Barron River – Queensland 2024

ALP 3.1%

Incumbent MP
Craig Crawford, since 2015.

Geography
Far North Queensland. Barron River covers the northern suburbs of Cairns, including Smithfield, Redlynch and Kuranda. Most of the electorate lies in the Cairns local government area, with small parts contained in Douglas Shire.

History
The electorate of Barron River was first created for the 1972 election. At most elections this seat has been won by one of the parties who won the election.

Bill Wood won the seat for the ALP in 1972. He had previously sat as Member for Cook since 1969. He lost Barron River in 1974. He later served as a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly from 1989 to 2004.

Martin Tenni won Barron River for the National Party in 1974. He held the seat until 1989, when the seat was won by Lesley Clark of the ALP, as part of the Labor Party’s return to government after decades of conservative rule.

Clark lost to Lyn Warwick of the Liberal Party in 1995 before returning to the seat in 1998. She retired in 2006.

Steve Wettenhall was elected for the ALP in 2006. He was re-elected in 2009, and served as a parliamentary secretary from 2009 to 2012.

In 2012, LNP candidate Michael Trout defeated Wettenhall. Trout was felled in 2015 by Labor candidate Craig Crawford. Crawford was re-elected in 2017 and 2020.

Candidates

Assessment
Barron River is a marginal Labor seat.

2020 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Craig Crawford Labor 12,385 39.5 +6.0
Linda Cooper Liberal National 12,092 38.5 +7.9
Aaron Mcdonald Greens 4,134 13.2 +0.7
Susan Andrews One Nation 1,852 5.9 -10.9
Adam Rowe Informed Medical Options 575 1.8 +1.8
Jenny Brown United Australia 345 1.1 +1.1
Informal 1,059 3.3

2020 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Craig Crawford Labor 16,653 53.1 +1.2
Linda Cooper Liberal National 14,730 46.9 -1.2

Booth breakdown

Booths in Barron River have been divided into three areas: centre, north and south.

Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in two out of three areas, with 58.8% in the centre and 59% in the north. The LNP polled 52.1% in the south.

The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 12.3% in the south to 17.6% in the north.

Voter group GRN prim % ALP 2PP % Total votes % of votes
North 17.6 59.0 5,866 18.7
South 12.3 47.9 2,641 8.4
Central 17.0 58.8 1,851 5.9
Pre-poll 11.1 50.2 13,668 43.6
Other votes 12.8 54.1 7,357 23.4

Election results in Barron River at the 2020 Queensland state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal National Party and the Greens.

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62 COMMENTS

  1. This has voted for a government MP since 1974 (if you count 1995 as a Coalition victory), I can’t see this changing in 2024.

    Whoever wins here should be sitting on the government benches, as to which party, ask me in a year.

  2. Crawford should have built up a good profile now as a minister, and (since Pitt’s absence of leave) the most senior ALP figure in Far North Queensland. Having said that, Barron River is historically a bellweather and if the LNP can find the right candidate, this will be one to watch.

  6. @NQ View
    Surely him retiring makes it harder for Labor to retain the seat?
    This seat is a bellwether, so if Labor does not hold, they are likely losing 13 other seats!

  8. Massive prepoll here last time which is why the LNP only won in the south and at Clifton Beach. The LNP came close to winning the prepolls.

  9. LNP TPP in Barron River/Leichhardt, federal vs state:

    Caravonica: 51.06% vs 48.94%
    Clifton Beach: 59.30% vs 52.20%
    Freshwater: 48.70% vs 50.21%
    Holloways Beach: 48.29% vs 35.86%
    Kewarra Beach: 56.98% vs 43.31%
    Kuranda: 42.60% vs 28.79%
    Machans Beach: 37.43% 32.22%
    Redlynch: 50.45% vs 53.91%
    Smithfield: 42.75% vs 41.89%
    Stratford: 45.88% vs 49.24%
    Trinity Beach: 49.81% vs 43.63%
    Yorkeys Knob: 47.30% vs 38.14%

    So the LNP performed better at the 2022 federal election than at the 2022 state election in all but three booths in this seat. Those three booths were located in the suburbs of Freshwater, Redlynch and Stratford.

