Counting yesterday saw Labor’s position improved in one key seat, and weakened in another.
One Nation’s Pauline Hanson slightly improved her position in Lockyer. In Whitsunday, the LNP lead narrowed from 163 to 88 and then blew out to 355 votes. In the seats of Mansfield and Mount Ommaney, Labor narrowed the deficit, with Mount Ommaney now the best chance for Labor to win a majority.
I’ve added an extra column with a rough estimate of how many votes are remaining in the count. This is based on assuming that there will be the same number of each type of special votes in each seat as there was in 2012.
If you follow this model, almost all postal votes have been counted in the seven seats I am tracking, while there are large numbers of absentee and prepoll votes remaining to be counted – about 63% of prepoll votes are yet to be counted, and about 93% of absentee votes are yet to be counted.
So far, both pre-poll and absentee votes have favoured Labor, which may well see Labor’s seat total increase from 44 to 45.
You’ll note that I am no longer tracking the race in Redlands. Antony Green estimates that the LNP lead in that seat has increased to over 1200 votes since Tuesday evening.
| Electorate | LNP | ALP/ON | LNP lead | Est. remaining votes |
| Ferny Grove | 12,751 | 13,099 | -348 | 4,543 |
| Gaven | 11,908 | 10,992 | 916 | 5,029 |
| Glass House | 14,270 | 13,544 | 726 | 3,321 |
| Lockyer | 12,674 | 12,491 | 183 | 2,687 |
| Mansfield | 12,156 | 11,701 | 455 | 2,783 |
| Mount Ommaney | 13,423 | 13,222 | 201 | 2,560 |
| Whitsunday | 13,405 | 13,050 | 355 | 6,967 |
Ferny Grove
Over the course of Thursday, the Labor lead in Ferny Grove increased from 341 to 509, and then dropped back to 348 votes. With Labor likely to benefit from pre-poll and absentee votes, you would expect them to hold on to the seat, but the possibility still remains of Ferny Grove’s result being invalidated and the voters of Ferny Grove returning to vote in a by-election. Antony Green has pointed out that any challenge to the Ferny Grove result would take some time, and in the meantime the seat’s winner will sit in Parliament, which will probably help Labor.
Gaven
Since I last posted on Wednesday morning, the LNP’s lead has increased from 823 to 916 votes. The LNP is likely to win.
Glass House
ABC Elections is estimating the two-party-preferred vote in this seat, as the ECQ is not publishing two-party figures. This estimate increased the LNP lead from 801 to 924 votes earlier on Thursday, before dropping back to 726 votes. It’s conceivable that this lead could drop as pre-poll and absentee votes are counted, but unlikely to be enough to give Labor the seat.
Lockyer
Pauline Hanson is still trailing the LNP, but has narrowed the deficit from 205 to 183 votes. Hanson is winning the absentee votes, and the LNP is winning the pre-poll vote. There are more pre-poll votes expected than absentee votes.
Mansfield
Most of the postal votes have been counted, and the LNP lead has dropped from 547 to 455 votes. This seat could still come into play if the remaining special votes break strongly towards Labor.
Mount Ommaney
Mount Ommaney is now the closest LNP-Labor race in the state. The LNP was leading by 481 votes on Tuesday evening, but by Thursday evening this lead has been cut to 201 votes. With a substantial number of absentee votes yet to be counted, and most pre-poll votes not counted, Labor could easily close this gap and win their majority.
Labor has won 56.8% of the absentee votes, and exactly 50% of a small batch of prepoll votes. If they continue to poll a similar level in the absentee vote, they will need about 53% of the remaining prepoll votes to win.
Whitsunday
Whitsunday was previously the closest race in the state. The LNP led by 163 votes on Tuesday evening, which was cut to 88 votes by Thursday morning, before blowing out to 355 votes by Thursday evening. Large number of pre-poll and absentee votes are yet to be counted, and these could easily reverse the result.
Barely 300 pre-poll votes have been counted in Whitsunday, and they have broken to Labor by more than 62%. I estimate there is over 2500 remaining pre-poll votes. If the remaining pre-poll votes flow to Labor at the same level, it will give Labor a lead of over 200 votes, with about 4000 absentee votes to be counted.
In the fourth paragraph, did you mean to say that there are large numbers of pre-poll and absentee votes to be counted, with about 63% of pre-poll votes yet to be counted?
Yes, you are right. Thanks for the correction, I’ve updated the post.
Some on main stream politics have said candidate funding should be changed to stop repeat candidate like Pauline Hanson standing and getting funds every time she does not win. I wonder how my MHR Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports) is feeling now as Pauline is close to possibly winning or coming second. Danby when a member of the Federal Electoral Matter Committee wanted to raise the funding threshold from 4% to 15% but this was rejected by the rest of the committee, Mercifully Danby is no longer on that committee.
Good Luck Pauline
I just hope that the presence of the bankrupt bloke in Ferny Grove ultimately doesn’t force a by-election. But how far does one of the major candidates have to be in order for the bankrupt bloke’s vote to be almost irrelevant?
And I can’t see Hanson winning at this time.
Best to do two counts the votes both with and without the bankrupts votes and see if it changed the result. If the result change without the bankrupts vote then a by-election should be held but if the result still has the same winner with both counts why have a by-election.
The presence of an ineligible candidate shouldn’t invalidate the preferences of those who voted for him. Let’s hope that if the result is challenged the court will rule in favour of common sense.
The other factor is that the PUP bankrupts votes would have exhausted anyway as he was not one of the lead candidates
@Adrian Jackson: That would assume that PUP still ran a candidate. There is a chance that those voters, if not given a PUP candidate, maybe have voted for one of the major parties and with 800 votes going to the PUP candidate with a margin of less than 500, the chance is certainly there for the result to change dramatically.
OK far enough. But why didn’t the QEC and the PUP administrative executive check that the candidate was a valid candidate.
Noting the final statewide count by party – the Greens have crept up slightly on their election night percentage (as I remember it) of a swing of 0.8% statewide to 0.9% must have done reasonably on the absentee votes
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