How Might Minor Right Parties Win More Federal Seats?

This article covers a few recent things I've had my eye on in terms of the Australian minor right movement's attempts to win more federal seats.  By "minor right" I primarily mean parties like One Nation, Libertarians, United Australia, the current version of Family First and so on.  In the broadest sense the term includes these parties plus Australian Christians, Australian Citizens, Gerard Rennick People First, Katters Australian Party, Shooters Fishers and Farmers, Great Australian Party, Trumpet of Patriots (yes that's a thing, nee Australian Federation Party), the federally unregistered Democratic Labour Party, the unregistered AustraliaOne and Reignite Democracy Australia and also unregistered "don't call us antivax" parties like HEART and Health Australia.  

That's a lot of parties.  Some of these parties have legitimate reason to exist independently - Australian Christians and Libertarians each represent an ideology (though how many Australian Libertarians actually believe in it as opposed to being random culture warriors or Liberal Right refugees is another question).  KAP at federal level is basically a vehicle for a single de facto independent and Shooters Fishers and Farmers represents a specific set of interest groups.  But most of the rest fall broadly into the same nationalist/populist/conspiracist/Trumpist/culture-warrior basket and have no reason for independent existence other than that they just can't bang the rocks together.   So this is one of the problems - the Australian minor right is a rabble.  So how do they become more successful?

Queensland 2024 Postcount

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Donations welcome!

Cleaning up the mess in Queensland postcounts is hard work!  Donation links for PayID, paypal, bank transfer in sidebar - please only donate if you can afford to do so (poll deniers and Courier Mail editors excepted, they should both give me everything they have)

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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)

Queensland 2024: The Polls Aren't Getting Much Better For Labor

Recent polling LNP leads approx 55.5-44.5

Possible seat result of this 2PP LNP 56 ALP 29 Green 4 KAP 3 IND 1 

I last wrote about the Queensland polling leadup back five months ago - was it really that long? - in The Tide Is Going Out For Queensland Labor.  At that time, there had been a few polls out showing Labor trailing about 45-55 two-party preferred, which as I explained in the article is historically not surprising in the slightest.  Five months on and less than one to go til the election, they're still there.  

However it's not as if nothing at all has happened in the meantime.  Since my last article (which mentioned the 44-56 April YouGov and the 46-54 March Newspoll), things may have got worse and then got better for the Government.  There's no need for me to repeat all the details of polls that are recorded and linked to on Wikipedia but there was a string of shockers for the government through to early September.  On 2PP they had only 44.5% (est) in Resolve February to May, 43% (converted estimate) in Redbridge February+May (two waves, not a continuous sample), 43% in YouGov July 8-15, 45.5% in Redbridge May+August, 43% in Wolf + Smith 6-29 Aug (Wolf + Smith is a sort of Resolve spinoff), and 42% (est and possibly generous) in Resolve July through September.  

While the Resolve type polls in this mix have the Labor primary lower than others because of their handling of the independent vote, none of these six polls had the Labor primary with a 3 in front of it, and Redbridge's first sample had the LNP as high as 47.  The average major party primary gap across these polls was 17.5 points.

Queensland 2020: Rolling Final Days Roundup

I'll be covering the Queensland election here on election night and in detail throughout the postcount, though on some days I may be busy with other things during the day.  

Another Queensland election count is a day and a bit away and there's a distinct lack of data for the usual polling aggregation/modelling type game, so I've decided to start a rolling roundup article which will cover a number of possible themes.  When new polls appear - assuming they do - new sections covering them will be posted at the top of the article. I also have a new article in The Guardian.  I should clarify that I didn't speak to any of the nameless insiders personally, and was going off other media reports.  There were reports since I filed that one that unnamed Labor insiders were more confident yesterday because internal polls had supposedly shown an uptick following one of those debates that nobody much watches.  This narrative was gleefully and even gullibly snapped up by Sky, perhaps because it was useful for attacking Gladys Berejiklian.  The NSW Premier will doubtless be scapegoated in the event of an LNP loss even if there is nothing special in the early/late voting history to justify such a charge.

