Wright – Australia 2025

29.1% of this seat voted for a right-wing minor party, the highest percentage in the nation.

I spent ages making a map for the right-wing minor party vote around the country but now I can’t find the bloody file. Very annoying.

I should be more specific: highest other than Kennedy which is Bob Katter’s seat (counting KAP as a right-wing minor party)

@nether portal
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if there was no Clive Palmer or Rennick one nation vote could be even higher

Fun fact is Pauline Hanson lives around Beaudesert

@Nimalan that was exactly my question which is why I made the map. Will recreate it in a few days or maybe this afternoon.

@Marh in Beaudesert itself One Nation came second in 2022 and 2025.

Six News Project that if an election was held today ONP would win this seat. For ONP to do well it would be good for them to have a single right wing minor party hence no Rennick or Palmer.

I find this dubious.

If we added every vote from Rennick and Palmer in Wright in 2025 and gave them to the One Nation candidate holus bolus, they barely clear Labor on first preference votes. The Greens would push Labor back into second place and the status quo result of LNP would prevail.

In any case, Wright may undergo serious boundary changes at the next redistribution. If the Lockyer Valley is moved out of Wright, there’s no way the ONP can win the seat.

I wonder if this would be amongst Australia’s most right wing nationalist seat if adjusted from demographics and geography given One Nation has a stronghold there (Hanson even lives near Beaudesert)?

@ Marh
A lot of ONP support comes from Semi-rural peri urban areas like Camden, Wollondilly etc. I still think Maranoa is the most conservative seat in the Nation (vote compass constantly has said that). Melbourne is probably the most left-wing followed by Grayndler, Sydney, Wills, Cooper.

@Nimalan I know you’re probably referring to Camden/Wollondilly as examples of Semi-Rural Exurban areas but I think it would apply to the rural/provincial parts of Wright (and to a lesser extent, Blair and Groom) well. The Lockyer Region (where Beaudesert, Laidley and Gatton are located) are very right wing (no surprises given that Hanson almost won the state electorate of Lockyer in 2015) and would be suitable to One Nation’s politics. Ditto for the outer Toowoomba areas like Oakey and the Somerset region towns like Esk, Kilcoy, Lowood and Toogoolawah which are in Blair.

Agree Nimalan – when considering the average vote across the 3 most recent nationwide referenda/plebiscites (Republic 1999, SSM 2017 and Voice 2023), I believe Maranoa recorded the lowest vote with the inner-city ALP-Green seats recording the highest average vote.

This is because the CALD heavy seats (Blaxland, Watson, McMahon etc) recorded average or above average results for the Voice and Republic referenda even though their support for SSM was well below that recorded for the Queensland outback seats (Kennedy and Maranoa).

Continuing from the last post, this probably explains why the MPs of both Wright and Groom are the arch-conservative ones from Hastie/Dutton’s faction rather than the moderate group. Garth Hamilton and Scott Buchholz are both very conservative, which seems to suit their electorates better politically.

@ Tommo9
yes you are correct with my reference. I also think Garth Hamilton should be in the Nats since Groom is such as socially conservative seats.
@ Yoh an
I agree the CALD seats like Blaxland, Watson etc maybe religiously conservative due to CALD people being more religious but they are not Nationalist which is why Blaxland even had a better result for the Voice than Cook despite Blaxland being much poorer and less educated. I dont think a Nationalist culture war on flags WTC, CRT etc works in those seats but does work in Kennedy. For example, Bob Katter will be hated in Blaxland and Watson as some people will say feel he ashamed of his heritage. Labor can appeal to Grayndler and Watson as they just have more in common compared to Grayndler and Kennedy these days.

This from the Guardian 13th May:
“Liberal MPs expect Ley to reward supporters Alex Hawke, Jason Wood and Scott Buchholz with frontbench promotions …”
Buchholz might hold pretty conservative views, but he and the other 2 were on the outer during Dutton’s time. It’s a big division for the south east, Lockyer Valley is a vegetable growing area east of toowoomba, Beaudesert was once a huge dairying area, over 600 farms, voters there tend to be socially conservative. Historically settled by Germans, they tend to be politically active.

The topic of most conservative seat comes up a lot and it’s difficult to rank.

On raw numbers however 78.8% of Maranoa voted for conservative parties while 21.2% voted for progressive parties. Broken down, Maranoa voted 53.2% for the centre-right (LNP), 25.6% for the right (right-wing minor parties), 16.1% for the centre-left (Labor) and 5.2% for the left (Greens).

On the other end for the most progressive seat would be Wills where 79.0% of the seat voted for progressive parties while just 17.21% voted for conservative parties (with the remaining 3.82% going to centrist or big tent parties, in this case Fusion and Legalise Cannabis).

@ NP
For Wills maybe Break the left vote into Centre Left (Labor) and Left (Greens.Socialists)
@ Gympie
I always thought in the past German Settlers may have been more Labor like Irish Catholics especially if they thought Centre Right parties where Anglophile. The UK and Germany were once rivals.

