Central – Brisbane 2024

I would expect Schrinner to remain Mayor with a decreased number of wards. Obviously the LNP would be the best choice for Brisbane (note this may sound biased coming from me, a Coalition voter), but I guess the inner-city is getting a bit too woke so they vote for the Greens (who end up preferencing Labor). If any wards fall to the Greens I would expect this one to be the most likely due to it being inner-city. Interestingly due to the Greens’ growing influence on inner-city Brisbane (where they won three seats in 2022 (two from the LNP, Brisbane and Ryan; and one from Labor, Griffith), possibly due to there being no teals), Labor’s dominance in Brisbane in general on the state level (where the LNP holds just five seats and the Greens hold two) and the LNP’s dominance on the local level (where they have a supermajority, Labor has just five of the 26 wards, the Greens have one which is The Gabba and then there’s the ex-LNP/now-independent-held ward of Tennyson), you can see that there are parts of Brisbane that are held by the Greens federally, Labor on the state level and the LNP on the local level and this is one of those places. Even though Pullenvale contains a lot of Ryan and looks almost exactly like Ryan, it would be a shock result for the Greens to win there (in fact I’m surprised they won Ryan due to it being such a big electorate in area, generally the bigger the area of the electorate the more likely it is to be Coalition-held; maybe the LNP will gain it back in a few years). Overall the council election should be interesting given all of those factors. The Brisbane LNP (Team Schrinner) seems to be more Moderate and knows what they’re doing like the NSW, SA and Tasmanian Liberals, not like the Victorian Liberals (or until recently the WA Liberals) that have literal faction wars (although so does state/federal Labor in many places and in some respects the federal Liberals).

Your general rule of thumb: “the bigger the area of the electorate the more likely it is to be Coalition-held” is only true if the area encompassed by the electorate is mostly all the same density. Coalition do well in low-density rural electorates where there are barely any pockets of urbanisation.

A division like Ryan however is stitched together with varying degrees of density. On Ryan’s eastern edge is the progressive and young (by median age) western-edge of Brisbane’s inner-circle which includes the University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus. Because this urban portion of Ryan is so dense (and populous), it accounts for the large majority of Ryan’s total enrollment. The remainder of Ryan is composed of affluent acreage estates at a much lower density. There are not enough numbers of enrolled voters in these low-density portions to eclipse its urban portion by enrollment. Another huge chunk of Ryan is not populated at all and is filled by reserves, national-parks and the Enoggera Resovoir. So its apparent size compared to other divisions is misleading, it includes of lot of area which is barely populated. There are quite a few divisions that are very urban in nature but have to be stitched together with adjacent uninhabited parks and reserves. You’ve got to zoom in and look granularly at divisions and the communities that compose them.

You’ve rightly identified though that Pullenvale is a tough win for the Greens. Pullenvale encompasses mostly the aforementioned lower density acreage suburbs and uninhabited parks and reserves of Ryan. Whereas Walter Taylor incorporates most of the urban and progressive portions of Ryan and is an almost certain pick up by the Greens on the Federal election numbers. Neighbouring Paddington was already close at the 2020 local elections and seems like a shoe-in too. Central is a tricky one because it incorporates some fairly affluent neighbourhoods; on Federal numbers though it looks strong for the Greens. All of this assumes that the same motivating factors that led a large plurarity of Brisbanites to flock to the Greens at the Federal election are going to apply in this local election context – it might not.

Agree SEQ Observer, this council election may play out in a similar manner to the NSW state election. Some suburbs (mainly riverside ones) such as New Farm are like some of the affluent inner northern suburbs of Sydney such as Mosman/Cammeray that still backed the Liberals at the state election, even though they supported teal candidates federally.

Many riverside suburbs in this seat could also be comparable to some of the affluent eastern suburbs of Sydney (such as Darling Point, Double Bay etc) which also had split results, supporting teal candidates federally but the Liberals for the state election.

@ Yoh An, agree with you i also feel that Teneriffe, New Farm can also be compared to East Melbourne, Albert Park etc which are bit higher density so not as strong for the Libs compared to Clayfield, Kew, Brighton etc

This repeated comparing of places in other parts of the country to suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne is becoming tiresome in my opinion. Different places are different, they have their own local cultures and concerns and can’t be reduced to mere demographics that can be assumed to value the same issues everywhere.

