Two polls were published yesterday in the Courier Mail pointing towards possibly interesting results in the two Queensland state by-elections due for this Saturday.
In the Labor seat of Bundamba, which on paper is a safe seat, the poll found One Nation in second place, and remarkably has the Liberal National Party dropping to fourth place. The poll projects a big drop in Labor primary vote from 53% to 38%, but Labor is still far out in first place on primary votes, and the pollster projects a two-candidate-preferred result of 62% for Labor and 38% for One Nation.
The more interesting race appears to be the LNP seat of Currumbin, where the poll predicts a 50/50 tie between the LNP and Labor.
— Glenn Kefford (@GlennKefford) March 22, 2020
Of course we shouldn’t put too much weight on these small polls (run by uComms), but they do point towards some potentially interesting outcomes. A Labor gain in Currumbin from government would be a rare success, and One Nation overtaking the LNP in Bundamba would be a second embarrassment for the state opposition.
These should both be seats worth watching on Saturday night.
At present it still looks more likely than not that these elections will not be cancelled due to the virus. I’ll leave it to the health experts to assess the relative safety of that.
But I am curious how they will be able to count the votes, especially while enabling adequate scrutineering. Whilst I don’t especially put a lot of faith in this poll, if Currumbin is as close as it suggests, there will be a lot of keenness to have close scrutineering.
I don’t know how that can be done with necessary physical distancing – or even whether the ballot papers might need to be sterilised before handling/counting.
How long does the virus survive on paper? Maximum 3 days?
Perhaps they could just count a sample of ballots from each booth and wait to do a full count a while, closer to the postal deadline…
That way blow out results are quickly known and closer results get the heavy scrutineering in a safer way.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the candidates for the 2020 QLD State Election and thought I’d post some updates here:
Bundamba: The ALP MP is contesting, and it’s the same candidates for Greens and One Nation. LNP yet to confirm who their candidate is running in this seat.
Currumbin: The LNP MP is contesting, and it’s the same candidate for ALP but not Greens, who chose someone different. Interestingly, the Green candidate for the 2020 By-election is now contesting Gaven at the State Election.
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