I’m going to wrap up shortly – it seems like the vote count has dried up. I’m sure we’ll have more data tomorrow that can resolve more of the seats.
At the moment it looks likely that the Greens will gain some wards, but whether they end up with 2 wards or as many as 4 wards is hard to say. Labor is set for 4-6 wards, which looks like a pretty terrible result. Labor may have won Calamvale, which would be their first ward gain since 2000, but it came alongside another potential lost.
But while we don’t have a precise final ward count, the results so far tell a very clear picture about a big divide in voting trends between the inner half of Brisbane and the outer half.
The ALP is just slightly outpolling the Greens on the primary vote, 27.4% to 24.3%, but it varies so much by region.
| Region | LNP | ALP | GRN |
| Inner & Western Suburbs | 44.0% | 20.1% | 30.8% |
| Outer Suburbs | 46.5% | 34.7% | 17.7% |
I split the 26 wards into a group of 12 wards in the inner city and the western suburbs, and the other 14 in the outer ring.
The Greens did much better in the inner city, polling over 30%, while the ALP still polled twice as much in the outer suburbs.
This first map shows which party matched up against the LNP in the 2CP in each ward. In Moorooka, which looks set to be Labor vs Greens, I’ve marked it as Labor since they seem to be winning there.
There is now a solid bloc of nine wards stretching across the council from Pullenvale to Hamilton which are now LNP vs Greens contests.
If you toggle the map, you can see how much of the total Labor + Greens vote each of the parties polled in each ward. You can really see the gradient from the areas where the ALP is the main centre-left party, to the areas where the Greens take that role.
There’s also a decent number of wards in the middle where both parties have a sizeable share of the vote. Under an OPV system, the centre-left will do better where one party dominates the centre-left vote, but instead there’s now a lot of wards where both parties polled well. In eighteen out of 26 wards, the stronger of the two parties polled less than twice of the other party.
And finally, as my last thing before I finish for the night, this map shows the two-candidate-preferred swing in every ward.
The Greens generally gained 2CP swings in the inner city, although the LNP slightly reduced the Greens margin in The Gabba on the most recent figures.
There’s a few small patches of swings to Labor, but there’s a lot of booths where the LNP has gained a 2CP swing, despite losing primary votes – that’s the effect of facing two opponents in an OPV system.
11:11 – So there are nine races that remain in some doubt. In most of them, either Labor or Greens is narrowly in front but generally the projections suggest the LNP position will improve as the count goes on.
The Greens are competing in Central, Coorparoo, Paddington and Walter Taylor. The ALP is competing in Calamvale, Holland Park, Northgate, Runcorn and Wynnum Manly.
It’s probably possible to call a few of these wards, but considering how messy and inconsistent the swings have been, I’d rather wait for more results to call some of these races.
10:54 – There are three wards where the ECQ has counted the 2CP count between the wrong candidates. In Enoggera and The Gap, they have counted between LNP and Labor, but it should actually be LNP and Greens. In Moorooka, it should actually be ALP and Greens. It seems like the Greens will fall a long way short in all three wards, but we won’t have all the data until they recount those seats.
10:48 – I’m now calling Morningside for Labor.
10:41 – I think it’s safe now to call that the LNP has won the Ipswich West by-election. There was also a huge swing to the LNP in Inala, but Labor will hold on there.
10:25 – I’d like to wait until we have a more complete picture, but it looks like the preference flows between Labor and Greens have increased compared to 2020. When Labor is knocked out, their preferences are more likely to flow to the Greens and less likely to exhaust, and vice versa.
10:14 – There’s still a bunch of seats still in play. The Greens are definitely in with a shot in Coorparoo, Paddington and Walter Taylor, but the story is not clear in any of them.
Likewise the ALP looks like potentially gaining Calamvale and losing Wynnum-Manly. Then there’s a bunch of other races where it looks like the LNP and ALP is likely to retain but the results are still early, and there is a lot of races where the lead is quite narrow.
