Redistribution – Brisbane 2016

The City of Brisbane recently underwent a redistribution of boundaries for its twenty-six wards, as happens after every second election.

In this blog post, I analysed the population numbers prior to the redistribution, finding that the north-east was substantially over quota, and the south-west was substantially under quota.

The following map shows the population numbers in the old wards:

In the end, the commissioners decided not to make dramatic changes by having a seat straddle the Brisbane River, and instead spread out the population deficit on the south side amongst a larger number of wards.

On the old boundaries, a uniform swing of 15.6% would produce a hung council, with a swing of 16.9% giving Labor a majority. Those numbers are now 13.6% and 16.6%. This suggests that Labor’s task of winning a majority on the council has gotten slightly easier, but still very difficult.

The following map shows you the council and mayoral two-party-preferred figures for the 26 new wards, as well as their boundaries. The two-candidate-preferred vote was LNP vs Independent in Tennyson and LNP vs Greens in Pullenvale and Walter Taylor, but these are not included in the following map.