Maiwar – Queensland 2024

Still marvelling at the fact the LNP ran an anti-abortion religious activist in this seat at the last election – probably on of the least (socially) conservative seats in Queensland.

Probably just shows how seriously they’re taking their attrition in the western suburbs of Brisbane.

This area cost the LNP Ryan federally. If the Greens lose this, they can write off Ryan in 2025.

The greens calling for age of criminal responsibility to be raised and less punishment for youth offenders will backfire and hurt them. Nobody wants these thugs roaming the streets and any party that calls for government to be more lenient with them will take a beating at the polls.

Daniel, I see youth crime as more complex than just punishing those who commit crimes. Many youths may have troubled or abusive parents and the best way of breaking the cycle of crime is to implement programs to divert them into education/training. Agree they still need to be placed into detention, but it should be for a short duration (few months maybe) and then move them into special care.

Daniel T, do you think it’s possible you’re assuming that your own personal views are held by the electorate at large? If so, is that really the case in Maiwar? Not all electorates have the same values. Perhaps other areas are susceptible to a scare campaign on youth crime, and many of their constituents will be baying for as harsh a punishment as possible, but I doubt those places vote Greens anyway. By contrast, Maiwar contains a lot of young people who don’t enjoy being stereotyped, and a lot of educated people who know that effectively dealing with crime is not always as simple as right-wing populists claim it is.

On current polling projecting a 9% 2PP swing to the LNP (compared to 2020), I think this seat is dicey for the Greens with only a 6.3% margin vs LNP. I think Berkman will suffer a cut in his margin with a state-wide swing to the right, the question is by how much. However, his primary will probably improve, partially benefiting from a decline in Labor’s vote, but so will the LNP’s primary.

The swing to the LNP will probably be less in the inner-city than in outer suburban and regional areas, so that may save Berkman, and it will depend on what kind of candidate the LNP preselect (i.e. “moderate” or “conservative”). Using Cook Political Report ratings from the US, I’d currently say this seat is “lean Green”, but any further deterioration in Labor’s polling and I think this becomes “toss-up”.

The Labor primary was already only 18.5% here at the last election. Assuming literally no increase in the Greens primary vote, the Labor primary would have to fall below 10% for the LNP to win. That is not realistic, even if such a swing did happen a decent chunk of it would end up with the Greens or a micro-party.

The only way this seat becomes competitive is if the lnp take votes off the greens, but that is unlikely as the greens rarely suffer a loss of primary vote once they have an incumbent mp.

The only exception was perhaps the state seat of Melbourne where ellen sandell did see a small primary vote swing against her.

@Yoh An unless the Greens vote remains static but Labor’s vote drops heavily and goes to the LNP. But I doubt that would happen. And as @Daniel T pointed out, if the Greens lose Maiwar they’ll lose Ryan. This is the Greens-voting part of Ryan.

@GPPS. The poll shows a state wide 2PP swing to LNP against Labor. The poll shows a primary vote swing of 3% to LNP and 2% to the Greens.

I wouldn’t extrapolate but if that happens, the Greens will hold Maiwar. If the Greens and LNP are neck and neck then the Greens will hold, as most Labor preferences will flow to the Greens.

Predictions:

Greens: 43.2% (+1.8%)
LNP: 40.1% (+2.9%)
Labor: 11.9% (–6.7%)

TCP:
Greens: 54.2% (–2.1%)
LNP: 45.8% (+2.1%)

The swing against the Greens is due to the swing against Labor. I’ve only got the predictions for three candidates because they’re the only ones that will do well. Usually I leave out some candidates intentionally so the percentage doesn’t add up to 100% because some random independent or minor party might have an unknown effect, so usually I would only do predictions for the LNP, Labor, the Greens, One Nation and (in North Queensland) KAP.

LNP will absolutely run the Greens close here. They just need to get cracking with selecting a strong moderate liberal candidate. Their council primary was in the high 40s here, and I would expect their Maiwar primary to be sitting at well over 40% given the current environment. Berkman’s primary can only drop.

Greens retain. It’ll be interesting to see if they run Clare Jenkinson who was an outstanding local councillor and almost held onto Paddington.

Clearly very popular locally and someone who still has a future in politics.

It’s just such a tough area now for the LNP.