But zooming out, the LNP looks set to retain a large majority despite not winning a majority of the vote. But the anti-LNP vote is split almost evenly between the Greens and Labor. Labor is currently sitting on 25.8%, and the Greens are on 24.9%. Optional preferential voting will really hurt the left in that situation, but the exact distribution of those votes will tell us how badly the left will do in the ward count.
10:03 – After doing a quick run through the wards, the LNP has clearly and definitively won Bracken Ridge, Chandler, Doboy, Hamilton, Jamboree, MacGregor, Marchant, McDowall and Pullenvale. Labor has won Deagon and Forest Lake, the Greens have won The Gabba, and Nicole Johnston has retained Tennyson.
9:46 – We’re now getting preference counts from Coorparoo and the Greens are looking strong there. With them also looking strong in Walter Taylor and Paddington, it’s looking increasingly likely that the party could win four wards.
The other two wards that seemed feasible were Pullenvale and Central. In Pullenvale, the Greens appear to have gone backwards on 2CP as Richards independent voters have returned to the LNP. We don’t have any preference counts in Central, but the LNP primary vote has actually gone up a bit. The only thing that suggests the door is not completely shut on the Greens there is that the shift of votes from Labor to the Greens might reduce the role of exhaustion there.
9:24 – Labor look like they’re in trouble in Wynnum-Manly. The ABC still thinks the ALP is ahead, while Poll Bludger’s computer has the LNP narrowly in front. Whatever happens, Labor’s result is very poor and it looks quite possible they will go backwards.
9:21 – We’ve started getting preference counts in Walter Taylor and Paddington. Paddington looks good for the Greens – Walter Taylor the swings are in the Greens direction but not quite enough to flip the seat. Still, the ABC computer has called both wards for the Greens.
8:49 – There’s a lot of projections on the ABC website that seem to be based on a handful of primary vote booths and no actual 2CP figures, but instead makes assumptions about preference flows. It suggests that the Greens are in a close race with the LNP in Walter Taylor and Coorparoo.
8:32 – I think the Greens are in a strong position to win Paddington – it looks like they’re on track to top the primary vote, and thus would be winning. For some reason Poll Bludger has the seat at 50/50 but I don’t think that’s right.
8:25 – The informal rate in the two state by-elections has basically doubled, despite not having that many candidates running. It is absurd that they hold these by-elections (using compulsory preferential voting) alongside OPV council elections. Queensland could just not do that. It’s not hard to predict that this would happen!
8:23 – There’s not a lot of evidence of the LNP losing marginal wards at the moment. Bracken Ridge, Doboy, Calamvale and Northgate are looking pretty solid for the LNP right now. While the Greens look like overtaking Labor in Enoggera, but haven’t made much progress in chipping away at the LNP vote. But the number of booths is still low.
8:15 – Labor looks like they’re suffering another huge swing in Inala, but with a bigger margin they should still retain the seat.
8:08 – A ward worth watching is Moorooka. The Greens gained a large swing and Labor suffered a large swing in the first booth to report, which was enough for Poll Bludger’s computer to give the Greens a chance of winning.
7:52 – Labor has regained its lead in Ipswich West’s 2PP count, but it’s not a big lead. Labor is on 51.1% after four booths, which is a swing of 17.5%.
7:51 – It’s too early to call any competitive wards, but the matched swings across Brisbane City are consistent with a decent swing away from the ALP and towards the Greens, but only a tiny swing against the LNP.
7:30 – We now have primary vote figures from eight Ipswich West booths, and the primary vote swing is 17% to the LNP and 14% from Labor. It’s hard to be precise but right now it’s looking like it will be close.
7:26 – The Poll Bludger matched-swing computer is currently showing two-party-preferred swings to the LNP on the mayoral ballot in numerous BCC wards: Bracken Ridge, Doboy, MacGregor, Marchant, Northgate and Runcorn. This could be consistent with the Greens making ground in the inner city but Labor making no progress. Indeed if the Greens gain votes off Labor you’d expect many of those votes to exhaust, and thus be lost to Labor on a 2PP basis.
