Editorial: Little doubt now the LNP is headed for victory

Bookmakers now have the LNP as $1.20 favourites to win, meaning it is at shorter odds than Donald Trump, writes the editor.

The only good news for Labor in this devastating opinion poll – just 100 days out from the election – is that only one-third of voters say they will be casting their ballot in judgment of the last nine years of government since Annastacia Palaszczuk was elected premier.

If that finding proves to be true – and the remaining two in three decide their vote on the policies presented during the campaign – then the Labor government, led now by Premier Steven Miles, is still clinging on by its fingernails.

Add that to the fact that 55 per cent of respondents say the $1000 energy rebate – appearing now on bills – makes them more likely to vote Labor, and there remains a very slight glimmer of hope here in what is otherwise a sea of red.

It explains why the Treasurer Cameron Dick was so keen in his Budget speech early last month to paint the state election on October 26 as “a fight about the future of our state, not a referendum on the last night years”.

It sounded incredulous at the time; that after nine years in power that Queenslanders would use their vote to “make a choice about their future, not to express an opinion about the past,” as Mr Dick put it. But now we know why. This hope is literally the only path to victory for Labor, based on the numbers revealed in this YouGov poll for The Courier-Mail.

The primary vote of 26 per cent is a disaster for Labor. If replicated at the ballot box it would be the worst result in Queensland for the party since 1893, before federation – eclipsing the 26.7 per cent result in 2012 that saw the Anna Bligh-led government lose 44 electorates to Campbell Newman’s LNP, ending up with just seven MPs in the 89-seat parliament.

The primary vote of 26 per cent is also a personal disaster for Mr Miles. His ascendancy to the top job at the hands of the unions last December was based on the argument that Labor had a better chance of victory without Ms Palaszczuk as premier.

It now appears not, with the party’s primary vote consistently between 33 and 34 per cent for the last 18 months of her leadership.

Expect those within Labor who are still loyal to Ms Palaszczuk to be texting more than a few “I told you so” messages to comrades over the next few days.

But Labor insiders loyal to Mr Miles were quick to claim the party’s own polling is not nearly as bad as this result from YouGov, a pollster with a remarkable recent record of accuracy in elections.

The insiders also point to their own polling of key seats, which they say are holding firmer for the Labor incumbents than the statewide results would suggest.

There was also some eagerness to point out yesterday that Mr Miles’s net satisfaction rating is better now than Ms Palaszczuk’s was last October – a sign, according to his backers, that Queenslanders are warming to him as they see more of him as leader.

The challenge to that argument is that Mr Miles’s net satisfaction rating is still at -13 – and even if his rating continued to rise at the same rate as it has over the past three months until polling day itself, it would still be in negative territory when the last vote is cast.

Mr Crisafulli’s net satisfaction rating has meanwhile been in positive for two years now, and has lifted every time we have asked.

The Opposition leader also remains preferred premier for 40 per cent of respondents, compared to 29 per cent for Mr Miles (last October, the head to head on that measure was a tight 35-37 to Mr Crisafulli over Ms Palaszczuk).

The Courier-Mail has also been asking in every one of our opinion polls right back to 2011 if the state is heading in the right or the wrong direction. We do so because the general attitude people have as to their daily lives is a good indicator of whether they are in the mood to give an incumbent government another go. And, sadly for Labor, the net result on this key question has been stuck firm since last October at a net result of -13.

For comparison, the net result on this same question was just -3 before the 2012 election – and it was +11 before the last change of government vote in Queensland, in 2015.

There is still a long way to go. There are still 14 weeks before election day. There are 10 until the official caretaker period begins.

Anything can happen between then and now – and, as the politicians like to say, the only poll that ever really matters is the election itself. We agree.

But here is another interesting fact: the bookmakers now have the LNP as $1.20 favourites to win, meaning they are at shorter odds than Donald Trump in the US presidential race – a man who last weekend survived an assassination attempt and whose opponent in recent weeks has publicly confused Italy with France and the president of Ukraine with Vladimir Putin of Russia, as well as claiming he is the “first black woman to serve with a black president”. Trump is the $1.40 favourite in that contest.

The Queensland LNP have been seriously good at losing elections. But surely this time they can’t stuff up this chance to win office, for the first time since the Newman era.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Chris Jones, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details here

Originally published as Editorial: Little doubt now the LNP is headed for victory