Hinchinbrook – Queensland 2015

LNP 3.63% vs KAP

Incumbent MP
Andrew Cripps, since 2006.

Geography
North Queensland. Covers the Queensland coastline between Townsville and Innisfail. The seat covers most of Cassoway Coast council area, all of Hinchinbrook, and northern parts of Townsville LGA. The seat covers Innisfail, Ingham, Cardwell, Tully, Mission Beach, and some of the northern beaches of Townsville.

History
The seat of Hinchinbrook was first created in 1950, and has been held by the Country/National/Liberal National Party since 1960.

Marc Rowell won the seat for the National Party in 1989. He briefly served as a minister in the final months of the Borbidge coalition government in 1998.

Rowell retired in 2006, and was succeeded by Andrew Cripps. Cripps won a second term in 2009, and a third term in 2012.

Candidates

Assessment
Hinchinbrook was long considered to be a safe seat for the Nationals (now the LNP). In 2012, Cripps held on against a strong challenge from Katter’s Australian Party. It seems likely that Hinchinbrook will return to its trend of being a safe LNP seat in 2015.

2012 election result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Andrew Cripps Liberal National 11,952 44.04 -13.92
Jeff Knuth Katter’s Australian 9,564 35.24 +35.24
Tony McGuire Labor 4,491 16.55 -13.06
Pamela Monaghan Greens 867 3.19 -2.42
Desmond Connors Independent 263 0.97 +0.97

2012 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Andrew Cripps Liberal National 12,652 53.63 -11.06
Jeff Knuth Katter’s Australian 10,940 46.37 +46.37
Polling places in Hinchinbrook at the 2012 Queensland state election. Central in blue, North in green, South in orange. Click to enlarge.
Polling places in Hinchinbrook at the 2012 Queensland state election. Central in blue, North in green, South in orange. Click to enlarge.

Booth breakdown
Booths in Hinchinbrook have been divided into three parts along local government boundaries: central, north and south. The ‘north’ area covers polling places in the Cassowary Coast local government area. The ‘central’ area covers polling places in the Hinchinbrook local council area, and the ‘south’ area covers those polling places in the Townsville council area.

The Liberal National Party topped the primary vote and won the two-candidate-preferred vote in the centre and north of the seat. Katter’s Australian Party won the most primary votes in the south of the seat, and won 55.2% of the two-candidate-preferred vote in that area.

The LNP primary vote ranged from 34.5% in the south to 49.5% in the north. The KAP primary vote ranged from 31.6% in the north to 40.6% in the south.

Labor came third, with a primary vote ranging from 14.9% in the north to 20.1% in the south.

The Electoral Commission does not publish two-candidate-preferred figures by polling place, so two-candidate-preferred figures in the following table and map are estimates.

Voter group LNP prim % KAP prim % ALP prim % LNP 2CP % Total % of votes
North 49.45 31.55 14.86 58.85 8,070 29.74
South 34.85 40.62 20.07 44.82 6,373 23.48
Central 44.53 37.47 15.61 52.80 6,312 23.26
Other votes 45.89 32.34 16.11 56.37 6,382 23.52
Estimated two-candidate-preferred votes in Hinchinbrook at the 2012 Queensland state election.
Estimated two-candidate-preferred votes in Hinchinbrook at the 2012 Queensland state election.
Labor primary votes in Hinchinbrook at the 2012 Queensland state election.
Labor primary votes in Hinchinbrook at the 2012 Queensland state election.

10 COMMENTS

  1. Hinchinbrook isn’t that safe for the LNP. Between Labor, One Nation, KAP and independents, they’ve had plenty of close calls here in the last twenty years. The margin against Labor was only about 2% in 2006; next time, Labor ran a uni student from Brisbane for some reason, and he was stupid enough to tell the local paper that he’d only driven through the area once and didn’t plan on visiting during the campaign. They treated it as if it was a safe LNP seat, and surprise surprise – that’s exactly what it became.

    Jeff Knuth was the One Nation MP for Burdekin (the other side of Townsville) from 1998 to 2001, and his brother Shane is the LNP-turned-KAP MP for Dalrymple. He’d’ve got a fair bit of name recognition, or confusion with the other Knuth.

  2. The katter vote will fall this time. The margin isn’t really reflective as its against katter. Hinchinbrook is an lnp retain.

  3. In 1992 this was merged with Mourilyan which had been Labor for decades (apart from 1974-80) & became notationally Labor but Labor lost it, interesting that Mulgrave has gone opposite direction.

  5. Sportingbet announced today they’ve installed KAP as the fave 1.75. LNP now 2 dollars. Big surges of money on KAP.

  6. What on earth is going on here? Any ideas if the money is coming from people who actually know something or are just KAP loyalists with too much spare cash?

  7. KAP has done a lot of work in the North and with once again ALP preferences flowing to the KAP they’re not out of it and could cause an upset here as well. Remember they tried to pick seats they could win this time around and not spread their resources. The ALP have done full tickets while the LNP tried the very arrogant one vote and didn’t want preferences. It may very well come back and bite the LNP where its needed

  9. “[T]he electorates of […] Hinchinbrook, […] also all under threat of falling to Labor.”

    Hard to take that seriously, given the history of conservative dominance in Hinchinbrook.

    KAP winning I can take more seriously, given their strong result last time and the likely fall in the LNP vote. That said, the KAP vote is also likely to go backwards and the new candidate probably isn’t as strong as Jeff Knuth.

Comments are closed.