Toowoomba federal election: Data reveals key ways Suzie Holt’s campaign couldn’t overcome LNP’s Garth Hamilton in Groom

One of the most expensive political campaigns seen in Toowoomba has fallen short of flipping a cornerstone seat in LNP heartland. Here are the three key factors that led to Saturday’s result.

Suzie Holt’s dream of an independent Groom was dashed on Saturday night, as the most expensive campaign arguably in the seat’s history produced a small swing against the LNP.

Garth Hamilton will head to Canberra next week again as Toowoomba’s federal MP, following a five-week election where he faced an enormous fight at the hands of Ms Holt and a groundswell of community advocacy.

Ms Holt, a former social worker, had amassed a war chest of more than $500,000 to try to flip the previously-safe seat in LNP heartland.

Her billboards, corflutes and signage were everywhere, she had more than 300 volunteers on the ground and her ads on TV and on social media were omnipresent.

Groom Independent Suzie Holt (centre) looks over early numbers with Penelope Lilford and Thomas Murphy at campaign headquarters on federal election night. Picture: Kevin Farmer

This war chest included about $50,000 from lobby group Climate 200, with other local mega-donors also involved, alongside hundreds of small contributions.

With 83 per cent of the vote counted, Groom might well become marginal as the two-candidate result sits at 55-45, which is what the Australian Electoral Commission would classify the seat if that held.

But it wasn’t the result that Ms Holt — who has indicated she will not recontest in 2028 — and her supporters had wanted.

An analysis of booths and other polling numbers reveal why things didn’t go to plan:

1. Hamilton’s primary holds (sort of)

The most pressing question Ms Holt had to answer was this — could she draw away disaffected LNP voters and convince them to vote for her?

The answer is yes — but not enough.

Garth Hamilton’s primary vote has taken another hit, currently down more than three points to just 41.3 per cent, down from 43.7 in 2022.

This is a far cry from the 53 per cent former MP John McVeigh secured in 2019, meaning the LNP’s first preference has dropped 12 points in just two election cycles.

This looks bad on paper, but it wasn’t nearly enough to start talking about flipping the seat.

Likewise, Ms Holt’s primary of 17.5 per cent is up nine points on her 2022 result, but her gains did not come at the expense of Mr Hamilton in a major sense.

Instead, her new voters also came from Labor’s Richard Edwards (2.2 per cent), the Greens’ Alyce Nelligan (0.5 per cent) and fellow independent Kirstie Smolenski (3.5 per cent), whose primary halved in three years.

For Ms Holt to have stood a real shot, Mr Hamilton would needed to have seen a primary in the mid-30s.

But as it stood, the incumbent held onto enough of his base to ride preferences to victory.

2. Holt suffers in preference flows

Speaking of preferences.

In a situation ABC election guru Antony Green said he had not experienced before, the 2022 Groom election saw Ms Holt climb from fourth place (8.3 per cent) to second, riding on 72.5 per cent of the preferences of remaining votes to finish on 43.1 per cent.

This bizarre result created a 13.6 per cent swing against the LNP, and certainly galvanised the growing feeling across the community that the seat was gettable.

Maybe because of her previous lower profile and the fact 2022 featured a lot of anti-Coalition sentiment, Ms Holt was able to enjoy the majority of preferences from the United Australia Party (68 per cent), the Federation Party (73 per cent), and crucially One Nation (54 per cent) during that election.

Mr Hamilton and the LNP clearly knew this because in a well-known preference deal, One Nation agreed to place the Coalition above independents they considered “teals” on how-to-vote cards.

For the record, both Ms Holt and Ms Smolenski disagreed that they were teals during the campaign and slammed letterbox material and corflutes painting them as such.

This, along with changing sentiments by One Nation voters around climate change and renewable energy, led to Ms Holt’s preference flows dropping to 65 per cent in 2025.

This is still a sizeable chunk of the remaining votes, but if she had been able to maintain the original number this contest would’ve become a lot tighter.

How much tighter? Based on the current count, the final 2CP would’ve finished about 51-49, putting the result on a razor’s edge.

3. Prepolls and postal votes snuff out Holt’s sniff

Much like in 2022, Suzie Holt dominated election day voting — particularly in Toowoomba itself.

Of the 26 city booths set up for May 3, Ms Holt won the two-candidate vote in 21 of them.

In contrast, Mr Hamilton enjoyed wins in all but one (Kingsthorpe) of the 20 booths located in smaller communities.

Ms Holt was particularly impressive in traditional “Labor” suburbs such as Wilsonton, Harristown and Newtown, as well as wealthier areas including Rangeville, East Toowoomba and Mount Lofty.

If this was 2007, when the vast majority of people voted on the day, then that would have been good news for the independent.

However the substantial prepolling results across five locations were more favourable to Mr Hamilton, who won all of them.

This included the city prepoll at the Annex, which saw 10,000 votes cast and resulted in a 50.5-49.5 split.

The South Toowoomba early voting centre, worth 12,000 votes, went 55-45 to Mr Hamilton.

Highfields in general was a serious problem for Ms Holt, with the affluent semirural community proving to be a winner for the LNP both at a state and federal level.

But the real killer for Ms Holt has been the postal votes, where she is losing 65-35 in the two-candidate race.

Groom LNP candidate Garth Hamilton (right) talks with Errol Spence at Club Toowoomba on federal election night. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Considering more than 23,000 postal ballots were sent out (of which about 16,000 have been counted), this has mitigated any big gains made from polling day and might push the seat out of its current marginal status.

The LNP has historically had a strong postal voting program, but it also speaks to the thousands of rural landholders who live outside of Toowoomba who are also harder to reach.

There are also another 6000 ballots to count for absent, provisional and declaration prepoll voters, which have an unknown swing at this point.

Ms Holt’s campaign hinged on the idea there was a very large contingent in Groom of soft Liberal voters, not prepared to vote for Labor or the Greens but willing to give an independent a go in the belief they could better advocate for vital local infrastructure.

That might well still be true, and indeed Ms Holt performed strongly on election day, which is largely made up undecided voters who can be easier to convince.

But her numbers before May 3, especially with early in-person voting, essentially extinguished her path to victory.