frequent hot potato ever since, and was heavily contested at this election.  On the night Aspley looked pretty much gone but a few things have happened since then.  One that benefited the LNP's Amanda Cooper over Labor's Bart Mellish was booth corrections, on which she gained 87 votes to Mellish's 17.  Another was a similar story to Pumicestone with both absent day votes and absent prepolls that have been so far counted having swings against the LNP (which doesn't mean much without knowing where they are from, but is interesting).  This has closed the ABC's projected margin to 247 votes but that should still be enough with only about c. 1700 left if turnout matches 2020, about half of which could be postals.

Gaven (ALP 7.8%)

Tightened because of corrections but Labor should now hold

Wednesday night: Stone has conceded.  Conceding doesn't mean anything legally but is a nice touch ... and usually a sign that party scrutineers have been all over it and found nothing,

Wednesday: Provisionals have boosted Labor to a projected 383 vote lead.  My own estimate yesterday was lower by about 160 but the number of votes left at 83.1% counted is now likely to be so low that it will be very difficult for the LNP to win the seat.  Labor has called the seat which I won't be doing based on my closer estimate yesterday but it does look like Labor will survive the scare,

Intro Tuesday midday: Gaven is a hotly contested Gold Coast seat that has been held by high profile Minister Meghan Scanlon who picked it up from the LNP in 2017.  On election night Gaven seemed fine for Labor but developments since have been adverse and the seat is now in serious play, indeed on my reading perhaps more so than the ABC projection estimates.

Currently in the official count (which has caught up with the unofficial count) Scanlon is on 41.5% primary, leading the LNP's Bianca Stone on 39.2%.  One Nation have 8.3%, the Greens 4.9%, Legalise Cannabis 4.2% and Family First 1.9%.  The problem for Scanlon is that the preference flows in Gaven are so poor (with only 44.9% reaching Labor out of that lot) that she risks being overtaken on preferences because of the same compulsory voting system that the LNP wants to abolish.  The indicative preference throw had Scanlon ahead by 537 votes, however there was since a counting correction in the Returning Officer Gaven prepoll booth, which moved about 200 ALP votes to informal.  

Also since there have been additions of absent prepoll and absent day votes, far more of the former than the latter.  The net effect of those is a further closing of 72 votes on primaries and possibly 100 on preferences, so Labor may in reality be only, say, 165 ahead.  I note that the preference flow in within-electorate prepolls is much better for the LNP than it is in day voting but I am reluctant to extrapolate that to the absent prepolls because the Greens and Legalise Cannabis are doing above average on those.  

The count is now at 80.6% of enrolment, compared to a final 86.7% in 2020.   Most of what is left is likely to be postals and I would expect about 1700 of these; Stone gained 240 on the first 4336.  The later ones will generally not break as strongly so the LNP would be lucky to get more than say 75 gain out of them.   In 2020 there were about 250 declaration votes and nearly 200 telephone votes; Labor could gain 40 or so off the dec votes.  I am not sure how many absents of either kind might be outstanding (Labor would be wanting to see as few absent prepolls as possible).  If it's not many Labor should still be OK here, but not by much.  

Mirani (ONP vs LNP 9.0%, ONP incumbent ran with KAP)

LNP has hit projected lead, looks set to retain

Thursday 7th: Seat has been declared.

Wednesday 1 pm: Disaster for Andrew as he polls really badly on both absent prepolls and absent day votes (about 14% on each) and falls over 300 behind on projection. LNP should now win the seat.  Poor performance on absents is a thing that sometimes happens to independents.  It might also have happened to Andrew as a KAP incumbent (whereas it didn't happen to him as One Nation) because the party lacks campaign presence in the surrounding areas. 

Wednesday morning: Andrew is now 197 ahead on the ABC projection.  

Tuesday evening: Some more postals and telephone votes have been quite unhelpful for Andrew; he has dropped back to 27.3% vs 36.1% for Kelly in the primary count and on this basis has dropped back to 120 votes ahead in the ABC projection.  

Monday 4:30 pm: The ABC is using the mix and match method from the incomplete official primary count to correct for errors in the unofficial count and on this basis is showing a slight weakening in Andrew's primary (down 31) and improvement for the LNP (up 11).  Andrew's lead in the unofficial 2PP count is 328, with those changes it would be more like 286.

Intro Sunday: Mirani is a coastal seat loosely between Rockhampton and Mackay.  In Mirani, Stephen Andrew was elected for One Nation in 2017 and became a very rare case of a One Nation incumbent to run a full term with the party and be re-elected in 2020.  But in the lead-up to the current election a spat broke out between him and his party, who accused him of being "lazy" and complained that he had not been moving bills in the parliament.  After a short spell as an indie, Stephen Andrew was picked up by KAP.  