The LNP has endorsed Natasha Winters as candidate for Maiwar.

In my opinion, the only way the LNP can win this seat is to hope that they finally choose a moderate, young, talented candidate. They made the mistake last time in 2020 in Maiwar with a religious, anti-abortion candidate. The LNP vote dropped, the Greens grew by 13% on primary. However at BCC the LNP held onto Walter Taylor ward, which includes Indooroopilly.

I mean, if the LNP can hold onto Walter Taylor ward, which has much more Green support in terms of density over Maiwar, then they should regain or marginalise Maiwar.

Comparing council elections to state or federal is foolish. There are allot of Labor leaning voters who vote LNP at council but never for them at state.

The only time they voted LNP at state was when their man Campbell Newman who was the lord mayor which heads the council was LNP leader.

@Daniel T I agree because the BCC LNP are more moderate (like NSW/Tasmanian Liberals) while Labor hasn’t been very effective. The Greens will eventually become the opposition party in the BCC.

@James true Greens voters won’t just switch from left to right over one candidate being moderate. It may allow them to gain teal/small-l-liberal voters, however, and potentially some Labor voters.

If the Greens lose this then they’ll be saying goodbye to Ryan.

NP – we know from the Teal seats that in upper middle class areas the core Green vote is about 8%. In Ryan and in the state seats within Ryan it might be slightly higher. A lot of Greens support outside the inner city cores is pretty contingent. If there had been a Teal in Ryan, Higgins or Macnamara they would not have done nearly so well.

The lnp is never moderate

@Redistributed, I agree that the Greens vote includes a teal contingent but I think it’s less than you think it is. You write that if a teal had have run in Higgins/Macnamara, the Greens would not have done “nearly as well”, yet we have data from the Victorian election where Teal-like candidates did run in Caulfield and Albert Park, and the Greens vote actually increased in both seats in spite of Teal candidates. Same for federal Boothby in SA. In all those seats, it was Labor’s vote that went backwards, not the Greens. This makes me think that Teals are not really that threatening to the Greens.

I don’t think a teal candidate would have done well at all in Macnamara given that it was a Labor-held seat and a significant part of the teal pitch was that they were the only ones who could defeat the Liberals. There isn’t a s

A teal may have been able to win Higgins, but it’s a bit hard to say if they would have managed to get ahead of Labor, given Labor was also seriously trying to win the seat (and succeeded) – the only seat where both a teal and Labor seriously contested was North Sydney and it was fairly close between Tink and Labor in the 3CP count.

A teal may have been able to win in Ryan but it would probably have come down to how Labor voters split their preferences between Greens/the teal and that’s hard to predict. I don’t think the Greens vote would have collapsed there the way it did in other teal seats due to the strong Greens campaign there.

Brisbane and Ryan really only went to the Greens due to preferences. Some of the booths there were marginal LNP or marginal Greens booths because Labor preferences the Greens over the LNP so Moggill for example narrowly voted LNP but the LNP had a sizeable lead on primaries and it voted No in the referendum.

A teal would’ve won Ryan.

@MQ umm… did you say that “the LNP are never moderate”? What about Sam O’Connor? What about Tim Nicholls? What about Adrian Schrinner? What about their Pumicestone candidate Ariana Doolan, who could’ve easily become a teal given her young age and her views?

GPPS
Both Albert Park and Caulfield have territory that is ‘deep green’ i.e. St Kilda and St Kilda East. Nomi Kaltmann in Caulfield was endorsed by Climate 200 but was not a viable candidate – going from Labor staffer to Teal does raise questions about ‘independence’. In Hawthorn, Kew and Mornington the Greens vote did drop away into single figures. There are obviously voters who like some of the Greens agenda and will vote for them as ‘least worst’ option if there is not something more palatable like a Teal.

@Michael Quinlivan Nether Portal is right. There are A LOT of moderates in the LNP.

Susan Irvine is the Labor candidate.

This seat is more winnable for the Libs than people are making out. If the Libs are really getting 57% TPP (a 10% swing) then a seat like Maiwar would be winnable for them. The Labor/Green TPP vs Libs in the past have been virtually identical and I’m not sure if this was a Labor seat people would say it has no chance of being won by the Libs.