7:23 – Pullenvale is an interesting ward worth watching in Brisbane City. Kate Richards was a former LNP councillor who quit the party and was defeated in her independent candidacy in 2020. She came third, with the Greens coming in the top two. This time around she’s running again and is preferencing the Greens. The first booth there is Upper Brookfield, and there’s a primary vote swing of about 10% away from Richards and to the LNP, which isn’t a great sign for the Greens there.
7:20 – There’s also big primary vote swings in the Ipswich West booths of Raymonds Hill and Rosewood, but nothing like what we saw in Marburg.
7:17 – Both the Poll Bludger and the ABC systems have called McDowall for the LNP – a very safe LNP ward and not a surprise at all.
7:02 – We have the first two-party-preferred figure from a booth in Ipswich West, Marburg, and the LNP is on 60.9%. That’s a swing of about 23%, which would be enough to flip the seat, but it’s just one booth.
6:54 – I had heard from a journalist that the ECQ had been expecting more pre-poll votes than had actually been recorded. That makes me wonder what level of pre-poll they were expecting, and whether that flowed through to a reduction in resourcing for election-day booths.
6:43 – The only results we have are from mobile booths – they are small, unrepresentative, and not possible to calculate a swing that would inform us about how the results might be going. So I’ll wait for something more.
6:18 – There was a big uptick in pre-poll voting yesterday (which is pretty standard). More than 5% of all voters cast their vote on Friday, which means that 25% of all enrolled voters cast a pre-poll vote. Remarkably this means that the total pre-poll share has jumped from 23.7% in 2020. It does look like postal votes has dropped, but we don’t yet have a final figure.
The big unknown factor is how many people vote on election day, but there have been reports of long queues. So it’s possible we could be looking at an elevated turnout.
6:00 – Polls have just closed across Queensland in the state’s council elections, along with two state by-elections in the Labor seats of Ipswich West and Inala.
I am most interesting in the City of Brisbane but I will briefly touch on other contests of interest tonight. The City of Brisbane is Australia’s biggest local council by a long shot, and in some ways it more resembles a small state than a larger council. The LNP has held the mayoralty for twenty years, the council for sixteen years, and have not lost a ward since 2000, but if the polls are to be believed they may go backwards tonight.
Counting steady at Holland Park prepolling and postal booth. 2 LNP scrutineers, 2 ALP and zero Greens. However expect ALP to announce on Monday an Inquiry into OPV, because there’s a significant amount of 1 votes.
Mark, a “1” vote for a top-two candidate isn’t significant. How many of those 1-onlies were for a candidate who’s likely to be eliminated?
Jack – a lot of these wards, Holland Park included, were expected to be three-cornered contests, so a lot of 1 votes would significantly change the results.
@Brisbane Jack The ALP is running about 20% ahead of The Greens in this booth, so that’s a significant chunk to exhaust.
About 100 people in the line at … State School, 4 QEC staff.
2 were at a desk checking voters off the roll, 1 was at another desk for Declaration Votesrs, and the other one was at the desk for voters from outside Wards, so 2 of them weren’t doing much.
Inquiry was met with the response
‘We didn’t know there’d be this many people.’
AEC/QEC – is it ‘fit for purpose’?
Ipswich West is giving Penrith By-Election Vibes
There’s still very few votes counted but it doesn’t look like to me that there is a single ward where the greens have gone backwards. Their primary vote looks to be up absolutely everywhere.
oops there’s one exception i can see: tennyson.
BREAKING NEWS: the ABC has called the Lord Mayoral election for Adrian Schrinner!
I’m at the after-party and I can’t wait to hear his victory speech! Congratulations!
Deagon looks very strong for the LNP. A very similar bayside division to Wynnum-Manly. If Brock Alexander was not disendorsed by the LNP campaign, I think it would have been a gain. Instead, it’s going to be tight.
The LNP have retained MacDowall.
The Greens have gained Paddington.
