Well that’s over and a damned good thing too. FNQ was a strong result for the ALP with wins in Mulgrave, Cairns, Barron River and Cook. The election of Cynthia Lui in Cook as the first elected TI representative is welcome and also may challenge the paradigm that a woman can’t win Leichhardt.

When Antony Green says this is the most complex situation he has dealt with it wise to be careful. The One Nation (ONP) vote in the Cairns urban electorates appears to be lower than comparable regions elsewhere such as Townsville and Mackay.

The Cairns electorate is confused by Pyne who has more in common with ONP economic and populist policy and shared misconceptions than supporters of either would likely be prepared to acknowledge. (Note: Rockhampton is also difficult to assess on this with an ex-ALP independent but don’t know the circumstances).

Among the Cairns urban area electorates ONP scored highest in Mulgrave. This was also among those won by ONP back in 1998. Curtis Pitt way too big on primary vote this time to be any contest on preferences. The boundaries have shifted since with Mulgrave moving more into the suburbs and the recent redistribution since the last election.

Notably also Brinsmead has shifted from Barron River into Cairns with the recent redistribution. Consequently extreme caution should be taken with reported swing numbers at the Cairns Post. We used to rely on Antony Green for this stuff. Sadly the new ABS census demographic data by state electorate doesn’t reflect recent boundary changes.

Anyhows. let’s look at Barron River as the cleanest and most marginal of the FNQ complexities and a comparison of One Nation with Greens:

Pre-poll was the largest single booth component by number of voters. LNP outperform at pre-poll but are even outperformed slightly here by ONP relative to electorate result. ALP and particularly Greens underperform at pre-poll. Both ONP and Greens outperformed state averages in Barron River. ONP didn’t contest all Queensland electorates so Barron River would likely be around or an underperformance of those contested. The ONP candidate previously stood in Barron River for Palmer United Party and scored 8.8%.

It can only be assumed that the Greens voters of Machans Beach were too stoned to make it down the road to pre-poll?

Update: This would appear to leave ON vote in the Cairns based electorates below state and regional averages.

@AntonyGreenABC  #qldvotes One Nation polled 13.7%, 9.7 in south-east and 21.4 in rest of state. Looking only at seats One Nation contested, the party polled 20.7%, 18.4% in south-east 23.1% in rest of state.

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