They were mostly protestants so more aligned with the right

I also find it dubious that ONP would be projected to win this seat today.

A reason being that it is changing quickly due to demographics. The new greenfield estates in Wright like Yarrabilba and Flagstone continue to make a bigger impact to this division. Making a greater proportion of this division consist of young-families, in newly built detached dwellings, with a mortgage. There is also an increasing amount of cultural and linguistic diversity emerging out in these fringes (something to watch in the upcoming Census).

Ultimately, tipping this division closer to Labor on Two-Party Preferred and bumping up their primary vote. Shaping it into more of a typical classic contest. If LNP are falling off at the expense of One Nation quite hard, this could be a Bundamba style ONP vs ALP contest.

Though, as Real Talk mentioned, this seat is very vulnerable to being transformed in future boundary changes.

This seat will almost certainly undergo boundary transformation once the redistribution opens up. It’ll likely end up being a Gold Coast/Scenic Rim based seat.

The Lockyer Valley will not stay in the seat.

My guess is lose Lockyer valley and gain parts of gold coast.

Replies:

@Nimalan, in Wills the left (Greens and Socialists) got 43.4% while the centre-left (Labor) got 35.6%. In a FPTP election (like in the UK or the US) the hypothetical “left” party would’ve won Wills while I would assume in a two-round vote (like in France) Labor would’ve won.

If you split Wills more New Caledonian-style (where it’s pro vs anti-independence) and make it pro vs anti-Voice then 80.0% of Wills voted for pro-Voice parties while 17.2% voted for anti-Voice parties (the remaining 2.8% voted for Legalise Cannabis who don’t really have policies).

@Up the Dragons, I think the German settlers were mostly Lutheran. There are German Lutheran missions in the NT and some older Aboriginal people in places like Hermannsburg (which has a German name) speak German as their second language and English as their third.

@SEQ Observer, I don’t think One Nation would win any lower house seats in any Australian parliament. Australia is a different country to the UK with a different political system and at the moment Reform are the functional opposition to Labour rather than the Conservatives despite having far less seats. Other European countries like France, Germany, Italy and Sweden have multi-party systems rather than a binary two-party system.

I think one will eventually start to chip away at the lnp and labor. A Hunter seat without lake Macquarie and parts of new England with no sitting member would be vulnerable along with a Lockyer valley and rural Ipswich and parts of Toowoomba with no member could also be vulnerable. There was a time where greens winning lower house seats seemed Farsicle.

@ Up the Dragons
Make sense that way i assume Nordic people and Dutch being mainly Protestants would have been more right wing than Southern Europeans and Irish historically.
@ Nether Portal
Good to break Maranoa into Pro and Anti Voice parties. It seems Wills and Maranoa are opposite ends.

@Nimalan, it’s the same as left vs right with Maranoa. The only anti-Voice candidates in Maranoa were Labor and the Greens, every other candidate was the LNP (David Littleproud) or a right-wing minor party (specifically One Nation, People First, Family First, TOP and the Libertarians).

Interesting to think about the fate of this seat in the longer term.

If Wright sheds the Lockyer Valley, you would have to imagine that the new housing estates in the Logan portion of the seat would tilt the seat towards Labor, as @{SEQ Observer} points out. But it is important to note that unlike many new housing estates across the country, the demographic moving into these new housing estates is not particularly CALD. Perhaps this trend may change in the future.

The counterpoint is that the population growth across this seat may cause it to shed its Logan component, keeping it very safe for the LNP. Or maybe Wright will become one of those peri-urban seats that recedes every redistribution due to population growth, making it notionally stronger for the Coalition, but then also precisely because of population growth, swings back towards Labor at the subsequent election. (I’m thinking the Victorian state electorate of Yan Yean, although of course Wright has a much more conservative starting point.)

If you hypothetically wanted to gerrymander a seat to maximise the right-wing minor party vote, combining the Lockyer Valley and Scenic Rim might be the way to go! It makes me wonder how One Nation and other right-wing parties will perform in a Blair that contains the Lockyer Valley, or a Groom that contains the Lockyer Valley, as the Lockyer Valley will likely be transferred to one of those two.

Also, without the Lockyer Valley, Wright would actually resemble the old Forde before Wright was created. The net result over a number of redistributions will be as if Forde was renamed Wright, and what we know as Forde is a new seat to absorb the population growth in Logan and the Gold Coast, with the current boundaries an (awkward) intermediate state.

Once the redistribution suggestions open up I plan on suggesting the Lockyer Valley be moved into Groom. This would allow Maranoa to absorb the western side of Groom that largely overlaps with the state seat of Condamine.

@CJ i concur. However wright should gain more of the Gold Coast west of the motorway and that will help keep this in lnp hands.

