Queensland poll: Marginals leave power hanging in the balance

Next Saturday’s election is shaping up as a nailbiter.

While statewide polling indicates Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor has a commanding lead over the Liberal National Party and Deb Frecklington, The Weekend Australian’s marginal seat polling shows the devil is in the detail.

There’s unlikely to be a uniform statewide swing. Labor strategists are predicting the party will lose seats in the regions to the LNP — at least one Townsville-based seat and potentially Barron River near Cairns, and Keppel on the central Queensland coast.

And they’re not counting out the possibility of a surge to the Greens in the city, putting former deputy premier Jackie Trad’s seat of South Brisbane and Education Minister Grace Grace’s electorate of McConnel at risk.

Labor has a majority of just two seats in the 93-electorate single-house parliament, 48 compared to the LNP’s 38, with seven MPs sitting on the crossbenches.

For Palaszczuk to hang onto majority government, she needs to pick up southeast Queensland seats to counter the possible regional losses.

The Weekend Australian’s Newspoll of three marginal electorates shows some good news for the Premier. In the only definitive result, Labor looks certain to snatch Pumicestone (0.84 per cent), based on Bribie Island and parts of Caboolture north of Brisbane, back from the LNP.

But ALP insiders will be concerned about the result in suburban Brisbane’s swing-seat of Mansfield (Labor 1.62 per cent). Strategists would have hoped for a bigger lead in the seat.

Conversely, in the regions, where the LNP’s election strategy to win government is centred, they would have wanted a better result in Townsville’s Mundingburra (Labor 1.13 per cent).

This is the first state election in the COVID-19 era, and in a crisis there’s always an incumbency dividend. There’s no denying Queensland has kept a lid on the coronavirus, with a relatively low number of infections and deaths, and Palaszczuk is riding a wave of popularity as a result.

Frecklington has run a small-target campaign, after months of being pushed into irrelevancy by the pandemic. It’s unlikely the LNP will win the nine seats required to govern in its own right.

A hung parliament after October 31 is still a very real possibility.