Major parties go to QLD election missing candidates

I have been compiling a list of candidates for the Queensland election as I always do, regularly updating the lists on each seat guide.

I ran an update last night, after the Premier’s election announcement, and was surprised at the number of vacant spots on the major party candidate lists, with Labor in particular still lacking candidates in a large number of seats. It is possible I am missing some candidates, but I searched for each seat lacking a major party candidate and only found a handful of extra candidates.

According to my current list (which you can view here), the numbers for each party are:

• Greens – 87
• Liberal National Party – 84
• Labor – 78
• One Nation – 55
• Katter’s Australian Party – 6
• Independents – 6

I should note that where they have not otherwise announced their retirement, I have counted all sitting MPs as running. It’s not entirely clear if Billy Gordon (for example) is planning to run as an independent in Cook.

It is quite shocking that the Labor Party, despite having the choice of election timing and deciding to go early, is still lacking candidates in 15 seats. It is true that most of these seats are in areas the party has no chance of winning, but they have no candidate in Hinchinbrook (3.4% margin) or in Burnett, Ninderry, Gympie and Southport, all of which have margins between 6.6% and 7.8%. Not likely Labor wins, but not complete write-offs either.

The LNP is doing better, but still have nine seats without candidates. Maryborough (margin 1.1%) is a particular surprise.

It’s not shocking that One Nation has only nominated 55 candidates. For a party that has only emerged as a major force in the last eighteen months, it’s impressive to manage candidates in almost two thirds of the state. There are a handful of seats (for example the seats held by KAP) where the party has deliberately chosen not to run, and the party has also had issues with candidates being disendorsed. But I think we need to assume that One Nation will not close to running a team in every seat, and thus we’d expect a lower total statewide vote than the polls suggest (but if the party has good coverage in its best seats, that may not matter).

When I rank seats according to the One Nation vote in Alex Jago’s analysis of the 2016 Senate result, most of the missing candidates make sense. One Nation are only running candidates in six of the 25 seats with the lowest Senate vote, which explains half of the missing candidates. They are running in most seats with a stronger One Nation vote, but with some glaring exceptions.

The party is deliberately not running against KAP incumbents in Traeger and Hill, but they are also missing candidates in Warrego, Condamine, Gladstone and Thuringowa – all in the top twenty One Nation seats in 2016.

Finally, let’s take a look at the gender breakdown for each of these parties.

The pattern is consistent with other recent elections. Overall a majority of candidates for all parties are men, with the Greens closest to parity, with Labor not far behind. The LNP and One Nation have much lower proportions of women amongst their candidate lists.

Please feel free to download and use the spreadsheet listed above. If you are aware of any candidates I’ve missed, or if there are any errors in the data, please post them as comments under the relevant seat guide, and I will make an update later this week. Nominations close next week, and after that I will make one last update.

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