This proved rather handy for him in preference-gathering terms because it meant that instead of being a One Nation candidate who Labor had to put last, he was now able to be preferenced by Labor ahead of the LNP - Labor's general fondness for giving away preferences to the Katter Party and also Shooters Fishers and Farmers having long known no rational limits.  

The split in vote between KAP and One Nation in the seat, plus the general swing to the LNP, have endangered Andrew's hold on the seat but haven't destroyed it as obviously as could have been the case.  At present Glen Kelly (LNP) has 35.8%, Andrew (KAP) 27.6%, Susan Teder (ALP) 20.2% and Brett (Beaver) Neal (ON) 10.8% plus 3% for the Greens and 2.7% for Family First.  There is a slightly incomplete 2CP count in which Andrew leads Kelly by 253 votes (50.5-49.5).  This is missing a small booth Mount Morgan from which Andrew may slightly increase his lead (say by 40 votes or so), but I am not so sure about that as while the LNP has done badly in that booth and Labor well, it is a very good one for One Nation.

The count is at 68.8% of enrolment and in 2020 it reached 89.6%.  Absent early voting is huge in Mirani accounting for 23% of enrolment in 2020 (nearly 8000 votes!); it will be less than that this time.  There are probably about 2000 postals to come as well as a few thousand absents and the usual scatter of provisionals and so on.

It's not possible to project off the 2020 2CP breakdowns in this seat because the how-to-vote recommendations of Labor at least are different as concerns the two competing candidates.  It's the postals that are the issue for Andrew so far as the first 2319 cost him 367 of his lead, and while that flow should weaken in the later postals it could still be enough to put him behind or very nearly so.  The LNP hasn't done at all well in the prepolls in this seat counted so far on 2CP (oddly) and so I suspect that absent early votes should be good for Andrew and absent votes also should be.

It's a straight 2CP fight and it's better to have the lead than not to have it so for now I think Andrew could just hang on but this is subject to, for instance, any corrections in the existing count.  I did a preference flow check and did not find any issues.  

Mulgrave (ALP 12.2%, LNP vs KAP)

Prospect of KAP getting into top two appears to be weakening; if they don't then LNP wins the seat

Nov 12: The 3CP point was James 10788 Bates 10166 Lesina 9543, so Lesina was third by 623 votes (2%).  Lesina gained at .186 votes per vote meaning he was actually in a live winning position on the night but his chances were killed off by poor performance on absent votes

Friday 5:15: Seat has been declared for the LNP, distribution not up yet.  KAP failed to make the final two with a final margin for James vs Bates of 16,066 votes to 14,429.

Friday week: Still a staggering lack of information regarding the fate of this seat.

Friday: Antony Green notes "Party scrutineers have been unable to offer any meaningful view on whether Labor will be passed."  

Wednesday 6 pm: As with Stephen Andrew in Mirani, Mesina's position has weakened severely on absent prepolls, absent day votes and other late counting.  The LNP is now on 27.5%, Labor on 24.3 and Lesina down to 16.3.  This now leaves Lesina needing to beat Labor by .25 votes per preference in a three-way split with the LNP, and since some of those votes will be favourable to Labor that is looking rather difficult now.  In the event that Lesina does get over Labor the winning target is now 59% of all preferences.  

Tuesday morning: Changes since election night have so far been minor with the LNP up to 26.1 and ALP down to 23.6 in the ABC's totals which adjust for rechecking.  The primary counts are not of much interest, what matters is the preference flows.  I note that Jarrod Bleijie has stated the LNP expects to win "at a minimum 53 seats" and that would presumably include this one - do the LNP have any information on it?  

Intro Sunday: Mulgrave includes southern Cairns and areas further south and has been held by Labor since they won it in a by-election in 1998, which gave Peter Beattie majority government.  It was won by the Nationals from Labor in 1995, then initially by One Nation in 1998, and has been held by Labor ever since the by-election, firstly by Warren Pitt (also MP 1989-1995) and then by his son Curtis Pitt, who retired at this election.

Labor has lost more than half of its vote with the retirement, a catastrophic 27.4% primary swing (the worst in the state) and is currently behind 52.7-47.3 on 2PP with 54.8% counted.  The bulk of the rest will be absent early voting which in 2020 accounted for 20.2% of enrolment and favoured the LNP over Labor.  Turnout in this seat also tends to be low, reaching only 83.75% in 2020.  Presumably swings on absent early voting will be at least similar to the count so far if not worse for Labor so Labor will lose the 2PP even more heavily than this.  

