Annastacia Palaszczuk’s looking good, but don’t bet your house on it

Queensland Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk and Queensland opposition leader Deb Frecklington bump elbows at the Leaders Debate. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

So this is where we have ended up: right back where we started, with Labor in the box seat and daylight between Annastacia Palaszczuk and challenger Deb Frecklington.

If anything, the LNP and its leader lost ground over the past 25 days — especially when it mattered most, in the clinching phase of the campaign.

Credit to Frecklington. She worked hard and kept smiling, as difficult as that must have been after the stunt her party hierarchy pulled in June when damaging polling was leaked to the media, underlining her unpopularity with voters.

But the problem with the LNP campaign strategy was brutally exposed on election eve at the second leaders debate in Brisbane. Frecklington landed some punches on Labor’s integrity issues, debt and a state economy that was in trouble long before COVID emerged, but failed to make the case that mattered most to voters.

Why change horses now in the teeth of a global pandemic and the recession it unleashed?

This has been the signal deficiency of the LNP campaign and Frecklington’s leadership, and Newspoll tells the story. Two weeks ago, Labor was motoring along at 52-48 per cent two-party preferred, having turned around the LNP’s two-point lead in the July survey. As polling day dawns, Labor is still three points ahead on this decisive measure.

The LNP’s base vote, meanwhile, is down a point.

Palaszczuk’s strength is her ability to connect with voters: it is intrinsic to Labor’s re-election pitch on the borders and keeping people safe from the virus.

, Frecklington presented on Friday as over-rehearsed and struggled when the Premier inquired, lethally, what would have happened had Queensland opened the crossings on July 1 as the LNP originally advocated?

A Labor victory will affirm the power of incumbency in this strange and confusing time of coronavirus and set Palaszczuk alongside Wayne Goss and Peter Beattie as a three-time election winner in the pantheon of ALP greats in Queensland.

It’s no done deal, however. Labor has the larger share of vulnerable marginal seats, clustered in the volatile coastal regions, and if it falls short of the 47 required for majority government, and the LNP can get close, anything could happen in post-election horsetrading.

Labor rightly remains the warm favourite to win one way or another — just don’t put your house on it.