I think the Poll Bludger is assuming unreasonably high exhaustion of Labor preferences
@Nether Portal Oi! Why weren’t you scrutineering? 🥴
Ok I spoke to soon RE: Deagon.
“strong for the LNP”, Observer? 62.4% ALP vs 19.1% LNP isn’t my idea of strong! Or even tight…
@Brisbane Jack
For context, I posted my comment when there was only one division result in from the Brisbane City early voting booth 😀
Way too early
@Mark Yore I’m at the after-party not scrutineering. I was in Rochedale btw.
@WestSydPol
And Inala is giving Cabramatta vibes. Feels like a repeat of the lead-up to NSW 2011.
Just a guess:
Since LNP are running a Viet candidate, Labor ran a Viet as an Indy to split the Vietnamese vote.
It may have backfired.
This is probably the poorest performance I’ve ever seen from the ABC site on an election night. It’s all over the place and completely unreliable…
Agree Laine, it is very slow and i am not sure it is reliable either
They did pretty similar things the last time I watched their coverage but at least you had Antony Green on air for checking sanity. Instead we’re just left with their insane algorithm jumping all over the place.
Labor has crashed but still hold Forest Lake Ward and Inala (state electorate). The Greens and LNP have improved their primary votes. Labor is doing worse here than in they did in NSW (Cabramatta, Fairfield, Liverpool) and VIC (western suburbs) at both the last state and federal elections.
The LNP might potentially be in trouble in the federal seat of Brisbane. There’s been a small swing to the LNP in a few wards, namely Central which should’ve been a Greens gain. OPV helps the LNP but still.
Labor primaries are way down yes, but I think it’s more an endorsement of the Greens than a repudiation of Labor. As many have said, Labor ran quite dead in this election and the Greens assuredly did not.
The other factor is OPV. I don’t know this for sure, but at first glance it looks like there are a number of wards that Labor could have won on preferences under CPV that are exhausting this time around.
That doesn’t apply to Inala and Ipswich of course. On those races…ouch.
The Greens have Paddington in the bag. Walter Taylor and Coorparoo look like tossups. Results depend on uncounted votes and preference flows. Calamvale looks like a bright spot for Labor.
The LNP retain their wards except for the aforementioned. I think the Greens put in way more effort into flipping wards. Not sure why Labor ran dead everywhere except Calamvale. I get that they had to defend Ipswich West and Inala but still…
Awful night for Labor, but it really didn’t seem like their heart was in this election. That and OPV seems to be making it hard to actually flip seats despite having a pretty good night so far.
I think despite not getting a big ward haul (ABC’s computer seems to be all over the shop, un-calling Paddington at the time of writing), there’s enough to suggest the Greens can raise their state election ambitions and target Moreton federally
Next Election, Labor & Greens need to have a discussion with about where to run/don’t run candidates if they want to get the LNP out of Majority…
‘Next Election, Labor & Greens need to have a discussion …’
It appears that’s what they did this time, but the problem, imo, is Jonno as Lord Mayoral candidate.
He’s just too ‘out there’.
Turn out has been huge, but that didn’t help Labor at all.
Gympie – I suspect they had that discussion about running /campaigns/. To win they may need to talk about running /at all/ as if it were a FPTP system
^ Labor spent plenty of money. I think they just struggle to understand (or at least communicate effectively on) Council issues. They’ve also been taking the ‘small target’ approach because it’s frankly not their time yet, no point risking what they have with bold announcements.
Perhaps instead of discussing where they should and shouldn’t run next election, Labor should have simply enforced CPV on all councils if they wanted to win wards. Their failure to do so has allowed the LNP to retain their council majority.
As for the Greens, it’s interesting that they’ve managed to lift their vote across the city, but possibly not enough in the wards they were targeting. A rather mixed blessing, but gives them some hope in October’s state election.
THE COMMENT ABOUT BRISBANE BEING THE LARGEST LOCAL AUTHORITY IN AUSTRALIA IS INCORRECT, AS THERE IS A LOCAL AUTHORITY IN WESTERN ASUSTRALIA AN AMALGAMATION OF 3 VERY LARGE PILBARA REGION LOCAL AUTHORITIES AS LARGE AS MOST OF MODERN EUROPE. BRISBANE IS THE LARGEST OF ALL THE AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL CITY LOCAL GOVERNMENTS.