Queensland 2017 Live

Labor appears to have won the election, but majority status is touch and go.

Approx Labor 43 LNP 38 KAP 2 ONP 1 IND 1 Unclear 8 (including one ALP vs Green)

(From base of Labor 49 LNP 42 KAP 2:)
Labor Gains from LNP: Redlands, Aspley
Very likely Labor/Green Gain from LNP: Maiwar
LNP gains from Labor: Bundaberg and probably Burdekin (notional ALP)
Very likely ONP gain from Labor: Mirani
Likely IND gain from LNP: Noosa

Complicated: Hinchinbrook (LNP), Mundingburra (ALP - Labor favoured), Thuringowa (ALP - Labor favoured), Macalister (ALP - Labor favoured), Rockhampton (ALP)

Unclear ALP vs LNP: Pumicestone (ALP leads in ALP seat), Gaven (ALP leads in LNP seat)

Queensland: A Hard Election To Model

Primary vote aggregate Labor 34.7 LNP 32.8 Green 8.8 One Nation 17.3 Other 6.4
If Newspoll/Galaxy preference assumptions are correct Labor should just win majority on current numbers (Projection: Labor 50 LNP 37 PHON 4 KAP 2)
If ReachTEL preferences are accurate LNP may win, though ReachTEL released 20 Nov is less clear on this

Note: Live comments on Queensland elections here on Saturday night.

It's taken me until the week before the election to get around to posting any analysis during the campaign for the 2017 Queensland election.  This is partly because of an unusually severe version of the usual problem: I've been extremely busy and there are just not enough of me to do everything I'd like to do.  It's also because this election's very challenging to model.  And, as I noted previously, the big picture isn't much help either.  The government has been chaotic, but the federal Coalition's turmoil is a massive burden for Tim Nicholls' LNP opposition.

Queensland Galaxy Says Game On For PHON Balance Of Power

Queensland Galaxy: Labor 31 LNP 33 PHON 23 Green 8 KAP 3 Other 2

A Queensland state poll by Galaxy, published in the Courier-Mail, tells a story that should have both major parties quite concerned.  If this poll is correct and typical, it is 1998 all over again and a bit more.  Perhaps the current One Nation polling bubble will burst before an election that is possibly still most of a year away.  If it doesn't, then a weakened minority government facing an unpopular opposition presents a dream scenario for Australia's number one nineties nostalgia party to break through at state level and obtain some serious power there.  Whether it would manage to remain remotely united this time if it did, nobody knows. 

 The high One Nation vote should be considered no surprise following polls showing the party at 16% in Western Australia, 16.3% in NSW and 9.4% in Victoria.  Queensland always was the party's strongest state.  It's possible even that the figure is an underestimate, but I am not that convinced that One Nation voters are all that shy anymore.

Sample size issues aside (and I haven't seen the sample size for this poll yet) there is one big reason to treat this poll with unusual caution.  It comes during a lousy news cycle for the government following the resignation of Transport Minister Stirling Hinchcliffe in response to a damning report on the failings of Queensland Rail.  I would expect that event to be deflating Labor's primary vote, and everything I say below should be taken with that caveat.

Recent Victorian and Queensland Polling

This week is officially a "boring week" in federal polling so far, with only Essential appearing to date.  Essential moved back to Labor by one point to 52:48, but that was from a Coalition-friendly excursion that no other pollster had been replicating, and so there is no net move on my aggregate, which stays at 52.3.  However, this will reset to 52.1 if nothing happens before midnight tonight, since the probably unrepresentative result of the Newspoll before last will fall out of the system. If there is nothing else today then the aggregate will briefly be based on just three current polls.  So much for too much polling!  At this stage, the touted Fairfax replacement for Nielsen has yet to surface.

The coming federal polling will be of interest to see whether Bill Shorten's clearing by Victoria Police of a decades-old rape claim has any impact on perceptions of Shorten as a leader; indeed, it will be the first time for quite a while that Shorten's ratings have been of much interest or driven by anything.  I don't think we'll know the answer right away.  There may well be sympathy for him in the short term, and then it depends on whether the whole story dies off or branches out in new directions.  More on that next week.