    The federal LNP won two booths that state Labor won (Caravonica and Kewarra Beach), while the state LNP won one booth that federal Labor won (Freshwater). However, although there is a gap between federal/state TPP (with the size of the gap varying by booth), every other booth was won by the same party on the federal and state level.

  12. Bree James is running a very effective social media campaign and is the exact person the LNP would need to win and defend a seat like Barron River. As a bellwether seat, I can’t see how Labor holds onto it this time.

    Craig seems to have been a good local MP, but when the tide turns, this seat falls quickly.

  14. Agree with PRP and Nether Portal about this. Bree is a star in the making but will most likely have to focus on holding this rather than Ministerial work. Maybe she gets an assistant Ministry.

  16. @LNP CRH honestly I think it will be something like 60% LNP TPP or at least like 57% LNP TPP. Labor risks being reduced to just 12 seats.

    My prediction is that 2024 won’t be a massive landslide reducing the opposition to less than a full soccer/cricket team but then loses power to the same opposition after just one term (even though Labor only won a minority in 2015 and the LNP had the highest primary vote, Labor still had a higher TPP and a higher seat total than any other party). I think it’ll be more like NSW in 2011: a long-serving Labor government finally loses to a Coalition opposition in a landslide with a massive swing statewide endangering many seats that were once safe and potentially changing the electoral landscape. Think about it: NSW Labor won’t ever get Bathurst back, the Liberals still hold Drummoyne, Ryde and Winston Hills, albeit marginally (the former was usually a safe Labor seat), and Western Sydney changed from being a Labor heartland to the number-one battleground region (more so than the Central Coast).

  17. Np…. depends on who is the younger of us .. but I think to say Labor will never ever win Bathurst again is an overstatement. I cannot see Mr Toole being defeated but if he not the candidate things change. In gauging this look at the figures for Calare esp if Mr Gee contests as an independent

  18. This is the Greens’ strongest seat outside SEQ and yet it’s one of the electorates they still don’t have a candidate for, in the same box as the likes of Warrego and Gregory. Meanwhile Mackay is one of their weakest seats in the state and they’ve had a candidate ready for weeks. You’d think now would be as good an election as any to try and take a bite out of the already nosediving Labor primary vote.

  19. Greens are focusing all their resources and energy on winnable seats in Brisbane. Assuming beyond that it’s all about what the local branches want to do. It’s also bad optics to target a Labor held ultra marginal vs Liberals – Greens don’t want their fingerprints on any Labor losses to LNP (one of the reasons they may be sleeping on Ferny Grove)

  23. My interim redistribution proposal for the two Cairns seats:

    * Barron River: removes Kuranda to become solely based in the Northern Suburbs of Cairns
    * Cairns: unchanged

    Redistributed results for Barron River (2020):

    First preferences:
    * Labor: 39.5%
    * LNP: 39.4%
    * Greens: 12.6%
    * One Nation: 5.9%
    * IMOP: 1.6%
    * UAP: 1.1%

    TPP:
    * Labor: 52.3%
    * LNP: 47.7%

    If you get rid of the Kuranda voters who prepolled the LNP would certainly finish first on first preferences and may have even won the seat.

  25. @Doug that’s not why it has a high Greens vote though because Indigenous people usually don’t vote Greens.

  26. Response to Mick and NP – I believe Bathurst is like Toowoomba North, a seat that was once Labor held but now almost impossible to recover as Labor never managed to win Toowoomba North in the three elections since losing it in 2012.

  28. @Nether Portal I agree, Kuranda is a hippie town, kind of like Maleny or Tamborine Mountain, with a high Green vote.

    Machans Beach has a very high Green vote too, but I don’t know too much about its demographics.

  29. i agree with Yoh an about Bathurst it is a bit like Morwell in Victoria both areas are trending rightwards with demographic change namely the decline of Coal. I personally also think as Nether Portal said some areas like Burleigh and Currumbin will become better for the LNP as they gentrify and property values rise.