If one must make comparisons, don’t make them to places in Sydney and Melbourne, because they are large cosmopolitan cities with their own distinct subcultures, that can only really be compared to each other. By contrast, Brisbane is a sprawling, less populated, more homogeneous city, much more economically tied to the price of resources. Its best comparison is to Perth.

Fair point Wilson, Brisbane is most aligned to Perth or even Adelaide being considered second tier (type B) cities compared to Sydney and Melbourne.

I and some other commentators are only making these comments to aid understanding of potential vote patterns, given our familiarity with the places that we have grown up and spent most time in.

going by recent elections the eastern end of the ward really isn’t much of an lnp stronghold. they struggled to pull 40% PV in their absolute best booths at the federal election. mostly it’s more like low-mid 30s, sometimes less (they get slaughtered in bowen hills for whatever reason). if you map federal booth results onto this ward the lnp and greens get more or less the same PV,

and yes council and federal elections are very different, but the greens have proven that when they commit to winning in inner-city Brisbane, they tend to get the massive swings they need (8% in this case). They didn’t really try very hard in 2020, for obvious reasons (the Paddington team was maybe the one exception, I saw Donna Burns signs everywhere back then). All signs indicate to me that that isn’t the case in Central ward this time. They’ve already selected the candidate and already begun canvassing.

OPV could maybe be a problem if Labor are gunning for the seat too but I doubt it. I expect they’ll do what they did in Padddington in 2020, ie more or less run dead, let the Greens have their fun and save money for McConnel in October. Wouldn’t be surprised if Labor polls undder 20% this time.

still if there was gonna be an ‘upset’ where Greens underperform expectations and miss out on a seat they were supposed to win, it’ll be this one.

This seat is no contest beacuse Vicki Howard IS Central ward herself.

Everyone “is” their seat, until they’re not. A place like Brisbane CBD gets plenty of churn in residents, and new residents are less likely to have any attachment to an incumbent. Howard is vulnerable, given that Brisbane went to the Greens at the federal election and they’ve apparently already started campaigning here now.

Wilson, unless Vicki Howard is seen to be an outspoken figure in the LNP who sides more with Labor and the Greens. If that is the case, then she could be akin to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore who is adorned by the left but seen as a disrupter by the conservative side of politics.

Yoh An, that is definitely not the way I’d characterise Vicki Howard. She’s very much a lackey of Schrinner. LNP councillors who side with Labor and the Greens get pushed out of the party room very quickly, as happened to Nicole Johnston in Tennyson.

Because Brisbane City Council elections use OPV this seat is actually even safer LNP than it appears unless voting patterns change fairly significantly.

The exhaust rate was 11% in 2020 (and that’s basically entirely Labor 1st preferences). It’s hard to tell if the Greens defection rate would be similar because Vicki won outright in 2016 and 2012 (I would expect it to be less (because Greens voters are generally more used to their preferences mattering) but still quite high).

If you got the kind of conversion rate you’d expect from CPV, the LNP would still have won this seat under most scenarios in 2020 but it would be on a very small margin.

Would a Greens victory here in March forebode trouble for Grace Grace in McConnel in October? The area would have Greens at two levels of government, so they’d be a very known quantity to voters.

@Wilson, yes. But at the same time, depending on how deep their talent pool is in Brisbane, it might elect a highly electable talent into the council that could have otherwise been elected in the competitive and high-stakes division of McConnel. A good outcome for the Greens is that the local council ward race is very close, makes a lot of noise but falls just short. This race then builds the profile of the new candidate for McConnel.

Although if the Greens are confident in the depth of their talent pool, they would ideally hoping for back-to-back wins in Central Ward and McConnel. The win in Central will have the morale boosting effect and associated momentum that they can take into the state election. And then a win in McConnel would allow them to boast that they’re elected in Brisbane to all three levels of government.

SEQ Observer, interesting point. The Greens didn’t end up repeating a candidate between the council and state elections in 2020 in Central/McConnel, although their Central candidate last time, Trina Massey, now holds Jonathan Sriranganathan’s old seat of The Gabba. You’d imagine they’d be able to find someone competent other than Wendy Aghdam to run for McConnel. They could simply re-nominate Kirsten Lovejoy from the previous few elections if nobody new comes along, since she’d have some level of name recognition too.

