A state election is due in Queensland in the first half of 2012. As part of the Tally Room coverage of this election I am currently producing a guide for that election.
This follows on from guides I have produced on the 2010 federal election, 2010 Victorian state election and 2011 New South Wales state election. I will be producing a guide for each individual electorate, including history, lists of candidates, previous results, booth breakdowns and a series of maps. It is also possible for readers to comment on individual seat profiles with corrections or information about how the campaign is going in that seat.
So far I have written guides for eight seats – the eight most marginal Labor seats in Queensland. I’m planning to prioritise writing guides for Labor marginal seats before eventually writing guides for all 89 electorates. I’ll also do some general writing on the election campaign. I’m hoping to have the entire guide finished before the end of 2011.
At the moment it appears that Anna Bligh’s Labor Party is headed towards defeat after being in government for all but two years since 1989, and winning eight elections in a row. Bligh succeeded former Premier Peter Beattie in 2007, and then won another term in office for the ALP in 2009. She will be facing off against the Liberal National Party, created by a merger of the National Party and Liberal Party before the 2009 election. The LNP is now led by former Lord Mayor of Brisbane Campbell Newman. The LNP has bucked Australian political tradition by selecting a leader who is not already a member of Parliament. If Campbell Newman is to become Premier, his party doesn’t only need to win a majority of seats in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, but he will need to win the Labor seat of Ashgrove off former Environment Minister Kate Jones.
There are two points about these profiles that I would like to draw your attention to. Firstly, the list of candidates for each seat is unclear. The LNP and Bob Katter’s new political party have both posted lists of announced candidates on their website but I can’t find any definitive list of which ALP MPs are running for re-election. So if you have a reference confirming that someone is running as a candidate please post as a comment and I will update the profile. It’s also worth noting that the Electoral Commission of Queensland does not provide two-party-preferred data per booth. Because of this it is not possible to produce booth breakdowns or booth maps based on 2PP figures, so these are all based on primary vote figures.
You can start reading the profiles right now here at The Tally Room. I plan on tweeting from @thetallyroom Twitter account with links to each seat profile, with two new seat profiles being posted to Twitter every weekday.
