Clive Palmer emerges as a force

CLIVE Palmer could be on his way to Canberra, with the eccentric mining boss claiming victory in the Queensland Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax.

Clive Palmer

CLIVE Palmer could be on his way to Canberra, with the eccentric mining boss claiming victory in the Queensland Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax.

Despite the result being too close to call, Mr Palmer had picked up 28 per cent of the primary vote with almost 70 per cent of the counting complete.

After the flow of preferences, the ABC gave Mr Palmer 51.9 per cent of the two party preferred vote.

Speaking from his golf resort in Coolum, Mr Palmer said: “There isn't any doubt that I've won.”

“When we started 14 weeks ago, people said we couldn't stand candidates. We have 151 candidates in the House of Representatives,” he said.

“We took just 8-9 weeks to do that. Policies took us about 4 weeks.

“The other lot has had about 100 years.”

Mr Palmer, who declared he was in with a shot to become prime minister before the polls opened, also said he believed his party had seized the balance of power in the Senate, claiming his Queensland candidate, former rugby league star Glenn Lazarus, had won an upper house seat.

The big-spending iron-ore magnate's Palmer United Party registered strong results across Queensland.

In the neighbouring Queensland seat of Fisher, won by Howard government minister Mal Brough from former speaker Peter Slipper, the PUP claimed 18 per cent of the primary vote.

Further north in Wide Bay, held by the man poised to become Australia's new deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, Mr Palmer's candidate had won 16 per cent of the primary vote with half of the counting completed.

Even in some of Queensland's metropolitan seats the Palmer United Party garnered surprising results, winning 12 per cent of the primary vote in Forde, 11 per cent in the seat of Rankin, and 13 per cent in Longman.

Reflecting on his electoral success, Mr Palmer said his party could be a dominant force in the next federal election.

“We can win the whole country in the next three years,” he said.

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, who won the NSW lower house seat of New England, derided Mr Palmer, telling the ABC tonight that he had never provided voters with a good reason for why wants to be in politics.

Mr Joyce criticised Mr Palmer's “Titanic rubbish” and his decision to plant dinosaurs across his Palmer Coolum resort.

“What's that all about?” Mr Joyce said.

“If that ends up in Canberra we have some problems.”