My last few booth maps have been focused on the non-classic races – the Greens in Melbourne, and the teals in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. But a big part of the story was Labor routing the Coalition in traditional urban marginal seats, particularly those on the edges of cities, with the ultimate symbol being Peter Dutton’s defeat in Dickson.
So today I’m looking at two groups of three LNP marginal seats – three on the northern outskirts of Brisbane, and three to the south. In each of these clusters, two of the three seats were lost to Labor, with the third seat holding on.
First, let’s look at the northern map.
The biggest swings happened in a corridor in Dickson, spreading into the western parts of Petrie. Swings were not as large on the Redcliffe peninsula, and were significantly smaller in Longman.
Interestingly there are quite a few booths in Caboolture where the LNP gained a primary vote swing while losing 2PP.
Dickson’s population is concentrated at the eastern end of the seat, along with a sparsely-populated west. In that east, Dutton only won a single election day booth, although I’m sure he did better on the early vote.
And then we can look at the south. Labor gained Bonner (the north-western seat) and Forde (the southern seat). They gained a swing but didn’t win Bowman.
The swings were much larger in Bonner than in neighbouring Bowman, and the difference in swing seems to be distinct at the seat border. In Forde, there were swings to Labor everywhere but seem to be bigger in the less dense south of the seat, while the denser suburbs in central Logan experienced smaller swings.
Surprisingly the parts where the LNP held on best overlapped with the state seats they managed to gain at the previous state election. They won the seats of Redlands and Capalaba in Redland Council and also Redcliffe and Pumicestone in Moreton Bay Council (overlapping with their best parts in Petrie and Longman respectively).
Thanks for this, very interesting. Though it’s safe Labor I am interested in Lilley swings, especially where it borders Petrie.
Given the historic magnitude of the swing in Braddon, Tasmania or northern Tasmania might make for a good one of these.
givent the magnitude of the rather swings i wouldnt be surprised if the libs regained bass and or braddon at the election
Interesting the massive swings in the Park Ridge and Logan Reserve booths. These areas have seen massive population growth and so the voting population is substantially different from previous elections.
Of course there’ll be substantial changes here in the next redistribution with Forde and Wright being massively over quota.
The swag of Labor pickups in greater Brisbane caught everyone by surprise, maybe even Labor too. Labor actually over-performed in outer suburban electorates – the ones where Dutton and the LNP sought to flip.
In various parts of Brisbane there were LNP seats with strong Greens primary votes. I believe that at the 2022 election, the Greens had a larger primary vote in metro Brisbane than in metro Melbourne and Sydney, partly because of the absence of teals.
In Bonner, Mount Gravatt and Upper Mount Gravatt had strong Greens votes. Wynnum, Manly and Lota are teal-ish suburbs at least in my view. The huge primary vote swing to Labor was likely a function of LNP and Greens voters switching to Labor.
Dickson is an outlier as it’s probably recorded the largest outer-suburban swing of any LNP-held electorate. Labor poured lots of resources in. It also had a teal independent running.
I would say part of the issue like we see in other metro areas is the big swing in the middle ring suburbs. Bonner is a middle ring seat. Other Middle Ring seats such as Oxley, Moreton and Lilley also showed big swings to Labor
Yes, would agree with you Nimalan. The seats of Bonner and Dickson (along with parts of Petrie) in Brisbane roughly correspond with the middle ring suburbs of Sydney (seats like Mitchell, Greenway, Parramatta, Banks etc.) in terms of their demographics having substantial numbers of ethnic minority voters, above the state average and also where residents have a more professional type of background.
The outer suburban seats where voters are from a blue collar, ‘tradie’ type background (seats like Blair and Longman) saw below average swings to Labor.
@ Yoh An,
Middle ring suburbs such as Deakin and especially Aston was a killing field for the liberals on May 3rd so was Tangney/Swan in WA.
I think Labor, possibly silently, had QLD as a target state. Pre-election QLD had the most LNP seats on margins below 5% as well as 2 or 3 winnable Greens seats. Most states had just 1 or 2 marginal Liberal seats. Because of Labor’s very slim margin, they looked to find ways to increase their majority and QLD came as a logical choice.
I heard Murray Watt on the ABC post-election say that Labor was successful as tying the Greens with the LNP or putting them on the same page due to Greens’ obstruction in the senate.
On the flipside, the LNP absolutely misread the room. The LNP’s internal polling was all wrong and was way, way worse than the 2019 election’s public polling. At least the 2019 polling was within the margin of error and it said that Morrison was the preferred PM.
The LNP’s internal polling was out by several percentage points. It gave them false hope of a minority government. The LNP believed that they could hold Dickson and overlooked ground gains for Labor in Queensland. The LNP even believed a safe Labor seat like Gorton was winnable right up to the end. I heard that the Liberals were hopeful in seats like Isaacs and other seats in Labor’s red wall in Melbourne.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-06/how-did-most-polls-get-2025-federal-election-wrong/105256346
Labor probably had QLD as a target state, given how poorly they performed in the past few elections. I know people were confident of winning Griffith, Brisbane and Leichhardt, with Bonner and Dickson as possible gains too. Very few people thought that Petrie and Forde would flip – it would’ve as a big surprise to the LNP, as I’ve heard from their folk that they were spending their time attacking Blair, Ryan and Moreton rather than defending their own seats.
In terms of seats, I understand the comparisons to Sydney electorates, but I find that it’s a lot more of a nuanced picture in Brisbane. Bonner and Petrie are very much middle-ring electorates, but Dickson and Oxley are a bit different.
Bonner is definitely a middle-ring seat, with professional voters and high ethnic diversity. It has a decent green vote around the leafy parts of Mount Gravatt. Wynnum is an area that is currently gentrifying (like Redcliffe and Sandgate) – it used to be a fairly affordable, lower socio-economic suburb, but is becoming more affluent and teal-ish as property prices rise. Petrie is another seat that is fairly middle-ring, with substantial ethnic communities around Bracken Ridge and Bridgeton Downs.
Dickson is a more socio-economically diverse seat, with blue collar suburbs in the northern part (Strathpine, Bray Park, Petrie and Kallangur), middle-class professional voters around Albany Creek and Arana Hills, and wealthier folk in the acreages around Samford and Dayboro. It is also not very culturally diverse. Oxley is another electorate that is more socio-economically diverse, with middle-ring suburbia around Mount Ommaney, Riverhills, Forest Lake, Springfield and Augustine Heights, but also solidly working class areas like Inala, Goodna, Darra, Carole Park, Camera and Redbank. These areas are fairly multicultural, especially Inala and Darra.
It would be interesting to see the difference in swings between the working-class and middle-ring suburbs in both the latter seats.
The LNP had targets for Brisbane, Ryan and Blair. I thought for most of last term that Dutton would hold QLD together due to his local profile but it turns out QLD had an affinity to Morrison.
Nobody saw the enroaching Labor vote coming. Labor got swings of over 6% in their own SE Queensland but not in Blair. I was misled and believed Labor would have minimal swings in working-class electorates i.e. Rankin and Oxley, especially after the big swings to the LNP at the state level last year in Inala.