Saturday’s Queensland election result was not the landslide predicted at the start of the campaign. Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli mishandled questions about what a conservative government in Queensland might mean for women’s access to abortion that surfaced in the final days. That, along with Premier Steven Miles’ last ditch big spending, debt-funded cost-of-living relief giveaways such as free school lunches, appears to have helped stave off what was shaping up to be a wipeout.

Yet a 7 per cent swing to the LNP, which will give new premier Mr Crisafulli a comfortable majority in Queensland’s one-chamber parliament, is a convincing result. Especially as the fracturing of the electorate makes it harder for the major parties to assemble the broad-based coalitions required for election thumpings. That is underlined by the city-country divide revealed by Queensland’s election map.