Ipswich West by-election, 2024

Its been reported in the Australian staffer Wendy Bourne, Annastacia Palaszczuk’s “caucus liaison”, was positioned as a likely replacement for Jim Madden in Ipswich West.

Could this be held the same-day?

It will be on the same day – 16th March.
https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/99583

If anyone is wondering about One Nation’s prospects here. At their most recent high watermark of 2017, this seat ended as a Labor vs ONP contest on a 8.7% margin. This was ONP’s ~12th best performance on TCP. In 2017, Labor achieved just over 47% of first-preference votes, with ONP exceeding LNP first-preferences 28.2% vs 16.5%. This is also one of the eleven seats that ONP picked up in the 1998 State Election.

Yet another by-election.

This is safe Labor seat, which makes sense due to it being in a working-class Labor stronghold (i.e Ipswich).

In 2020, Labor won the primary vote in every booth in Ipswich West. They won all but two booths on TPP; the two they didn’t win were Haigelsea and Pine Moutnain; Labor narrowly lost the TPP to the LNP in both of these booths due to One Nation having such a high primary vote in both of those booths.

Why was the main 2024 Ipswich West page taken down?

It wasn’t taken down, you are on that page. It was turned into a by-election guide. No point having both open at the same time. I will need the by-election results for the general election guide.

@Ben Raue is the same true for Inala?

Yes.

As Ben mentions on the page this by-election will be particularly interesting to gauge support for One Nation in the current political atmosphere. Regardless of whether the TPP ends up against the ONP or LNP I expect a decent swing against Labor here… Maybe 6-7% at most.

Agree Laine, I think the bulk of the swing will be in the rural parts of the district – places like Rosewood and Marburg.

It is certainly an interesting By-Election, Darren Zanow is popular in rural communities and perhaps being President of the Ipswich Show Society this may also bring traditional ALP voters across to the LNP. Full disclosure I would never vote for the LNP and have already cast my vote however am doubtful that my vote will be successful.

Labor has shifted to playing the underdog here despite Ipswich’s status as their heartland territory. According to 6 News some of their members are apparently expecting a swing of up to 20% here, which I find hard to believe regardless of whether or not that’s primary or TPP vote, and even the Premier himself has said he is expecting a double digit swing in Ipswich West, as well as a large swing in Inala.

A double-digit swing against Labor wouldn’t surprise me.

I’m interested to see how One Nation performs. It’ll give indications on whether they can recover from their 2020 crash and whether they’re taking the 2024 state election seriously. In 2020, their primary votes halved or more than halved in their heartland, including their former seats (e.g. Ipswich West). If they can bounce back in 2024, they could potentially split votes in marginal, regional seats.

But will it be enough to flip the seat?

Doubt it. But I hope it flips so that Labor fan change before October and make the election tight.

Youth crime has only gotten worse since I left QLD. And a premier who laughs it off should laugh in front of the victims families faces and see what reaction they get then…

Time to wipe the smirk off of Miles face, Ipswich West! Cake in the face.

@daniel t he already did that

The swing could be big here. Expecting at least 6%.

I was initially thinking this seat would only swing 6-7% at most but given State Labor’s talk recently I think I want to revise that. They could be exaggerating their concerns so if the swing is smaller than they publicly expected they could try to spin it as a win but I’m not sure.

Thinking Labor will win with 53-55% TPP. Just for fun I’ll throw out 54.6% and see how close I am tonight.

I asked ChatGPT to write a blurb for today by giving context about the elections and by-elections. Here’s what I got:

“Today marks a pivotal moment in Queensland politics as residents across the state head to the polls to elect councillors and mayors for every local government area, including the City of Brisbane, Australia’s most populous. With the Liberal National Party currently holding a majority in Brisbane, the battle heats up as Labor and the Greens vie for ground. In the Lord Mayoral race, incumbent Adrian Schrinner seeks reelection against Tracy Price of Labor and Jonathan Sriranganathan of the Greens. Additionally, by-elections in Inala and Ipswich West add to the political fervor, with Labor and LNP contenders vying for victory. As the state election looms in October, these elections serve as a litmus test for incumbent Labor Premier Steven Miles and Opposition Leader David Crisafulli, shaping the political landscape for the road ahead.”

Also, I’m still in Brisbane today.

Im going to say it’s gonna be a flip

@John interesting prediction. Usually I wouldn’t think a seat on a 14% margin would flip (that’s safer than Mitchell in Sydney), but with the current situation I wouldn’t write off an LNP gain in Ipswich West. Inala however is will definitely be retained by Labor.

However I must stress that each seat is different. A very safe seat like Lyne in NSW, Gippsland in Victoria or Maranoa in Queensland would only ever be won by the Coalition and never by Labor, just like how the Coalition could never win very safe Labor seats like Grayndler in Sydney or Calwell in Melbourne, but a safe seat like Lilley (Labor-held) could potentially be won by the LNP (it almost was in 2019), in fact state Labor in NSW won the fairly safe seat of Parramatta from the state Liberals in 2023 after Geoff Lee retired; it’s now a fairly safe Labor seat but still winnable for the Liberals (more winnable than the federal seat of Parramatta to be honest). Then some marginals don’t swing as much as others, like the state Liberal seat of Winston Hills in Sydney or the federal Labor seat of Shortland in Newcastle. In Winston Hills the swing to Labor was quite small compared to the big swings in the safe Liberal seats of Castle Hill and Kellyville, yet all three are at least partially in the Hills District in northwestern Sydney, a Liberal heartland.

