Council margin – LNP 3.9% vs GRN
Mayoral margin – LNP 12.8%
Incumbent councillor
Penny Wolff, since 2023.
Geography
Western Brisbane. Walter Taylor covers suburbs on the northern shore of the Brisbane River to the west of the Brisbane city centre, including Indooroopilly, Toowong, St Lucia, Fig Tree Pocket and Taringa.
Walter Taylor ward is a traditional safe Liberal ward, and was won in 2000 by Liberal candidate Jane Prentice.
Prentice was re-elected in 2004 and 2008, building her margin up to 18.9% in 2004 and 21% in 2008.
In 2010, Prentice resigned to run for the federal seat of Ryan, which she won. She has since been re-elected in 2013 and now serves as an Assistant Minister in the Turnbull government.
The 2010 by-election was won by LNP candidate Julian Simmonds. In 2012, he was re-elected with a 21.9% margin over the Greens, who outpolled Labor. Simmonds challenged Jane Prentice for the federal seat of Ryan prior to the 2019 federal election, and thus resigned from Walter Taylor to run successfully at the federal election.
Simmonds was succeeded in Walter Taylor in 2019 by James Mackay, appointed by the LNP to fill the casual vacancy. Mackay won a full term in 2020.
Mackay retired in late 2023, and his seat was filled by Penny Wolff by appointment.
- Penny Wolff (Liberal National)
- Michaela Sargent (Greens)
- Rebecca Hack (Labor)
Assessment
This ward is very marginal, and the LNP again goes into the election without a full-term incumbent.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| James Mackay | Liberal National | 10,957 | 46.9 | -12.8 |
| Michaela Sargent | Greens | 8,147 | 34.9 | +12.0 |
| Karthika Raghwan | Labor | 3,582 | 15.3 | -2.1 |
| Matt Antoniolli | Independent | 684 | 2.9 | +2.9 |
| Informal | 412 | 1.7 |
2020 council two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| James Mackay | Liberal National | 11,439 | 53.9 | -12.6 |
| Michaela Sargent | Greens | 9,766 | 46.1 | +12.6 |
| Exhausted | 2,165 | 9.3 |
2020 mayoral result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Adrian Schrinner | Liberal National | 14,242 | 51.0 | -8.4 |
| Kath Angus | Greens | 7,332 | 26.2 | +9.9 |
| Pat Condren | Labor | 5,271 | 18.9 | -2.3 |
| Karagh-Mae Kelly | Animal Justice | 554 | 2.0 | +2.0 |
| Jeff Hodges | Motorists Party | 168 | 0.6 | +0.6 |
| Frank Jordan | Independent | 128 | 0.5 | +0.5 |
| John Dobinson | Independent | 92 | 0.3 | +0.3 |
| Jarrod Wirth | Independent | 86 | 0.3 | -0.1 |
| Ben Gorringe | Independent | 77 | 0.3 | +0.3 |
| Informal | 487 | 1.7 |
2020 mayoral two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Adrian Schrinner | Liberal National | 14,917 | 62.8 | -4.2 |
| Pat Condren | Labor | 8,830 | 37.2 | +4.2 |
| Exhausted | 4,203 | 15.0 |
Booths in Walter Taylor have been divided into three parts: central, east and west.
The Liberal National Party narrowly won a large majority of the council two-candidate-preferred count in the west, while the Greens won narrower majorities in the east and centre. The LNP really won the seat on the back of strong performances on pre-poll and postal votes.
| Voter group | ALP prim council | LNP 2CP council | LNP 2PP mayoral | Total votes | % of votes |
| East | 17.9 | 46.8 | 54.5 | 2,925 | 12.5 |
| Central | 17.2 | 49.2 | 58.5 | 1,994 | 8.5 |
| West | 14.4 | 60.9 | 68.6 | 1,278 | 5.5 |
| Pre-poll | 15.1 | 55.0 | 63.9 | 8,786 | 37.6 |
| Postal | 12.7 | 58.2 | 65.8 | 6,218 | 26.6 |
| Other votes | 19.3 | 47.0 | 47.0 | 2,169 | 9.3 |
Council election results in Walter Taylor at the 2020 Brisbane City Council election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Liberal National Party vs Greens) and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, the Greens and Labor.
