Queensland election guide – redistribution summary

Queensland has recently undergone a redistribution of state electoral boundaries, the first in almost a decade. The existing boundaries were used at three elections: 2009, 2012 and 2015.

The number of seats was increased from 89 to 93. This resulted in the creation of five new electorates, with two seats merged.

The inner-city electorates of Indooroopilly and Mount Coot-tha were merged into the new seat of Maiwar. Maiwar is a marginal LNP seat, with a margin of 3%.

Five new seats were created:

• Bancroft – Labor seat on the northern fringe of Brisbane, with an 8.3% margin.
• Bonney – marginal LNP seat on the Gold Coast, with a 2.2% margin.
• Jordan – safe Labor seat at the eastern edge of Ipswich, with a 13.5% margin.
• MacAlister – Labor seat in the north-east of Logan, with a 6.4% margin.
• Ninderry – LNP seat on the Sunshine Coast, with a 6.9% margin.

Eleven other electorates have changed their name.

The last Queensland state election produced a result of 44 Labor, 42 Liberal National, 2 Katter’s Australian Party and 1 independent.

Antony Green’s redistribution estimate (which I will discuss further below) produces a result of 48 Labor seats, 42 Liberal National seats, 2 Katter’s Australian Party and 1 independent. Two of those Labor seats are now held by independent MPs elected in 2015 as Labor candidates, and one of those LNP seats is now held by a One Nation MP, elected representing the LNP.

Notes on redistribution calculations

I have produced my own estimates of the impact of the redistribution on each electorate. I have produced my own estimates as part of the process of breaking each electorate into sub-areas.

As usual, Antony Green has produced his own figures, and he has explained his methodology here. Most seats have very similar margins for both of our models, but there are a few exceptions. He particularly explains that his estimates for Burdekin and Hill changed dramatically due to more careful distribution of pre-poll votes in those two large regional electorates.

The increasing volume of pre-poll votes has made redistribution calculations more difficult. I have chosen to keep these calculations simple, by adding up all votes cast through a special method (pre-poll, postal, absent, etc) and dividing them up in proportion to the population transfers. I don’t take into account whether pre-poll votes in one part of the seat differed greatly from other votes, nor do I take into account the relative partisan bent of different parts of a seat when distributing postal and absent votes.

I will be using Antony’s calculations for my pendulum and the top-level two-candidate-preferred figures, and will be using my own figures for the booth breakdown table and the primary votes. His technique for dealing with pre-poll booths in Burdekin and Hill seems more reliable, and his numbers are generally used as the standard of judging marginality.

Antony’s model gave Burdekin to Labor, Hill to Katter’s Australian Party and Pumicestone to the LNP, while my model gave those seats to the LNP, LNP and Labor respectively.

For the sake of transparency, I have put together the following table which compares my estimate to Antony’s estimate where they are off by more than 1%.

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