Sandgate – QLD 2017

ALP 10.1%

Incumbent MP
Stirling Hinchliffe, since 2015.

Geography
Northern edge of the City of Brisbane. Sandgate covers the Brisbane suburbs of Bracken Ridge, Deagon, Shorncliffe, Sandgate, Brighton, Taigum, Fitzgibbon and parts of Bald Hills.

Redistribution
Sandgate expanded slightly west, taking in a larger part of Bald Hills from Aspley. This change did not affect the seat’s margin.

History
The seat of Sandgate has existed since 1923, and has been won by Labor at all but one election since 1960.

Harold Dean won the seat off the Liberal Party in 1960. He held the seat until his retirement in 1977.

Nev Warburton won the seat in 1977. He became Leader of the ALP in 1984, and led the party into the 1986 election. He continued as leader until 1988, when he was replaced by Wayne Goss.

When the ALP won power in 1989, and Warburton served as a minister until he retired in 1992.

Gordon Nuttall won the seat in 1992. He became a minister in the Beattie government in 2001 and served in the ministry until 2005. In 2005, he was investigated for giving a false answer to a Parliamentary committee. He retired in 2006, and resigned from the party shortly before the election, facing the prospect of expulsion.

Nuttall was later convicted of numerous corruption charges in 2009 and 2010, and is serving a seven-year prison sentence.

Vicky Darling held Sandgate for two terms from 2006 to 2012, and served as a minister from 2011 to 2012.

In 2012, Darling was defeated by LNP candidate Kerry Millard. Millard held the seat for one term, losing in 2015 to Labor’s Stirling Hinchliffe.

Candidates

Assessment
Sandgate is a safe Labor seat.

2015 election result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Stirling Hinchliffe Labor 14,802 49.7 +12.1 49.5
Kerry Millard Liberal National 10,967 36.9 -6.9 37.1
John Harbison Greens 3,033 10.2 +1.2 10.3
Hamish Gray Independent 959 3.2 +1.6 3.1
Informal 580 1.9

2015 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Stirling Hinchliffe Labor 17,262 60.1 +13.0 60.1
Kerry Millard Liberal National 11,462 39.9 -13.0 39.9
Exhausted 1,037 3.5

Booth breakdown

Booths in Sandgate have been divided into three areas: north-east, south-east and west. The west makes up a majority of the seat’s population.

The ALP won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 60% in the west to 62% in the north-east.

The Greens came third, with a vote ranging from 8.9% in the west to 14.3% in the south-east.

Voter group GRN prim % ALP 2PP % Total votes % of votes
West 8.9 60.1 11,282 36.6
South-East 14.3 61.2 4,589 14.9
North-East 11.8 62.1 3,996 13.0
Other votes 9.5 58.2 10,956 35.5

Election results in Sandgate at the 2015 QLD state election
Click on the ‘visible layers’ box to toggle between two-party-preferred votes and Greens primary votes.

16 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting to see Sportsbet have One Nation as the second fave in this seat at 5 dollars. Anyone know why that may be? Labor are no chance of losing Sandgate this time but could we see a Lab v PHON contest?

  2. PHON would surely be a distant third on primary votes, regardless of the absence of an LNP candidate in the field.

    Strange that the LNP haven’t picked someone for Sandgate, considering the sitting MP was front and centre of the RailFail issue and resigned as Transport Minister.

    Labor will easily hold this seat nonetheless.

  3. The margin does seem too much, but we saw a bigger swing here last election.

    You would think a rail fail attack on this and Nudgee may have led to a big swing.

    That really has to be sustained over a long period of time.

    That could have made it interesting. Pity that has not happened and there is no candidate.

  4. This will be a two horse race with One Nation and Labor Greens consistently poll around 10% and will not get much more than that here…One Nation will get upwards of 20%….The ON candidate is a popular long term local within the electorate…They have done some serious groundwork here in this seat and have been campaigning all this year…

  5. Labor have failed the seat of Sandgate. They take the voters for granted a had to Parachute the ex Stafford MP into the seat just to prolong his career.
    With the rail fail debarcle and the devastation of the Taxi industry by allowing unregulated ride sharing, all the doing of the current member, there is little wonder voters are leaving in droves.
    Sandgate has been a forgotten seat by to many faceless politicians with there snouts in the troff forgetting the people they represent.
    Time for a Local For Locals, who will be there to serve the Sandgate electorate.

  7. Think there will be a definite swing here not enough to knock the sitting MP off but definitely will now rely heavily on Greens Preferences to get across the line. Pre-Poll voters this week have noticeably been very anti-the current sitting member he is on the nose big time here.

  8. I think the LNP made a big mistake not getting a candidate here earlier to build profile. The rail fail resonates strongly here and the member is very tainted by it. There was an opportunity for a big swing.

    Btw candidate list on this page is rocky’s not sandgate’s.

  10. I expect a decent drop in Labor primary here but One Nation splitting the vote and leaking preferences puts this beyond the LNP.

  11. Just want to point this out, Margaret Strelow is incorrectly listed as an LNP candidate in this electorate of Sandgate, Miss Margaret Strelow is, in fact, running as an independent in Rockhampton please correct accordingly.

  14. Certainly not by the current that’s for sure. Expect a decent swing against Labor but they can usually scrape over the line here in even bad years (2012 was just a rare occurrence)

  15. I think the Demographics have changed in Sandgate especially with the Fitzgibbon Development on its outskirts…I think getting the top of the ballot has been critical for Labor here…

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