Mayoral election results in Walter Taylor at the 2020 Brisbane City Council election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, the Greens and Labor.
definitely feeling a green gain here, along with paddington. the lack of an incumbent and very small existing margin does not spell well for the LNP in an area the greens did very well on both the federal and state level. greens floor for this election should be 3 seats, no excuses for losing this or paddington. the ceiling meanwhile could even be eclipsing labor and becoming the larger opposition party (gains of central, coorparoo, enoggera, possibly holland park? the gap? pullenvale? even morningside?).
How the actual f*ck did the LNP win the mayoral TPP in Indooroopilly if the Greens had the highest primary vote? Is this an error or did Labor preferences heavily flow to the LNP here?
Yeah I’m looking at the booth results around this ward and it appears that Labor voters put the LNP second on the lord mayoral ballot. Interesting. I know Schrinner’s a popular Lord Mayor but I thought Labor voters would’ve put the Greens second. Greens preferences are obviously flowing to Labor over the Coalition in every case scenario in history, so it appears that Labor voters in BCC prefer Schrinner over the Greens.
Because the mayor is ALP vs Lib not Lib vs GRN. And it is the greens votes who are being distributed.
The mayoral TPP count is Labor vs LNP, not Greens vs LNP. Labor preferences weren’t distributed. In the Indooroopilly booth, the reason why the LNP ended up ahead on the TPP there seems to be that with the Greens and LNP primaries being close and Labor having a low primary, a significant amount of Greens primary votes exhausting meant that the Greens preferences weren’t quite enough for Labor to get ahead in that booth.
Compare this to Taringa, where the Greens primary for mayor is much further ahead of the LNP mayoral primary, so even with a lot of votes exhausting the Greens preference flow is enough for Labor to end up ahead on TPP.
Which would mean this ward’s/Indooroopilly’s voters really are teal/blue-green voters. Something I thought the Greens would have a harder time winning under Bandt, but perhaps not given the continued strength of Greens in this area.
Schrinner generally outperformed the LNP council candidate in wards where the Greens made it to the TPP (though in some cases it was just due to more votes exhausting and he had a lower absolute vote), and the Greens generally underperformed in the mayoral race compared to their council candidate in wards where they did well. I’d just attribute that to the Greens not really being considered a serious contender for Mayor at all last election and not having put resources towards that. The dynamic is certainly different this election so I don’t expect those gaps to be as big in their target wards.
It should affect the primary and 2PP equally, but bear in mind that absent votes for mayor were counted at the booth where they were recorded, rather than being returned to the correct ward and counted as special votes. So the booth results in Walter Taylor would include voters from other wards.
Hang on I think the problem here, Nether Portal, is that you’re interpreting the mayoral 2PP as LNP vs Greens when it was actually LNP vs Labor. It was LNP vs Labor everywhere because it was all one big election.
So in Indooroopilly, the LNP had 35.3% of the primary and Labor had 19.8%. That’s a 15.5% primary vote lead. The LNP ended up winning 50.8-49.2, so Labor made up a lot of ground on preferences.
In raw numbers, Schrinner started with 196 votes and ended up with 223, and Labor started with 110 and ended up with 216. 116 votes exhausted. 249 votes were cast for candidates other than the ALP or LNP, 83% of which were Greens votes.
Of those 249 votes, 116 exhausted (46.6%), 106 went to Labor (42.6%) and 27 went to the LNP (10.8%).
Which once you factor in that this includes a number of non-Greens independents, Motorists Party and AJP, those preference flows are pretty similar to the ones I identified in my previous post, so this does actually make sense. If you come a distant third you’re not going to win the 2PP in an OPV system, even if you get a lot more preferences than the other major party.
BTW all those raw numbers can be found in my BCC-2020 data repo folder which is available for everyone to access.
Forgot about exhaust. I retract my earlier comment – pretty strong Green-ALP flows
“Which would mean this ward’s/Indooroopilly’s voters really are teal/blue-green voters.”
I’m sure a few of them are, but I think the preference flows are consistent with them being pretty ordinary Greens voters in an OPV system.
I find it difficult to find comparable suburbs in Sydney or even Melbourne (relative to things in this ward like St Lucia, Indooroopilly and Taringa).
I suppose Brisbane suburbs are very rarely comparable to Sydney ones due to the latter’s overt wealth stratification, but I still *think* i had a better try with some of the other suburbs (e.g. Sunnybank = Hurstville, Paddington = Paddington, West End = Newtown, Most of Pullenvale Ward/State Moggill = Berowra/Asquith)
Many Labor voters in Walter Taylor have refused to vote Green, whatever the preference card. A senior ALP campaigner told me Brisbane would be bankrupt in 6 months under the Greens.