If Campbell Newman loses in Ashgrove, which one of these three will become premier? (From left to right: Campbell Newman, Jeff Seeney, Tim Nicholls, Lawrence Springborg.) Credit to the Liberal National Party.
In this year's Queensland state election it is not whether the Liberal National Party (LNP) will win government, it is how large of a win the LNP will have on election night and whether or not LNP leader and former Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman will win the seat of Ashgrove and enter parliament and the premier's office.
Up to a couple of days, Newman was tipped to win Ashgrove and defeat the sitting Labor incumbent, Kate Jones.
There were several problems with Newman running in Ashgrove though. The first was that Ashgrove was a relatively safe seat for Labor, having a margin of 7.1% and held by Labor since 1989. In addition, Newman was not facing your ordinary Labor backbencher, he was facing off against Kate Jones who is very popular in the electorate. If anyone could beat Campbell Newman, it was Kate Jones.
And if Newman lost in Ashgrove while the LNP won government, the LNP would be facing the very uncomfortable question to who would become premier. Up to a couple of days ago Newman would at the worst pull out a narrow win in Ashgrove and the LNP didn't have to wrestle with that nightmare scenario. Unfortunately with the release of ReachTEL's monthly Ashgrove poll, the LNP has to grapple with that question again...
FYI:
1) ALP = Australian Labor Party
2) LNP = Liberal National Party
3) Two Party Preferred/IRV = Top two parties in the vote count after preferences from the other candidates on the ballot have either been distributed or exhausted.
ReachTEL. 3/6. 742 voters. MoE ±3.5% (2/9 results):
Primary vote:
Campbell Newman (LNP): 45.4 (49.2)
Kate Jones (ALP-Inc): 44.4 (41.0)
Sandra Bayley (The Greens): 5.5 (5.7)
Norman Wicks (Katter's Australian Party): 2.8 (1.3)
Ian Nelson (One Nation): 0.3 (0.7)
Any other candidate: 1.6 (2.1)
Two party preferred:
Kate Jones (ALP-Inc): 50.7
Campbell Newman (LNP): 49.3
Author's Note: Before I go on and analyze the poll results, I am obliged to inform you that ReachTEL's polls are done strictly by robocalling. While this method is common place here in the states, polling companies such as Galaxy, Nielsen, and Newspoll use live interviewers for their polling.
Since this is the first time robocalling has been used to poll voters in Australia, there are some questions about whether or not the results are correct.
Though Antony Green, one of the best election analysts in Australia has noted the only concern in ReachTEL's polling was that in previous polling, their two party preferred figures was not derived from traditional methods and was inaccurate. ReachTEL has addressed these concerns and has derived their two party preferred figures in this poll from traditional methods.
More on the analysis of ReachTEL's polling here and here.
Now onto analyzing the poll results...
One of the reasons why the LNP was confident that Newman would win Ashgrove, is because while a majority of voters in the seat have voted for Labor in state elections since 1989 (though the seat was nearly lost in the 1995 state election which saw Labor take heavy loses in Brisbane), these same voters have voted LNP for everything else in recent years as shown by the table below.
LNP vote in Ashgrove for the Federal and local elections.
Note: In 2004 and 2008, Campbell Newman was the LNP candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane. Credit to Antony Green.
Not only had the LNP carried the seat during the last two local elections and the last Federal election, but when faced with the choice of either having a Premier as their local representative (Newman) or a opposition backbencher (Jones), voters in Ashgrove obviously would of backed Newman.
Of course the one hitch in the LNP's plans was Newman's opponent Kate Jones. As noted in the intro, Jones is a very popular MP with deep ties in the electorate having lived her entire life in Ashgrove. If anyone could beat Newman, it was Jones and Labor's game plan to get her reelected involved hyper localizing the campaign (to the point many of Jones' campaign signs and mailers are devoid of any references to Labor) and bringing down Newman's favorables like how Mitt Romney has done to Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum for the past couple of months.
To that end, Jones stepped down from her post as Environmental Minister to focus solely campaigning in Ashgrove. A smart move seeing how Newman would be forced to campaign all over the state for his fellow LNP candidates.
The party has also brought in its heavy hitting surrogates into the electorate. With Premier Anna Bligh, former PM Kevin Rudd, and Maxine McKew, the woman who defeated PM John Howard in his own seat of Bennelong during the 2007 Federal election all campaigning for Jones in the electorate.
Labor has also been airing multiple ads attacking Newman's finances and a potential conflict of interest surrounding his time as Lord Mayor and a company owned by his wife's family. The party also has on the air an ad featuring Ashgrove voters saying why Jones should be reelected.
Labor's laser focus on Newman's finances is probably the reason why his poll numbers have sunken in Ashgrove. Unfortunately for Newman, he didn't help himself by waiting 11 days to adequately respond to Labor's attacks. In fact when the first Labor attack ads hit the airwaves Newman's response was to talk about how his friend's dog eat the homework and the hamster...
And worst off for Newman, a poll done by Galaxy Research for the Courier Mail was release a couple of days ago confirming that Newman's lead has evaporated and Jones has moved into the lead in Ashgrove.
In conclusion, the last two weeks of the campaign in Ashgrove is bound to get more negative and more nasty. The LNP has already bused in residents from Cape York to complain about how Kate Jones as environment minister has caused harm to their lives. And it's certainly possible that the LNP will attempt to destroy Kate Jones with a avalanche of attack ads in the coming weeks. Jones has already been the target of attack mailers including one homophobic mailer attacking her for voting for civil unions.
Unfortunately the biggest losers in all of this is Ashgrove residents who are being bombarded by both sides on TV, the mail and even at the grocery store. Many residents have chosen to shop outside the electorate in order to escape being harassed by campaign workers from both parties.
At least Australia doesn't have Super PAC's, otherwise this man would be the LNP's sugar daddy...