@nicholss i think the ,most likely outcome it will shed its gold coast parts in exchange for more of Logan. However that will probly not happen until the next redistribution or an expansion of parliament. The next redistribution would probly push forde gpfurther into the gc and lose its Logan parts to wright and rankin. However that would be over a decade away.

@John as it stands I’ve got Wright nabbing into some medium growth bits of the current Forde, the latter seat I’ve redrawn to lose much of its Logan portions and absorb the surplus from Fadden (ie, it no longer crosses the Albert River, but now absorbs east of the M1). This allows Rankin to become solely consolidated in Logan City LGA, and gives the city a dedicated MP, as currently there’s no single seat that’s wholly within Logan.

I’m not paying attention to the margins or anything like that while I draw up these boundaries, however under my current plan Forde would most likely revert to being an LNP seat, and Ryan would be very close to tipping over into being a Labor seat.

Buchholz might be hard to beat on any redistribution.
Though not originally from the area, and a former Nationals Senate candidate, he has German heritage, is a roman catholic, was a ringer for 2 years straight out of school and has been a successful businessman.
If Sussan Ley ends up going anywhere, he’ll be a Cabinet Minister.

@ive moved rankin to lose the city of Brisbane and absorb parts of Logan from Forde and Wright. Forde moves down to the pimpana River and south of the Logan River. Then same i dont consider margins just boundaries. My forde and petrie would probably flip back to lnp. Ryan would be a 3 way race still.

The possibility of One Nation winning here isn’t entirely insane – consider the LNP coming third, not Labor. Starting with the 3cp from Pollbludger (LNP 38.4 ALP 35.4 ON 26.1), a 6% swing from LNP to ON would put Labor in front and the LNP on the edge of dropping out of the top two – if that happened, ON would be likely to win on LNP preferences. Any swing from LNP to Labor would help that happen, too. Buchholz won the seat on 34% primary vote and shouldn’t get complacent (how often do I hear that about federal Labor with a similar vote nationwide?).

Swap left for right, and Wright is pretty similar to Macnamara (ALP 37.6 Lib 35.1 Grn 27.3) – safe for Labor but not outrageously so on a 2pp level (so the other major party stays in the top two), and a lot of that vote is preferences from the minor party that would like to replace them. There was plenty of chatter from excited Green partisans about Macnamara last election – this isn’t so much different.

So I do agree that it is quite plausible that ON could knock the LNP out of the 3CP in Wright.

I also think, more generally, there is no reason why a parallel party of the right couldn’t do what the Greens are doing on the left, regularly making the 2CP, causing havoc for their neighbouring major party and occasionally winning.

We don’t have a lot of data for how LNP preferences flow between Labor and ON. The only seat where this data was seen in 2025 was Hunter, and 80% of LNP preferences flowed to ON.

Using that as the only data point, ON could win from a primary vote as low as 28%, with the Coalition on 27.5%, and Labor on 44.5%. Possibly even slightly lower, my graph is only so precise.

A split like that is more plausible in a more Labor-leaning seat like Hunter rather than Wright. In the same way that the Greens can win with a lower primary vote in Ryan than in Wills.

Raue agreed. The lnp -> onp prference flow is probly somewhere similar as the labor -> grn flow. The onp -> lnp is however slightly weaker around 65-70% if memory serves? So in the grand scheme of things it better for the lnp for a onp candidate to make the count on seats they dont win against labor. Unlike the flip side where labor preferences are weaker for greens. Though there was a seat i can’t remember which where the greens candidate would have won against a lib but labor would have lost.

The ON->LNP preference flows have been getting stronger, and it jumped quite a bit in 2025, to 74.5%. Just as the GRN->ALP flows have been getting stronger. Polarisation baby. This blog post, second graph, shows the history.

I think that’s becuase the lnp have put pressure on onp to ensure greater preference discipline

In what way?
Voters control their preferences, not parties.

@Real Talk yeah but consider how many of them take the HTV card and follow that.

As do many voters from right across the spectrum.

I’d like to see an example of this “pressure” applied from the lnp to one Nation.

I dont know thats just what I read.

It’s much harder for One Nation to do to LNP seats what the Greens have done to inner-city Labor seats in the past.

1. Labor is highly unlikely to direct preferences to PHON over LNP. It will cause controversy and a backlash. LNP however has directed preferences to Labor over the Greens in the past. This helped the Greens overtake Labor on preferences e.g. Melbourne (Fed, 2010), South Brisbane (QLD, 2020).

2. The minor right-wing party vote is fragmented. In Wright, there were Cliver Palmer’s and Gerard Rennick’s parties and Family First as well as One Nation. The right-wing vote is quite split and not all votes will effectively flow to PHON after preferences in a consistent way.

3. In many rural and regional seats, the LNP come first on primary votes. More often than not, they finish on top after the distribution of preferences. For PHON to win, they’d need LNP to come third on the 3CP. Once LNP is eliminated from the count, they’d need preferences to get ahead of Labor.