As for Inala, it’s a Labor heartland covering working-class Labor-friendly suburbs like Inala itself and the nearby suburbs of Forest Lake and Richlands. Ipswich West is working class too just like the rest of Ipswich but it’s probably the most LNP-friendly seat in Ipswich.

Actually, looking at historical voting patterns, it actually seems like the Coalition and One Nation have done okay here before. One Nation held it for one term by winning it in 1998 and then losing it in 2001. The Nationals held it for one term too; they won it in 1974 on Liberal preferences before losing it to Labor in 1977. Traditionally it’s been a Labor-National contest but it has been Labor-Liberal before and it has also been a Labor-One Nation contest three times before (1998, 2001 and 2017).

The reason ongoing flip is cause the latest pl and the fact there are only 4 candidates. When I say flip I dont mean necessary to the lnp. Onp could take the seat as Labor will need to win on primary votes here (more then likely anyway)

One Nation taking this seat is a pipe dream.

Antony Green said the average swing against Queensland governments at by-elections in government-held seats since 1992 is 10.8%, and that it puts Ipswich West “within range” of changing hands, despite the fact that Labor has only failed to win the seat three times since 1960. A QLD state Newspoll released yesterday showed a 54% LNP 2PP, or a 7.2% 2PP swing to the LNP. If Labor does not win the Ipswich West by-election despite the seat being one of their heartland seats and a 14.35% margin, it can be a harbinger to a bad defeat for the Labor government at the October state election.

@John anyone will over 50% of the primary vote wins automatically regardless of the TCP count. The thing about this seat is the Greens vote is quite low (the Greens aren’t even contesting which is odd given they usually contest most by-elections on the federal and state level, with some exceptions like in the Northern Territory where they still only field candidates in select seats, though that could change at the next election in August), but the One Nation vote is relatively high (Pauline Hanson herself worked in a fish and chip shop in Ipswich before successfully running for the seat of Oxley in 1996), so the LNP benefits from One Nation preferences with CPV as opposed to OPV (whereas in the NSW state seat of Cessnock, a safe Labor seat with a working-class demographic, last time the disendorsed Nationals candidate failed to make the final count and it ended up being a Labor-One Nation contest instead of a Labor-National contest, and NSW has OPV and conservative voters are much more likely to exhaust their preferences than progressive voters, so the Nationals and One Nation didn’t get any benefit from each other’s preferences like they would federally, where it’s somewhat closer but indeed Cessnock itself is still a Labor town).

Nevertheless I highly doubt One Nation will gain this and file even get a swing against them.

I think Inala will swing a bit more than Ipswich West simply because Inala had a massive margin, mostly inflated by Annastacia Palaszczuk’s personal vote. And although at times she was quite an unpopular Premier, she remained a popular MP (at least to some degree).

Inaka is a forgone Labor win barring some sort of upset but between the onp and lnp they should get enough to topple Labor. What I was saying is if Labor doesn’t get 50% of the primary they will struggle to win since there are only 4 candidates and they won’t getuch of the preferences so need to win on primaries.

I think the reason the greens aren’t contesting is because they’re devoting their resources to the council elections

@John true but they’re contesting Inala.

Polls close in just over two hours. We’ve all got our eyes on Queensland tonight. And there’s footy on too.

The Greens are very focused on division 3 of Ipswich council, which is why they aren’t running in the Ipswich West by-election. There’s only a tiny bit of overlap between the two areas and they’d obviously prefer to focus on the Ipswich election they think they have a real chance in.

Inala doesn’t really require any extra effort from the Greens to contest since they’re already contesting every ward in BCC, that’s the difference.

With an absence of the greens and a priest against the alo likely I think the legalise cannabis party will poll pretty well here

Is it too early to say this is looking like an absolute catastrophe for Labor?

It is a very dire result for Labor.

BREAKING NEWS: the ABC has projected that the LNP are likely to gain Ipswich West with a swing of 22.6% in the TPP count.

Ipswich West has voters who work. They are not DiNKs they are more concerned about issues of bread and butter than croissants and French plonk. It is not parasite territory.

BREAKING: Wikipedia has called Ipswich West for the LNP. I’m still waiting on more results.

The informal rate is through the roof. It must’ve been because voters had to deal with two different voting systems at the exact same time.

Legalise Cannabis is at 16%. Could that be driven by a huge donkey vote?

@votante given the lack of left candidates they probably filled the void of the greens and disaffected Labor voters

Labor is probably done here now with 1/3 of the vote in and the LNP still ahead on the primary vote. Absolutely abysmal result.

I believ i called itat lunch time

@John looks like you could be right.

BREAKING: the ABC has called Inala for Labor.

The lnp did get a sizeable swing though

This is not a good omen for Labor, this is looking like a 2012 sort of defeat & it seems Steven Miles has inherited a sinking ship.