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Where Queensland sits on the political Richter scale : Comments
By Paul Williams, published 4/4/2012Queensland Labor was the victim of a confluence of extreme factors, some of its own making.
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One would assume that there was a massive stampede away from the ALP directly toward the LNP in Queensland but the final figures are worth looking at.
First of all, there was indeed a swing away from the ALP - of around 15.6%.
However - of this, the LNP only picked up 8.09% of the swing but Katter picked up 11.51% (Yes I know this totals to more than 15.6% but there were votes also heading toward the ALP from Independents too).
What’s more interesting is that the final seat figures show that the ALP picked up 26.6% of the votes but only 8% of the seats while
Katter’s 11.5% of the votes won him only 2 seats (as did the 2 Independents).
In typical Joh-era style, the LNP, with 49.69% of the votes managed to get 88% of the seats – and this with 40% of voters not even giving them a preference vote.
While this is bad for the ALP it’s more a “vote of no-confidence” in them than it was a “vote of confidence” for the LNP.
With O'Farrell's NSW government starting to lose it's post-election sheen and the Carbon Tax about to be implemented, one may reasonably expect that the inevitable slash-and-burn yet to come in Queensland before the next Federal Election may start to turn things around for Gillard, especially if Abbott stumbles or fails to live up to critical scrutiny in the coming months.