Late surge has Katter's Australian Party on track to take seats

A LATE surge in support for Bob Katter's Australian Party has set the stage for it to win seats in One Nation's former heartland.

A LATE surge in support for Bob Katter's Australian Party has set the stage for it to win seats today in One Nation's former heartland of regional Queensland.

The party has lifted its support to 9 per cent statewide in today's Newspoll, nearly double what it registered at the start of the campaign.

 KAP's base vote spikes to 12 per cent outside Brisbane, putting it in the running to win up to five non-metropolitan seats, said Newspoll chief executive Martin O'Shannessy.

This suggests Mr Katter has attracted part of the blue-collar base of Labor in the regions as well as more conservative supporters of the Liberal National Party.

This was the constituency Pauline Hanson gained, briefly, to put One Nation on the map in the 1998 state election in Queensland that delivered the party 22 per cent of the vote and 11 seats.

Using the 1998 experience as a guide, Newspoll suggests Mr Katter's son, Robbie, is in a strong position to seize Mount Isa from Labor for KAP.

LNP defectors Shane Knuth and Aidan McLindon are a show to retain Dalrymple and Beaudesert respectively under the KAP banner.

Another former One Nation seat, Nanango, once held by Joh Bjelke-Petersen and now being relinqished by retiring independent Dorothy Pratt, is in the mix for star KAP recruit Carl Rackemann, the former Test cricketer. LNP-held Mirani, west of Mackay, could also be in play.

However, KAP will confront an LNP in a much stronger position than the then Coalition was in 1998 under Rob Borbidge.

Labor, for its part, concedes KAP is making inroads into its base vote in the regions. "They've definitely taken blue-collar blokes' votes off us, in seats like Mulgrave and Thuringowa," one insider said.

But the insider insisted KAP would win three seats "at the absolute most", because the swing to the LNP would blow it away.

An LNP source said KAP had "no chance" in any seats apart from Mount Isa and Dalrymple.

Winding up his campaign with whistlestops in Cairns, Townsville and Mount Isa, the federal independent MP refused to speculate on his party's prospects of winning seats.

"There is undoubtedly some rich, upper-class suburbs in Brisbane where we are not going to poll well," Mr Katter said. "Obviously we're going to be polling a hell of a lot higher out here."

But he conceded that Ms Hanson had the benefit of a more conducive political climate in 1998 on the back of the introduction of the GST and outrage at John Howard's gun law reforms.

"We haven't had that wind in our sails; we've had to make our own wind," he said. "We've had to manufacture our own ethanol to put in our tanks in this campaign."

Robbie Katter said overcoming the 5.8 per cent margin of sitting ALP MP Betty Kiernan in Mount Isa was a big ask, but achievable.

"The groundswell and positive feedback we're getting on the ground is that people are begging for a change," he said.