Maryborough – Queensland 2024

Nothing to see here unless the incumbent stands down or the LNP win a comprehensive victory of around 55-60 seats.

Saunders is the Peter Watson, Leon Bignell, Janelle Saffin and Michelle Rowland of this seat. They members I mentioned have done well winning in difficult circumstances and even one in massive landslides a cycle or 2 later like Bignell and Saffin.

Mental health advocate and small business owner John Barounis, has been selected as the LNP candidate for Maryboroug.

As mentioned Bruce Saunders has turned this into a Labor stronghold. The buffer he’s got I just can’t see the LNP pegging it back in one election. Labor retains.

It was reported in the Courier Mail Bruce Saunders had discussions about joining Katter Australia Party. But Saunders has denied this report. But those talks have now cooled since Saunders was made assistant minster it was reported. Maryborough isn’t obvious Katter Australia Party country, being a city and a suburb in the Fraser Coast Region. I will acknowledge the party did get almost 20% of the vote when it stood a candidate in 2012.

Labor might as well write the seat off if Saunders defected. They will be hoping Saunders will stay in the ALP tent because Maryborough is there best chance of retaining in Wide Bay. And the party would likely be focusing more resources in trying to hold neighboring Bundaberg and Hervey Bay from falling to the LNP.

Night-watchman. Why would he defect. He has the seat in any circumstances short of a
Lnp landslide

@ Mick Quinlivan Agreed. Maryborough has had a bit of an odd voting history at times in the past so I wouldn’t completely rule out a an abnormal result, but there’s currently no reason to think Labor will lose it this year unless the election ends up catastrophic for them.

This is an excellent example of the impact of
Personal votes usually in
Country areas. I don’t think
Brendan Hansen was defeated.. think he retired

I agree with the above comments that Bruce Saunders built up a huge margin. This area in Wide Bay is federally an LNP stronghold. If he defects, his state politcal career will almost certainly end and the non-LNP will be split, creating a three-way race.

Although in 2017 ONP reduced the seat to a 2.5% margin by running a Fraser Coast councillor. So the personal vote for Saunders might not be as strong as it appears in the 2020 result.

Probably the best ONP pickup opportunity if the LNP’s climate targets hurt them in these regions (which I refuse to subscribe to) Matt Canavan can moan about it but in reality his position of climate denialism is out of mainstream with the majority of QLD’s

This will be close due to Saunders position. But he is a Leon Bignell and Peter Watson but if the LNP win big then he will not survive. Now the question would be, If Labor fell to 3rd place, would they put principle first and preference the LNP over ONP rather than ONP who are much more right wing??

I doubt Labor falls to 3rd. I can see a scenario where Labor comes 1st, but LNP and ONP split but preference eachother so whoever gets 2nd wins the seat with relative ease (3-8% margin) I estimate on current polling and LNP/ONP split.

@Daniel T I think the LNP will win this and I think the swing will be huge. If One Nation wants to pick up another seat their best shot is probably Keppel but they really need to focus on retaining Mirani since Labor isn’t finishing first there, so Stephen Andrew needs to finish first or else One Nation loses representation in Parliament.

I haven’t made a proper vote prediction for this seat yet (I’ll do that soon) but I’d say the swing will be huge but not bigger than the swing I predicted in Keppel.

Predictions:

Primaries:
LNP: 40.4% (+14.1%)
Labor: 27.2% (-26.1%)
One Nation: 15.5% (+2.3%)
Greens: 5.8% (+3.1%)

TPP:
LNP: 61.8% (+23.7%)
Labor: 38.2% (-23.7%)

Note that none of my vote total predictions for any seat will be 100% accurate, some may be a fair bit off, but they are sourced from factual information. Again, these predictions are based on opinion polling, historical trends and my own general knowledge.

I’m skeptical of a swing >20%. We can agree that the pandemic and Covid scare boosted the Labor result in 2020. A possible scenario is that Labor and LNP will almost tie but ONP preferences will carry LNP across the line.

There won’t be a 26% swing away from Labor. I think this seat will have a smaller swing because of Bruce Saunders’ popularity and Labor’s investment in Torbanlea train manufacturing. A lot of jobs in that industry, which the LNP decimated when they built NGR trains in India. I also think there will be a bigger swing towards One Nation if they put up a candidate soon and get on with some real campaigning.

I would estimate (on primary votes) a 14% swing from Labor, 9% swing to the LNP and 5% swing to One Nation.

So it would probably be an LNP gain but with a very small margin. One Nation preferences would push the LNP over the line.

Interesting comments and predictions in this thread. I’m leaning more towards a Labor retain and relatively easily too.

Saunders has bucked the trend time and time again but also now has a substantial margin. I think he’ll hold on with not much of a swing against him.

He’ll never be a senior minister/shadow minister – but I just can’t see him losing Maryborough.