This is the final of my three maps summarising key results from yesterday’s voting in Queensland. You can also check out my maps of the Brisbane lord mayoral results and the referendum results.
Overall, there was a swing to the ALP and away from the LNP, but it hasn’t been reflected in the ward victories.
The LNP primary vote dropped from 57.1% to 49.7%. Labor’s vote only increased from 32% to 33.8%, with the bulk of the swing going to the Greens, who increased their vote from 8.5% to 13.9%. This partly reflects that the Greens only ran in 18 wards in 2012, and ran in 26 in 2016.
On a two-party-preferred basis, Labor gained big swings in many LNP wards, but not in the ones that mattered.
The LNP has held on to all of their wards. Labor has lost its marginal ward of Northgate to the Liberal National Party, and Labor and the Greens are in a tight race for second place in the Gabba ward. Whichever progressive candidate comes second in the Gabba should easily defeat the LNP candidate on preferences.
Overall this leaves the LNP with 19 wards (up from 18), the ALP with five (down from seven), independent Nicole Johnston with her ward of Tennyson, and the Greens currently leading for their first Brisbane council seat.
(When the results are final and there is more time it would be worth examining whether there was an increase in preferences from Greens to Labor giving them those big 2PP swings, or whether it was just a drop in the LNP vote).
The following map can be clicked on to look at the primary votes and two-candidate-preferred figures for all 26 wards. We don’t have two-candidate-preferred vote figures in five wards. Understandably we won’t have a count in The Gabba until we know who is in the top two (although the ALP in winning about 59% in the ALP-LNP count). In Paddington, the ECQ originally conducted a count between the LNP and Labor, but the Greens overtook Labor.
For some reason in Tennyson, Pullenvale and Walter Taylor the ECQ included Labor in the notional count, even though they came third in those wards in 2012. It looks like Labor has again come third, so the ECQ will need to conduct a new count.
That’s now the 3rd time in a row Greens have easily come in second ahead of Labor in Walter Taylor – you’d think the ECQ might finally show the notional count as LNP vs Greens, if for no other reason than to save themselves some time later on!
As for your comment “When the results are final and there is more time it would be worth examining whether there was an increase in preferences from Greens to Labor giving them those big 2PP swings, or whether it was just a drop in the LNP vote” – I’d love to see that and if you’re going to do it at some stage I won’t bother looking so hard at it myself.
When/if you do get around to it, I’m happy to give you an indication of which Wards had the booths heavily staffed by Greens and which ones were less so. This was the first time ever the Greens ran in all 26 Wards in Brisbane, but there were only 2 Wards where we didn’t have anyone handing out how votes (although there were still official ones shown on the ECQ website if people wanted to go looking)
Andrew, I definitely won’t have time until after the federal election so don’t let me stop you.
You’ve got the wrong candidates in Macgregor on your map. It should be O’Brien, Huang and Huang.
Hmm I think they’ve been swapped with McDowall.
You’be been caught out by Scottish alphabetic order.
Tennyson will probably end up as an Ind vs ALP seat – they’re only 1.2% behind the LNP, and there’s 12.2% of Green vote to be distributed.
An Ind vs ALP count would actually have been reasonable to expect, considering the LNP candidate got disendorsed (link here). That’s where that massive swing came from.
Alright, fixed. For some reason Marchant, McDowall and Macgregor were sorted out of order.
I got caught by it when I set up the ABC election database. McDowall comes before Macgregor and Marchant in Scottish alphabetic order.
I’m intrigued by the results. I was expecting a swing toward Labor generally and the Greens to do well, but I never would have expected Labor to go back by two seats. It’s disappointing that there’ll be an even weaker opposition at City Hall.
I suppose one consideration is that there may have been an element of sandbagging of lower margin seats and sacrificing higher margins to retain seat numbers. The problem with this strategy for the LNP is that eventually it will fall down like a house of cards and they’ll lose 10 seats in one go.
I think result shows a real problem for the progressive parties in Qld due to optional preferential voting.
There are some of the usual accusations about reasons why preferences flows from Greens to Labor aren’t strong enough (which is possibly a post in itself), but the simple fact is even with how to votes showing a direct preference, a message on the how to vote urging people to fill in every square and multiple party workers staffing every booth to hand the things out, a sizeable chunk of people still just vote 1 and then their vote exhausts.