Wouldn’t count the Greens out here despite the 7.8% LNP margin, though I think the LNP is the comfortable favorite. The reason why I’m not counting out the Greens is that they managed to win Ryan and Brisbane, so overturning 5-7% margins isn’t unheard of, though that was with the help of full preferential which they won’t have here. If the Greens can knock this over, I think it’s pretty likely they are having a good night and will be winning 3-5 other wards.

Lets not forget that the Central Ward had the lowest turnout amongst all of them with a little under 70% of electors due to covid-19, thats not the case this time as it will be much closer to 90% this election.

I think a lot of local voters have voted Greens in the past at various levels as a protest vote rather than a structural re-alignment. I live in this ward and can attest to how quickly the local area is changing. Am unconvinced newer residents will respond to the Brisbane Greens giving their left flank a crack with Jonathan Sri’s agenda. I suspect many are extrapolating too much from the Federal result a couple of years ago where Morrison was such a big factor. Vicki Howard is very active on the ground and I see this as a straight blue/green contest, with Labor a distant 3rd. Will be interesting to watch.

Thanks for the local perspective @Elise A, though I feel there is a fairly strong case for “structural re-alignment” towards the Greens as well. One sign of this is that the Green vote has been steadily increasing over the last decade in federal seats like Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith. For instance, in the seat of Brisbane, the Greens gained primary swings of 5.1% (2016), 2.9% (2019), and 4.9% (2022) to reach 27.2%. This demonstrates that the growth of the Greens was happening before Morrison was a big factor. Maybe he accelerated the trend, but I don’t think he was the root cause. This makes me think the Green vote of 2022 was not a one-off.

That is true @Greens Political Party Supporter, although it reflects the churn of progressive voters from Labor to the Greens that can be observed in inner city communities across the country. Federally in the seat of Brisbane, Labor’s primary vote was routinely in the mid-40’s in the 90’s and 00’s, but since 2010 that figure has continually declined to just 27% in 2022. The same trend was seen in this ward at a local govt level, with the Labor primary vote halving in Central from 48% in 2004 to 24% in 2020. My suspicion is that trend will continue this time around. I still think there is a strong protest vote element to a sizeable portion of Green support – these voters vote Green at both levels knowing there isn’t going to be a Green PM or a Green Lord Mayor.

Apparently in central an LNP councillor stall was giving out campaign material claiming the Greens wanted to “stop the stage three tax cuts” “defund the police” and “abolish the private health insurance rebate.” Not rlly sure what to make of this other than the LNP are clearly getting nervous about the Greens chances.

At this rate, next week they’ll be saying the Greens tripped Barnaby Joyce and made him fall on the sidewalk.

It does make a certain degree of sense if we go back to 2012ish when the Greens tended to focus less on actual council level stuff for council elections, so attacking them on that level would make sense but they’ve focused more on council stuff as council seats have become winnable as opposed to awareness raising opportunities for the Federal campaigns ( State wasn’t super viable until CPV was introduced in 2016 ).

I wouldn’t say that QLD parliament wasn’t super viable for the Greens until CPV – the NSW Greens have three seats after all, and OPV actually makes Greens/Labor 2CP contests easier to win for the Greens (unless the LNP preference the Greens ahead of Labor, which they have done at times), but it makes LNP/Greens 2CP contests harder. What has actually changed is that QLD Greens campaign strategy has become much more effective in the last decade, starting with Sriranganathan’s council campaign in 2016.

According to Antony Green, this ward has seen the third highest enrolment growth in BCC (+12.5%) since 2020 behind The Gabba (+14.7%) and Calamvale (+16.0%). When you couple this to the fact that there is a high percentage of renters in Central, the electorate is quite clearly quite transient. This means the concept of a personal vote seems less relevant here since it’s just harder to build one up and maintain. This makes me doubt the strength of Vicki Howard’s personal vote and whether it is such an insurmountable factor preventing a Green win.