@gympie – I mean not fielding candidates in marginal wards where the 3rd place candidate has no chance of winning i.e no greens candidates in Bracken Ridge, Calamvale, Doboy, Marchant, Holland Park, Northgate. & No Labor candidates in Paddington, Central, Coorparoo, Walter Taylor & Pullenvale.
@joeldipops – it technically is, OPV is essentially the midway point between FPTP & FPV.
They’ve managed to lift their vote significantly but not in the way they needed since it’s been almost entirely at Labor’s expense. Probably demonstrates the strengths and limitations of their campaign strategy this election, and that the LNP council haven’t done much to really upset people.
Caleb, the Greens tried not running in Doboy in 2020. Labor still lost.
Labor’s rooted. But there’s one thing that’s more fucked than Queensland Labor tonight: Antony Green’s computer. The website has somehow given away The Gabba as an LNP gain but the Greens have 56.3% TPP.
I’d agree the LNP council haven’t upset voters, but that’s because they’ve successfully convinced voters that council is simply about the three Rs – roads, rates and rubbish – and not created many problems with those things. It seems to me that the point of Sriranganathan’s campaign wasn’t really to win, but to expand people’s concept of council responsibilities further, to whether people can live, travel and enjoy public spaces affordably. Perhaps that’s encroaching into state level responsibilities, but BCC has the ability to influence all of those things. We’ll see in future if that message starts to stick in voters minds or if the LNP will remain comfortably in power for many years to come.
The ABC’s projections were often completely broken throughout the night. Poll Bludger struggled a lot too at times. OPV + notable changes in preferencing behaviour + ECQ taking a long time to start doing 2CP counts seemed to cause trouble for their models in general but the ABC’s was comically broken at times.
Disaster for both Labor and Greens. Greens got a decent swing in the popular vote but it doesn’t look like it will translate into any gains, even if its 1, thats not good.
This was clearly a rejection of the state government rather than an endorsement of the LNP in city hall.
How much of a disaster it is for them remains to be seen. Greens may or may not come out on top in WT and Coorparoo and Labor’s strategists will be laughing their heads off if it turns out they win Northgate and Marchant, for example, off of the uniform but in places poorly deployed strength of the Greens’ campaign (ntm huge swings in places like Moorooka and Forest Lake for example that I don’t think anyone saw coming, but nonetheless did nothing for the Greens tactically). A lot of the commentary is about how the Greens are so strong now in the inner city, actually it looks like they can do pretty damn well almost anywhere there are lots of Labor voters to be found, but maybe didn’t get particularly large swings in their inner city heartland. They just don’t seem to be able to flip many LNP voters lately. From what little anecdotal evidence I’ve heard second hand, Labor voters were willing to hear them out at the polling booths whereas the LNP voters just took the blue HTVs and walked right on by.
They’re going to have to figure out why those swings didn’t happen for them where they needed them, why they did happen for them in some of the mid rung and outer suburbs (assuming they hope to be a party of government one day) and do a much better plan for how they’re going to resource the state election. At a glance, McConnel, Cooper, Greenslopes and even Miller are all winnable for them. Bulimba definitely isn’t, Moggill definitely not either, and even Clayfield now is looking sketchier than I thought (although they definitely didn’t try anywhere near as hard there as they did in, say, Morningside and Enoggera). But all four of those seats could be fizzers depending on what their primary swing actually ends up being and whether LNP preferences end up screwing them. Also, alarm bells should be ringing for Maiwar. It is not safe. They will have to defend it vigorously.
As for federal elections, I agree with John that there’s now good evidence that Moreton is worth a real good shot. Ryan could be a tough reelection. The good news, I guess, is they’re looking pretty comfortable for reelection in Brisbane and Griffith.