All the past Greens results in Lib seats have been in elections where Labor has also gotten a swing in the TPP: Prahran 2018/2022, Ballina 2019/2023, Maiwar 2020. We really haven’t tested how well the Greens vote holds up against Liberals in a seat that swings against Labor in the TPP. Pity QLD doesn’t calculate TPP for every seat because it’d be interesting seeing how different the ALP vs LNP and Green vs LNP results would be.

Drake, the first thing to consider with polls that report an overall swing, is that they will not be uniform swings across all seats. It is certainly possible for a big swing to the LNP here, but I’d say it’s less likely given how socially progressive Maiwar is. Also consider that the same polls have the Greens’ primary rising from last time out, and I doubt that rise is going to be concentrated in areas outside of inner Brisbane. So I would expect a higher Greens primary here, and a likely Greens re-election. While there will probably be a decent swing against Labor, they don’t have all that much to lose from their primary here, and I’m sure some (if not most) of their erstwhile voters won’t be able to bring themselves to put the LNP higher than the Greens on their ballot paper.

Once Berkman retires here, then the seat will be more competitive. He has a strong personal vote.

If anyone on the ground has info on how seriously the LNP is taking this seat I would like to know.
IMO, even if LNP somehow win here this time (REALLY doubtful), I think they will only hold it for 1 term because Moggill, being 8.74% under quota, MUST expand into Fig Tree Pocket at the next redistribution.

@Leon Fig Tree Pocket is probably the most sparsely populated suburb and cannot expand any further because the whole suburb lies within Maiwar.

Green retain

@MQ Agreed. The LNP is running a very low energy campaign here compared with 2020, with a much less controversial candidate.

It’s telling as they only preselected a candidate in June and have purposely chosen to campaign harder in other seats that are more low hanging fruit. Michael Berkman will probably now extend his majority here to over 10%.

I think Greens retain with a small swing to the LNP on TPP due to the drop in the Labor vote. The LNP should finish first with a swing to them, the Greens should finish second with a swing to them and Labor should finish third with a swing against them.

Likely that Berkman increases his margin. Incumbent Greens have increased their margins three elections in a row in Balmain, NSW and Melbourne federally, regardless of what happened statewide. This could be because Labor, and to a lesser extent, LNP, decided to run dead.

The LNP candidate is less controversial this time.

What would the margin be here on BCC results? Is there a possibility for LNP win

id say greens retain but reduced margin

@Nimalan let me get back to you on that one.

@NP thanks and Cooper as well which looks winnable on BCC results for the LNP

So it appears that Walter Taylor Ward covers almost all of Maiwar and the suburbs in Maiwar that aren’t in Walter Taylor didn’t have any booths, so it’s just the same results as Walter Taylor:

Primaries:
* Penny Wolff (LNP): 46.7% (–0.2%)
* Michaela Sargent (Greens): 39.6% (+4.7%)
* Rebecca Hack (Labor): 13.7% (–1.6%)

TCP:
* Penny Wolff (LNP): 51.7% (–2.2%)
* Michaela Sargent (Greens): 48.3% (+2.2%)

Mayoral vote:
* Adrian Schrinner (LNP): 49.5% (–1.6%)
* Jonathan Sriranganathan (Greens): 29.9% (+3.8%)
* Tracey Price (Labor): 16.3% (–2.5%)
* Clive Brazier (Legalise Cannabis): 2.9% (+2.9%)
* Bruce Tanti (Independent): 0.8% (+0.8%)
* Gilbert Holmes (Independent): 0.6% (+0.6%)

TPP:
* Adrian Schrinner (LNP): 58.3% (–4.5%)
* Tracey Price (Labor): 41.7% (+4.5%)

On federal results the Greens would’ve won this with 57.2% of the TCP vote against the LNP, winning only one booth (Fig Tree Pocket).

I don’t think the council results are useful for the state election as the Council LNP are very moderate and the council Greens are more radical/idiotic, in comparison to a more conservative state LNP (although the candidate is decent this time) and a more reasonable Greens.

I don’t see the Greens losing this seat or even having a swing against them, Michael Berkman is a very good and involved local member, with even LNP supporters I know being impressed by him.

Also this is an area with very little crime and one which will be more easily scared by the abortion controversy (UQ and the surrounds).