Council margin – LNP 13.5%
Mayoral margin – LNP 11.5%
Incumbent councillor
Steven Huang, since 2011.
Geography
South-eastern Brisbane. MacGregor covers the suburbs of Eight Mile Plains, Macgregor, Robertson, Upper Mount Gravatt and Wishart.
History
Labor candidate Gail MacPherson won Runcorn ward in 1994. She was re-elected in Runcorn in 1997, 2000 and 2004. Her margin at the 2004 election was a very slim 2.2%.
The 2008 redistribution split the Runcorn ward between the new wards of Karawatha and MacGregor.
The new MacGregor took in parts of Wishart, and sitting Wishart Liberal councillor Graham Quirk shifted to MacGregor. Quirk had been sitting on the council since 1995.
Quirk increased the Liberal margin from 7.9% to 21.1% at the 2008 election, and became deputy mayor as part of the Liberal Party gaining a majority on the council.
Graham Quirk became Lord Mayor in early 2011, after Campbell Newman resigned from the mayoralty to take up the state leadership of the Liberal National Party. Quirk was re-elected in 2012 and 2016, before retiring in 2019.
Quirk was replaced as councillor for MacGregor by the LNP’s Steven Huang in April 2011, and Huang was re-elected to a full term in 2012. He was re-elected in 2016 and 2020.
- Ashwina Gotame (Labor)
- Brent Tideswell (Greens)
- Steven Huang (Liberal National)
Assessment
MacGregor is a safe LNP ward.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Steven Huang | Liberal National | 13,345 | 59.4 | +0.4 |
| Trent Mctiernan | Labor | 6,460 | 28.8 | -0.1 |
| Sean Womersley | Greens | 2,666 | 11.9 | -0.3 |
| Informal | 630 | 2.7 |
2020 council two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Steven Huang | Liberal National | 13,588 | 64.1 | +0.4 |
| Trent Mctiernan | Labor | 7,603 | 35.9 | -0.4 |
| Exhausted | 1,280 | 5.7 |
2020 mayoral result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Adrian Schrinner | Liberal National | 12,786 | 54.6 | -8.5 |
| Pat Condren | Labor | 6,823 | 29.1 | +2.7 |
| Kath Angus | Greens | 2,183 | 9.3 | +2.6 |
| Karagh-Mae Kelly | Animal Justice | 778 | 3.3 | +3.3 |
| Jeff Hodges | Motorists Party | 238 | 1.0 | +1.0 |
| John Dobinson | Independent | 214 | 0.9 | +0.9 |
| Frank Jordan | Independent | 208 | 0.9 | +0.9 |
| Ben Gorringe | Independent | 101 | 0.4 | +0.4 |
| Jarrod Wirth | Independent | 82 | 0.4 | -0.1 |
| Informal | 684 | 2.8 |
2020 mayoral two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Adrian Schrinner | Liberal National | 13,330 | 63.1 | +6.3 |
| Pat Condren | Labor | 7,802 | 36.9 | -6.3 |
| Exhausted | 4,198 | 16.6 |
Booths in MacGregor have been divided into three parts: north, south and west.
The Liberal National Party won the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 53.6% in the north to 62.0% in the west.
| Voter group | GRN prim council | LNP 2PP council | LNP 2PP mayoral | Total votes | % of votes |
| North | 15.6 | 53.6 | 55.3 | 2,219 | 9.9 |
| South | 12.8 | 61.8 | 62.5 | 1,488 | 6.6 |
| West | 15.4 | 62.0 | 58.6 | 1,136 | 5.1 |
| Postal | 9.1 | 71.2 | 70.8 | 6,534 | 29.1 |
| Other votes | 13.9 | 60.3 | 53.7 | 6,305 | 28.1 |
| Pre-poll | 10.1 | 65.3 | 60.8 | 4,789 | 21.3 |
Council election results in MacGregor at the 2020 Brisbane City Council election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, Labor and the Greens.
Mayoral election results in MacGregor at the 2020 Brisbane City Council election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, Labor and the Greens.
One of the few seats, might be the only actually, where the sitting LNP councillor has a notably higher margin than the mayoral margin, indicating a strong personal vote for Steven Huang.
Huang may have a personal vote, but it only stretches so far. It didn’t really help him in the 2022 federal election when he ran for Moreton. He only won one booth on 2PP in the area covered by Macgregor ward, that being Robertson, a small booth in a wealthy area, and his 2PP margin there was only 0.2%. This was 15% below his margin in the Robertson booth at the last council election.
The conclusion I draw is that any benefit to Huang from a personal vote was swamped in the other direction by his party annoying the Chinese Australian community with their bellicose rhetoric against the Chinese government. It’s worth noting that Huang is Taiwanese rather than Mainland Chinese, which might have hurt his ability to counteract that effect.
Perhaps Huang’s personal vote is more advantageous at council level where there is no foreign policy debate making things difficult for him.
I’d be cautious about using those mayoral figures – the special votes for the mayoral election weren’t properly distributed to the correct wards.