  31. @Caleb she quoted someone else saying a word that in some contexts can be racist. She wasn’t actually being racist and calling someone a racial slur.

  32. In regards to redistribution my plan is to remove the parts of Mareeba from both hill and Barron River into cook and then move traegar into the southern parts of Mareeba

    Cairns and mulgrave can remain unchanged

  34. I was curious as to how preferences have helped Labor win and hold Barron River since 2012.

    In 2012, the ALP vote collapsed from 43% to 28%. The LNP rose from 43% to 46%. Preferences went 55-45 to the ALP but the LNP won handily.

    In 2015, Labor recovered to 39% but still trailed the LNP (41%). Preferences split 80-20 to the ALP (the only other two candidates were the Greens and Palmer). It appeared that most of the Palmer vote evaporated in the OPV system.

    Labor consolidated their hold on the seat in 2017 and 2020 despite not breaking the 40% primary barrier. The LNP bottomed out at 30% in 2017, and recovered to be virtually on par with the ALP in 2020. Labor won the preference battle 62-38 in 2020 despite the presence of One Nation, Informed Medical Opinions, and United Australia on the ballot.

    Preferences since 2012 have always broken towards Labor, by an average of 62-38 across four elections. Over the same time period, an average of 26% of Barron River voters have selected a minor party as their first choice.

    This is a foolish task, but if we apply the largest swing to the LNP, the largest swing against Labor, and split the preferences by the weakest flow to Labor (based on all elections since and including 2012), and apply it to the 2020 result, we end up with this result: LNP 60.83-39.17 on 2PP, 46-24 on primaries. This appears to be the absolute best possible result for the LNP based on historical results, slightly better than their 2012 Newman landslide result.

  36. I am starting to wonder if this seat could have had a Braitling-like situation (albeit at a lower magnitude), not at all saving this seat for Labor, but possibly keeping it a marginal LNP win than a landslide LNP win here. This seat is (as others have mentioned) the strongest Green seat outside SEQ and the primary vote is not much different to Bulimba. That said, even if it was possible, I assume it is too late for this now.

    I think the same story applies in Cook’s southern parts. I am already assuming its northern parts will act similarly to NT’s remote seats.

  37. @Leon this is the most conservative part of Cairns. The Greens could come second but I don’t think they will to be honest.

    The thing that makes the Greens vote so high here is Kuranda which is a hippie town, while the thing that makes the Greens vote so high in Braitling is the university.

  41. @Mick Quinlivan KAP can’t win this. This is a middle-class urban seat with lots of affluent beachside suburbs in northern Cairns, plus the Cairns metropolitan area is quite CALD for a regional city.

  42. A 19% swing, either 2PP or primary, seems quite large. The 2012 election had three or four seats swinging by that much and two of them had retiring Labor members.

    We can agree that KAP will split votes and take a chunk out of ALP’s vote. I’m tipping KAP beats One Nation but it’s hard to say who will come third, KAP or Greens.

  43. For the past three elections Barron River has been pencilled in as an LNP gain. Fourth time lucky, but a 19% swing is fanciful.

  45. Yeah. It’s one thing to laugh off corflute vandalism, another thing altogether to turn it into a social media post celebrating your German heritage.

    Doubt it shifts many votes though, to be honest.

  46. It was an incredibly stupid thing to do on the eve of an election that you are the favourite to win. Trust the LNP to shoot themselves in the foot at the last minute, but I agree it probably won’t affect the outcome.

    Crisafulli should urgently msg all his candidates and tell them to stick to the script. With one week to go and on the cusp of victory these guys can’t afford to stuff up now. What an idiot this woman was.

  47. The lnp has not vetted a lot of candidates properly. Don’t know if what happened will shift many votes. but this was the third Cairns based seat and the most likely to change sides.
    This has left a windows (a small one) for Labor to retain all 3 Cairns seats
    and given some people the idea that maybe the lnp are not up to the job
    This could impact on other close seats.

  48. @Mick Quinlivan this will have zero effect on the results. There’s no way Labor are winning this, it’s such a marginal seat and the swing is huge. If it weren’t for COVID then Labor would’ve lost it last time for sure.

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