This was the first time the Greens ran in all 26 wards in Brisbane City Council & that simple fact has clearly cut into the Labor vote in some areas (though it certainly doesn’t explain the whole story with Labor’s very low gains in the Ward votes). This is most apparent in Northgate,where the Greens have polled around 13% with a fairly minimal campaign & sporadic booth coverage in a seat the party didn’t contest in 2012. With the LNP primary at 47.35% it is unlikely the ALP could have caught up in any case even with a higher than usual preference flow from Greens.
While Labor (just) held this seat in 2012, the retirement of the incumbent obviously would have hurt them. Still, for their primary to drop from 50.4% to 39.4% is a big drop in a seat they held, especially in an election when the underlying swing was trending their way. A higher booth presence from the Greens might have strengthen the prefernce flow, but it would probably have also further increased the Greens primary vote, probably at the expense of Labor.
Given that voters will still have the capacity to exercise free will for the forseeable future, there will always be a problematic exhaust rate under OPV. Even if it’s only 20%, that can be more than enough to kill off chances in a close race.
And to show that it works both ways, whilst the LNP vote is a bit too high in Paddington for the Greens to realistically think it’s a chance this time around, given Labor will come 3rd in this seat, it will be interesting to see what the level of exhaust there is from Labor voters.
I’d be surprised if the Qld Labor government doesn’t start seriously considering a returning to compulsory preferential voting soon – although the hung (and slightly febrile) parliament might make such a measure difficult at the moment.
I agree that OPV is fundamentally flawed, but the problem is that neither party wants to fix it when the other is struggling because of it. The LNP’s current position is the same as the Nationals’ back in 1998.
Antony Green has written a number of very good articles on the superiority of full preferential voting over OPV, particularly including the benefits of nation-wide uniformity in reducing informal votes.
I’m not aware of ever having written an article on the superiority of full preferential voting. In fact my views on the subject are the complete opposite.
I stand corrected Antony, I’m sorry. I must have been thinking of someone else’s articles. On doing some research, I see you wrote an article for the Drum in January 2013 arguing the case for OPV.
I’m personally opposed to OPV on the basis that exhaustion of votes (whether through a specific dislike of all alternative candidates or a party’s ‘Just vote 1’ campaign) is equivalent to a muzzling of opinion and can lead to perverse outcomes (such as a Liberal being elected because Green preferences exhaust instead of flowing mostly to Labor, even though most Green voters would probably prefer a left-of-centre member). FPV may force people to nominate a preference on candidates they have no preference for, but preferential voting always comes down to a two-horse race, and so in those instances, it’s not unreasonable to force voters to provide a preference on which of the final two they prefer. In 2008, Alan Sutherland was elected mayor of Moreton Bay Regional Council on 29.88% of the primary vote, and after preferences had received 35.94% of total formal votes, with opponent Joy Leishman having 32.73% while 31.33% of votes were exhausted. I don’t see it as democratic if someone can be elected with almost two thirds of voters not expressing a preference for that candidate. You may as well have first-past-the-post.
Furthermore, OPV was brought in for political purposes when opponents were divided and at various times has benefited different parties one way or another. A voting system should not benefit one side or the other at all.
Regardless, more important than the specifics of OPV vs FPV is the importance of uniformity. Qld and NSW have significantly higher rates of informal voting due to voters numbering 1 only or with incomplete numbering. Moving to FPV would reduce the informal voting rate in these states, while moving to OPV would reduce the informal voting rate nation-wide.
I don’t see how someone choosing not to preference can be considered to be “muzzling of opinion”. If those Greens voters prefer a left-of-centre candidate they should preference as such.
You say “You may as well have first-past-the-post”, but under FPTP voters don’t have a choice. They are stuck either voting for their preferred candidate or voting tactically.
There’s an element of self-interest when an electoral system is changed but there’s just as much self-interest in the constant decisions to keep the system as is. Ultimately a politician needs to make the decision.
We should assess electoral systems independent of self-interest. No voting system should systemically benefit one side of politics – OPV doesn’t. It favours some at some times and others at other times.
Uniformity would be nice but I don’t think we should shy away from improving the system because we create more variation in voting system.
opv is superior as it gives voters a choice not to chose what they consider to be 2 or more bad choices……they also can extend preferences to the extent they wish. informal votes should be low as voters only need to make one clear choice for the vote to be formal
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