There’s an argument that newer voters may have less time to acquaint themselves with local politics and therefore stick with the incumbent by default, and since many of them are younger are this is a local council election, that could be even more plausible. I don’t think so though. The Greens are promising to use what levers they can to prevent further rent hikes for a ward composed overwhelmingly of renters, and massively expand the city’s active transport network, which probably resonates with a ward like Central more than any other. Vicki Howard on the other hand is promising to… do nothing about rent while peddling some truly insane and desperate shite about how ‘radical and dangerous’ it is to put bike lanes on Ann St, for example, despite Schrinner’s own posturing as an active transport guy (ntm the irrelevant and hysterical non-council political fluff mentioned above). The Greens have been campaigning hard here for months. If Central doesn’t flip then it will be a disappointing result. Not that I can’t see Howard hanging on, as I said last year, but it will be very, very disappointing.

The Greens have a fantastic chance here, they can start winning from an 8% swing. Considering this ward has had a 12.5% growth in voters, that is very achievable.

The 12.5% represents the growth in new registered voters, there will also be people that have moved out of the ward since the 2020 election, so 12.5% is the floor for new voters in this ward. I’d estimate perhaps 20% of voters will be casting their vote in the ward for the first time. I don’t think there is much value in being an incumbent if such a large proportion of the voting population is choosing where to vote for you for the first time.

I think this is the 3rd most likely Green flip, and that there is a really high chance of this happening.

The DemosAU poll had a 7.5% swing to the Greens in inner and western suburbs. There are five wards in this general area that were LNP-Greens contests in 2020:

Paddington – 0.7% margin
Walter Taylor – 3.9%
Coorparoo – 5.7%
Central – 7.8%
Pullenvale – 9.9%

A uniform swing would deliver the first three to the Greens and make Central a very close contest indeed. Of course, the swing won’t be uniform in reality, but I would expect it to be lower in Pullenvale anyway, because Pullenvale is a combination of outer suburban and semi-rural areas, areas that often prefer the LNP to the Greens.

A lower than average swing in Pullenvale could mean a higher than average swing the other four wards. That would make Central a true toss-up, and a very interesting contest to watch on Saturday night.

@ Wilson

You can’t directly extrapolate a 2CP swing from the polled 3CP swings.

We would like to know the 3CP swing away from the LNP in the same seats to properly estimate. The Greens picking up Labor votes wouldn’t help them as much as picking up LNP votes.

Average 3CP for ‘Inner and Western Suburbs’ wards in 2020 (excluding Pullenvale and Tennyson for the obvious reasons):
LNP 46.4
ALP 27.4
GRN 26.2

From that then the Demos poll then gives an average 5% LNP to GRN 3CP swing (with Labor pretty much level) in ‘Inner and Western Suburbs’, with the obvious caveat that this includes their polling in Pullenvale and Tennyson which is likely useless.

Ben, perhaps we can’t, but the 3CP swings should be even more influential in the 2CP result under OPV due to preference exhaustion. Not all votes the Greens win from Labor would have flowed to them last time.

Anyway, it doesn’t sound like the LNP are going to have a significant gain in these wards at the expense of Labor, so I still stand by my view that Central is going to be a close contest.

Yes, assuming a uniform 3CP swing across that set of wards and last-election preference flows then Greens gain Paddington, Walter-Taylor, and Coorparoo, and Labor gains Enoggera. Greens would come close to winning Central and Labor would come close to winning Holland Park.

I’m not expecting uniform swings though.

I voted late morning at Holy Spirit in New Farm. I counted 6 LNP volunteers, 4-5 Greens and 3 Labor. The blue shirts kept energetically repeating “Just Vote One” as you walked through, which I suspect will stick with some people. I saw several people holding only Vicki’s HTV inside. On the way out I asked one of the Labor volunteers how they felt it was going and he shook his head and said “this isn’t a great booth for us”. Very unscientific and anecdotal but that’s all we have until the results start coming in.

Elise, I would say new farm is probably going to be the strongest booth and suburb for the lnp due to its relatively low density residential environment.

The greens and Labor will definitely poll better in the areas closer to the cbd, including fortitude Valley where most of the high rise developments are located.

Agreed Yoh An – it is probably the bluest part of the ward, although worth noting the LNP won the City Hall booth last time along with both New Farm booths and Spring Hill. I’m not sure the link between high density developments and lower LNP vote holds true anymore, particularly given the type of apartments going in along the river which are very expensive.

This Ward kind of summed up the problems the anti-LNP forces had in too many places.

Greens got a strong swing…..but almost all at the expense of Labor, with the LNP vote barely moving. So the Left just cannibalised themselves, and the LNP was able to remain near enough to 50% that they were in no danger of losing.