Burdekin is a North Queensland coastal electorate, lying on the coast starting north of the Whitsundays and following the coast to the southern edge of Townsville.
Burdekin is a traditional National Party electorate. The seat was one of 11 won by One Nation in 1998. The sitting One Nation MP joined the City-Country Alliance prior to the 2001 election, where the conservative vote was split three ways, allowing the Labor candidate to win the seat. The seat was won back by the Nationals in 2004 by Rosemary Menkens, who retained it in 2006 and is running again in 2009, although she only held on by 2.4% in 2006.
The recent redistribution saw the town of Bowen transferred from Whitsunday. Bowen is a strongly Labor-voting town, and saw the seat flip to become notionally Labor, with a 0.9% margin. The new pendulum puts Burdekin as the fourth-most-marginal Labor seat in the state.
There is a very clear distribution of polling booths within the electorate, as demonstrated in the map below. The booths in Bowen vote strongly for Labor, while the booths around Townsville similarly vote strongly for Labor, while nearly all the areas in between vote strongly for the National Party.
[geo_mashup_map add_overview_control=”false” zoom=8 add_map_type_control=”true”]
The prospects for the LNP in this seat appear strong. The presence of an LNP incumbent along with a likely statewide swing should be enough to tip the seat over. It’s also quite likely that the marginss around Bowen are inflated, due to their inclusion previously in Whitsunday, where a disastrous performance by the National Party in 2004 would have likely depressed the National vote in 2006.
More information at Poll Bludger.
One would definitely suggest that this seat will ‘fall’ this year (although it will not mean an actual loss to the Labor Party in numbers as it is not currently held by a Labor member.
Rosemary Menkens will retain this seat – she is one of the most genuine people in Parliament and deserverves to be returned.
She hasnt done anything time to go LNP
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