However instead of the departing votes going to the LNP they have sprayed among a large field and we currently have this mess:

James (LNP) 26.0

Bates (ALP) 23.8

Lesina (KAP) 18.2

Raymond (IND) 7.9

McInnes (ON) 7.4

Daniels (LC) 5.8

Batzke (IND) 4.1

Everett (Grn) 3.6

Searle (FFP) 1.8

Floyd (IND) 1.3

On current numbers, the threat to the LNP's Terry James is Steven Lesina (KAP) who could repeat Nick Dametto's win from third in Hinchinbrook 2017.  Lesina's first challenge is to get into second.  On present numbers he needs to beat Labor's share of preferences from the other candidates by 17.5 points in a three-way split vs Labor and the LNP.  This does not sound difficult and the target may well decrease.  I note that of the independents, Batzke is a controversial anti-abortion ex-UAP candidate and Raymond is a veteran policeman who campaigned on crime issues and was reportedly courted by the LNP and KAP.  All this said reports that the how to vote card preferences favoured KAP were overstated, with many flowing to Labor and LNP ... but few voters for this mess will copy the cards anyway.  

Assuming Lesina does make the final two, he currently needs to beat the LNP 57-43 on the combined preferences of all other parties.  This strikes me as very easy, though the target is likely to increase as further counting favours the LNP.

Most likely we will be waiting for all votes to come in and a distribution of preferences to confirm the winner in this seat but at the moment Lesina seems to be well placed.

Pine Rivers (ALP 6.7%)

Counting errors have favoured ALP who now look like they should hold

Wednesday:  The count is now at 87.1% of enrolment and the ABC projection has reached a 290 vote lead for Boyd which looks extremely difficult for Clements to pull down as it requires a near 60-40 break which is not likely on any kind of voting at this point.  

Intro Tuesday: Pine Rivers is a western outer Brisbane seat that in its current incarnation has been reasonably Labor-friendly apart from the 2012 blip.  On election night it appeared to be one of the few Brisbane seats to have gone with the LNP candidate Dean Clements leading Labor incumbent Nikki Boyd by 406 votes, with this lead projected to increase.  However the seat has been beset with booth counting issues.  In Bray Park and Bray Park West booths matching cases of 50 votes in the wrong pile (a very common issue with on the night quick counts and entirely excusable) cancelled out; the Greens also gained 36 votes in the former.  In Samford Valley EVC about 100 LNP votes turned out not to exist (at least in this seat) and in Pine Rivers RO prepoll about 350 ALP votes appear to have been rescued from informal (which is a lot since only 231 real informals remained).  These are just clerical and processing errors but quite a lot of them and the net effect of all the corrections is that the ALP's primary vote deficit is down by 455 and the Greens are up 37 which also helps Labor.  Furthermore Labor has broken even so far on the primary vote in absents and absent prepolls.  The sum of all this is the ABC projects Boyd is actually 210 ahead which I agree with.  (I note that the Poll Bludger projections don't seem to be adjusted for counting corrections at this stage.)

The count is at 84% of enrolment and in 2020 reached 91.5% which is a very high turnout.  Remaining votes could include about 1600 postals, perhaps several hundred absent prepolls (as they are trailing 2020 at this stage) and the usual provisional, phone votes etc.  Based on trends so far and the usual weakening in late postals, the postals may knock about 100 off Labor's lead.  As with Gaven it may depend on how many absent prepolls are to come and where they are from but a very handy turnaround on checking for Labor in this seat and they could hold on now.  

South Brisbane (Greens vs ALP 5.4%)

ALP ahead of LNP at crucial point and need to stay there; this currently looks likely.but still very close

Live count gap estimate after preferences at Wednesday: ALP 108 ahead of exclusion

Estimate is based on scrutineering estimates of flow reported by Antony Green, which match historic patterns of the LNP/ALP gap.  Antony has now posted an estimate of a gain rate of about .52, previously it was .45

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Wednesday 2 pm: Antony Green has tweeted that the LNP is being distributed, which if confirmed following any recount (there may well not be one) means Labor has won.

Monday: The count continues; I have adjusted the estimate above down (now to 124) on fresh scrutineer information via Antony Green.  

Friday night: While the estimate based on the published figures continues to rise, now at 206, the Courier-Mail has reported a Greens source claiming it's as close as 100 but also that the LNP don't think they will make it into the final two.

Thursday: The count is now at 83.7% and Labor keeps stretching the estimated margin, now to 184.

Wednesday 6:20 pm: 1400 absent prepolls just dropped and broke to the LNP 492-386; the count is now at 80.1% and that brought the live count margin estimate down to 138.  However that's bound to have largely got rid of the Greens' best source of hope here; provisionals and others may well see the margin blow out.  

