Shock Qld seats on a knife edge as poll points to Labor victory
Labor would win a comfortable majority of 80 seats and the Coalition is facing an 11 seat wipe out, according to exclusive YouGov polling which also predicts Brisbane will be the only Queensland seat to fall.
But the contest for Longman on the Sunshine Coast and the inner-city battle for Ryan remain too close to call, with the former’s fate likely to be determined by One Nation preferences.
The Coalition would lose 11 seats, or up to five more could fall under a worst-case scenario for the government.
The 80 seats Labor is predicted to win puts it above the 76 needed to hold a majority and even a lower margin of error in the polling would see it scrap over the line with the bare numbers to govern without need for independents.
The Coalition’s hoped for gains in Hunter in NSW and in the Queensland electorate of Blair are looking grim making it tough for it to neutralise any loses.
But Labor is set to be thwarted in its wish to win back the seat of Flynn, putting former State LNP MP and vocal advocate for coal Colin Boyce up to join his colleagues in Canberra.
Leichhardt, Capricornia and Herbert are all set to remain with the Coalition with reasonable margins, despite the Opposition having once held hopes of winning them back.
It means the ALP will once again not hold a seat in Queensland north of Esk, having failed to win back the regional voters who turned their backs on them in 2019.
It will trigger soul searching within Labor as to why they are struggling to reconnect with the blue-collar voters in manufacturing and mining seats, which once would have been considered their base by are now seemingly drifting away.
But the party will be buoyed to see Terri Butler expected to increase her margin in Griffith, if the polling results are replicated on May 21, despite the Greens pouring resources into the area in the hopes of picking up its second House of Representatives seat.
In Brisbane, if the polling is replicated, there would be an astounding 12 point swing against LNP incumbent Trevor Evans’ primary vote with the numbers being split between Labor and the Greens.
It would see Labor’s Madonna Jarrett win the electorate 54-46 in a whopping swing in the two-party preferred from the current 55-45 favouring the LNP.
Ryan is set to come down to the wire, at a 50-50 vote split under these results.
It would be a shock result for the Coalition to lose Ryan, which it has held since its creation in 1949 except for an eight-month period after Labor won a by-election off the back of Member John Moore quitting after losing the Defence portfolio in a Cabinet reshuffle.
Brisbane and Ryan were the only two Queensland seats to have a swing against the Coalition in 2019.
Longman is the other seat which the polling shows will comedown to a knife edge.
It had been considered one of Labor’s best shots, but the party’s expectations of a victory have waned over time.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which won 14 per cent of the primary vote in 2019, preferencing the LNP’s Terry Young could be enough to sway the outcome.
Mr Young and his Labor opponent Rebecca Fanning took part in a Sky News debate on Wednesday, where the issue of transgender people and women in sport were among the issues raised.
Victoria would prove to be the killing field for the Coalition, with four seats falling including Treasurer Josh Frydenberg predicted to be toppled by Teal independent Monique Ryan.
Reid and Robertson would be won by Labor in NSW, Bass in Tasmania and Boothby in South Australia, while Labor would pick up two seats in WA.
The results do not show the government picking up any seats of its own to balance out the losses. The numbers are based on a YouGov survey of 18,923 voters nationwide between April 14 and May 7, prior to the final fortnight of the campaign.
Instead of producing specific poll numbers for each seat, which is notoriously difficult, YouGov cross-referenced the survey data with information about the demographics of individual electorates to produce seat-by-seat results.
YouGov Asia-Pacific head of polling Dr Campbell White said it provided “a more robust answer to the question of how national vote figures translate to the number of seats the parties will win than anything commissioned by any media outlet in Australian political history”.
Courtesy the Courier Mail Qld.