I mostly agree Furtive, though I wouldn’t call Bulimba out of the question for the Greens yet. More bad news for the state government could lead to a further collapse in the Labor vote. Whether that goes to the LNP or Greens remains to be seen, but there is a chance for the Greens to take advantage. I would definitely put it behind the four targets you mentioned though.
You’re counting on Labor almost repeating their Ipswich West performance. It’s a massive risk. Those four seats are speculative enough already.
BTW I generally think Kos Samaras is a bit of a dumbass but I think he is right that a lot (certainly not all) of the massive swing away from Labor in Inala was because they had an older white candidate in an electorate that’s getting much younger and much more ethnically diverse. The Greens’ Forest Lake ward candidate is Vietnamese. As for Moorooka, I’m really just gazing at my navel here but the Muslim vote may be a factor. They have some particularly good reasons not to like Labor candidates lately.
The Greens didn’t put any effort into Labor-held wards except a tiny bit in Morningside. Those gigantic swings aren’t a sign that they put too many resources towards wards like Morningside and Moorooka – it’s a sign that they would have been better off pouring resources into those instead of Enoggera – they probably would have won Morningside and maybe even Moorooka if they had. There was never any reason to think Forest Lake would be a remotely good prospect for them though and the result there is just crazy.
The obvious takeaway is that the Greens were excellent at winning over Labor voters, but largely ineffective at winning over existing LNP council voters. I think that the non-ideological, managerial image of the council and lack of serious controversy really helped the LNP – people really need a reason to vote against the incumbent council and weren’t given much of one. OPV of course did no one except the LNP any favours too.
Clayfield and Moggill were never going to be good prospects for the Greens at the state election even if the LNP weren’t likely to get a good swing to them. Even at the federal election, those are still very strong areas for the LNP and they’d very much be uphill fights.
Furtive and Wilson, I have a theory that might explain why the BCC based LNP is performing much stronger compared to their statewide counterparts. As a mini state, the LNP leaders on council are like some of the recent successful Liberal Premiers of NSW.
Campbell Newman as the first LNP mayor to defeat a Labor incumbent helped to kick start much of the infrastructure across the city (similar to Barry O Farrell). Then his successors Graham Quirk and now mayor Adrian Schrinner have continued this progression, akin to Mike Baird and Gladys Berejiklian.
The danger would probably come when Schrinner decides to call it a day, most likely before the next election if he feels he doesn’t have the energy to carry on and run for another term. His successor is likely to be Krista Adams, unless she steps down and someone else takes over as Deputy Mayor. Krista doesn’t appear to have the strong persona that Schrinner and his immediate predecessors carry, and she would be like Dom Perrottet in NSW who would end up losing narrowly in an attempt to claim a record 4th consecutive term for the Coalition.
I think Greens should be reasonably confident that they are strong in the areas where they’re meant to be strong and should be able to retain all 3 federal seats and pick up new state seats. It also seems like they can pick up the pieces in Middle ring suburbs when Labor is floundering. If these dynamics repeat federally then Lilley and Moreton are 3 corner contests.
If the next state election looks like a feeding frenzy on ALP seats, Greens would do well to target otherwise safe seats like Miller, Bulimba, Stafford – where there is a rare opportunity to push Labor into 3rd.
On the other hand Labor would want strong and visible Green campaigns in seats like Mansfield to keep anti ALP sentiment on the left side, but they would want to be publicly hostile to Greens if they want to have any hope of hanging on to the regional seats and getting PHON preferences.
@Furtive not sure why you think Maiwar is in trouble – they are stronger in Paddington and Walter Taylor wards than they were in 2020. With compulsory preferential and Berkman’s incumbency he should be able to hang on fine.
Greens do risk spreading themselves too thin but through the guise of getting a head start on the federal election (sandbagging incumbents, giving Moreton and Lilley a fair shake, and maybe Bonner as well so it isn’t just ALP held seats they’re targeting), they could get quite a haul picking up similar swings to the council elections.
The results in this Council election may be a good indicator that the inner city seats of Brisbane could be left untouched by the LNP