Queensland

Galaxy 50-50, Morgan 53-47

Larvatus Prodeo - July 30, 2010 - 12:11pm

Two polls are out today, both taken on Wednesday night.

Galaxy and Morgan both show the race narrowing, with Labor losing 2% on the two party preferred and 2.5% respectively.

There’s also an earlier Morgan, a face to face poll from last weekend. Possum is waiting for weekend polls before updating his trend analysis:

Suffice to say that there appears to have been a point or two slip in the Labor vote over the last 7 days.

In other news, it’s being reported that Kevin Rudd is being asked to campaign outside his seat of Griffith in other Queensland electorates. All observers appear agreed that Labor has problems in Queensland, where there are a stack of marginals.

For Mark’s take on the state of play in Queensland, see here. Read more »

The view from Channel Nine VI: Playing the parochial card and an Oakes bombshell

Larvatus Prodeo - July 27, 2010 - 7:13pm

Continuing an irregular series commenting on how the election looks to commercial tv viewers: commercial free to air is the biggest single source of information for voters.

After almost disappearing last night, the election was back on Brisbane’s Channel Nine news tonight – big time. The PM was in Brisbane, appearing with Anna Bligh to announce around $700 million for that hardy election perennial, a rail line to Redcliffe. (For background, see Andrew Bartlett.)

It certainly is a slog to get to Redcliffe by public transport, involving a long bus trip from either Petrie or Shorncliffe station. There was a bit of scepticism expressed on the vox pops, because this promise is regularly made by both major political parties in both state and federal campaigns, and nothing ever happens (it was first mooted in the 19th century, and land was resumed in 1978). Read more »

Why the Liberals will collapse in the Federal election campaignThis stor...

Politically Homeless - July 16, 2010 - 10:59pm

Why the Liberals will collapse in the Federal election campaignThis story misses the point: nobody gives a damn about the gaffe, simply because a) O'Farrell is not some gaffe-prone clown and b) it is an aberration and he will work even harder to make it appear uncharacteristic going forward. The Liberals are a shambles. They are going into the election campaign with an organisation that is

The view from Brisbane’s northern outskirts

Larvatus Prodeo - July 28, 2010 - 9:50pm

I’ve published a piece on the contest in three key seats on Brisbane’s northern outskirts – Petrie, Dickson and Longman – at the ABC’s Campaign Diary blog.

In the post, I also have some observations to make about the Kevin Rudd factor in Queensland, and the Cabinet leaks.

Federal election 2010: Queensland on the ground

Larvatus Prodeo - July 21, 2010 - 12:26pm

Last week, I put up a post at our main site (temporarily not viewable because of site maintenance), seeking readers’ contributions about what’s actually happening on the ground in Queensland.

Peter Brent provides a good summary of why this state is so important to the outcome. Half of the seats are held by margins of 5% or less, federal Labor has little in the way of a solid base, swings are often more marked than elsewhere in the country, and up to 10 seats are in play.

Some polling has shown Labor in danger of losing enough seats in Queensland to endanger its overall majority, though Dennis Atkins is right to say that the swings are very patchy. Queensland is a demographically and geographically diverse state, a point made well by Jason Wilson in an article on the key seats in Central and North Queensland.

Wilson, writing of the national media missing the issues and local campaigns in regional electorates, also observes: Read more »