Wednesday 6pm: Late postals have been the Greens' friends in so many postcounts but this time they are not; it doesn't help the Greens this time to get the late postals and it hurts them when Labor gets them.  The count is now at 76.8% and the live count estimate is blowing out (I have it at 266).  The Greens would need there to now be a lot of absent prepolls still to come and for them to break very favourably to the LNP for them to win the seat, given other remaining votes may be unhelpful.  

Wednesday 2pm: Not a lot happening here with the count still only at 74.6%.

Tuesday night: Antony Green has tweeted that scrutineers are finding ON preferences breaking about 65% LNP 20% ALP 15% Green, so I am now using .45 as the rate of change.  

Monday 9:20:  1619 out of electorate prepolls favoured the LNP 616-433 over Labor and 1249 day absents favoured Labor over the LNP 387-262; there were also some postals added.  An important thing here is that you can't project off a sample of absents to all absents unless you know where they are from; the prepolls may have been from somewhere naturally conservative.  (Edit: my understanding is they're from multiple seats to the south side of South Brisbane where the LNP vote is mostly not that high.)

Monday 3:30 pm: The current Labor to Liberal primary gap in the unofficial count is 2.9% (760 votes) having come down very slightly on what I believe is rechecking. Furthermore, in the rechecked booths the LNP are up 13 votes compared to the official count, Labor down 28, One Nation up 12 and Greens up 48 meaning the lead prior to ON preferences is currently 719.  The main culprit here is the West End booth where it appears 30 Greens votes may have been in the Labor pile.  Overall this improves the Greens' position by about 67 votes compared to Sunday's outlook and significantly improves their chances given the projected closeness of the finish (but they're still behind).  

INTRO SUNDAY:  The Greens' Amy MacMahon won South Brisbane from Labor's Jackie Trad in 2020 with the assistance of LNP how to vote card preferences, though she also had a lead on primary votes.  The LNP reversed that decision for 2024 meaning that all else being equal, the Greens would probably need a slight improvement in their primary vote position vs Labor to hold the seat.  That has not occurred, with a 2% swing against Labor's primary and a larger 4.6% swing against the Greens', with 63.8% of enrolment counted, and the small matter of a 43 point decline in the Greens' preference share means they are definitely toast if it finishes as a two-party contest against Labor.  In 2020 out-of-electorate early votes were 6.5% of enrolment (likely to increase) and day absents were 5.0%, and turnout finished at 88.  Remaining postals could be about 4.5% of enrolment.  

Late in the night, a possible lifeline emerged.  If the LNP vote comes up to the point that the LNP make the final two with the assistance of One Nation preferences, then the Greens still win the seat on Labor preferences.  At present MacMahon is on 35%, Barbara O'Shea (Labor) on 32.4 and Marita Parkinson (LNP) 29.4.  Richard Henderson (One Nation) has 3.2%.  

In South Brisbane in 2020 preferences from the One Nation candidate (not all One Nation votes) split 61.6% LNP, 20.1% Green, 18.2% Labor.  There were similar One Nation exclusions with three candidates left in, for instance, Maiwar 2020 and the federal seats of Griffith and Brisbane in 2022.  In all these cases the LNP gained on Labor at between .43 votes/preference and .50 votes/preference on the exclusion of the One Nation candidate.  If this pattern repeats, the LNP will close on Labor by something like 1.5 points off the One Nation preferences, suggesting they are currently in reality about 1.5% (390 votes) behind. 

If I assume that out of division prepolls will have the same swing as home prepolls, that will give the LNP only a trivial edge on those, probably worth less than 100 votes.  If I assume that absent day votes have the same swing as day votes generally, that would more or less cancel out the out of division prepolls.  This suggests that if the LNP are to close the gap (much as they don't want to) they will probably have to do it on remaining postals.

The postals so far have had a colossal swing to the LNP, such that another 1900 formal postals at the present rate would reduce Labor's lead in the race for second by about 310 votes.  However late postals won't break as strongly as early postals, and declaration votes could boost Labor's lead by several dozen.  So all up I am projecting Labor staying ahead of the LNP but the margin in my estimate is a few hundred votes (a bit under 1%) which could easily be overturned by a change in swing patterns or even a counting correction.  Too close to call yet (and the Greens for some reason have a high win rate in close postcounts in my experience) but for now this seems to be advantage Labor.  

The Greens have never before lost a single-member state and federal seat that they won at a general election, having successfully defended eight (some of them repeatedly).  That streak is here in serious danger.  

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