Knife-edge seats look good to ALP
Confidence grows as city MPS cash in on One Nation collapse
TOWNSVILLE’S Labor candidates are increasingly confident of victory in three knifeedge seats as preference flows show voters who abandoned One Nation turned toward both major parties.
It comes as Labor strategists credit its small targets campaign in the city and agile, and at times aggressive, advertising blitzes that went unchallenged by the LNP for getting it over the line.
Analysis of election results in Thuringowa, Townsville and Mundingburra revealed Labor and the LNP benefited, to varying degrees, from the collapse of support for One Nation.
In Townsville, where Labor MP Scott Stewart looks set to be re-elected, One Nation supporters ditched the party in favour of the Katter’s Australia Party, which in 2017 did not run a candidate in the CBDcentric seat and this year saw a swing of 11.2 per cent toward it.
Queensland University of Technology political expert and former Labor parliamentary speaker Professor John Mickel said in the bellwether
seat of Mundingburra, a decline in the minor party vote resulted in a 7 per cent apiece increase in Labor and the LNP’S primary vote.
But in Thuringowa, where One Nation has until now been a major force, the LNP’S Natalie Marr picked up a size
able 9.4 increase in the party’s primary vote while Labor’s Aaron Harper benefited mainly from the lack of an independent and a decline in the Greens.
“For all this talk from the Greens that they are marching across the state, they haven’t marched as far as Townsville,” Prof Mickel said.
“The shocking result there is the Greens, who have no reason to go (backward on their vote), have.”
The Greens vote declined by nearly a per cent across all three seats.
As experts blamed the LNP’S lack of cut through and original policy ideas for the party’s loss in Townsville, Labor strategists were crediting their small targets campaign of funding small projects.
One insider pointed out that the same day when LNP leader Deb Frecklington was announcing her controversial youth curfew plan, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was being photographed playing football with kids as the party promised $400,000 to upgrade the suburban club’s grounds.
The organic social media
reach of those announcements would reach dozens, if not hundreds, of people who would be directly impacted and in most cases came with a push to remember to head to the polls to vote.
Labor sources also revealed they were concerned about the strength of LNP’S Mundingburra candidate Glenn Doyle, saying the co-ordinated sustained smear campaign using his old social media posts had less to do with trying to paint him in a bad light than choking Ms Frecklington’s ability to sell her message while campaigning in the region.
Townsville’s Labor MPS Scott Stewart, Aaron Harper and candidate Les Walker yesterday said they were “quietly confident” of winning their respective seats but stopped short of declaring victory with postal votes yet to be counted as they all sat on 53 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.
Mr Doyle yesterday revealed he would be heading back to his job as a police officer and admitted it was a “bridge too far” at this stage of the count to see him catching up to Mr Walker.