I won’t belabour the point any more that the polls were accurately measuring public opinion up to Thursday and that it shifted very quickly as undecideds focused right at the pointy end of the campaign, but this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald by Cosima Marriner and Mark Davis is spot on: Ms Bligh’s victory [...]

… I don’t like to use the term “hegemony” because my hope is that under Anna Bligh, the first woman elected as a Premier in Australia from a supposedly conservative state, we’ll finally collectively wake up to the fact that the Smart State is at the forefront of a diverse and exciting country that’s in [...]

I’m going to chance my hand on a seat by seat prediction. I tip Labor to win 45 seats, the LNP to win 40 and Independents to win 4. Details of the seats I think are worth watching are below the fold, categorised into likely changeovers (the basis for the numbers above), and possibles. They’re [...]

Andrew Bartlett’s review of the Queensland campaign at New Matilda is graced (?) by this tagline: Andrew Bartlett was sceptical that the Libs and Nats could even pull off a merger, let alone win an election as the newly formed Liberal National Party. It looks like he got it very wrong. I’m not sure I’d [...]

From today’s Crikey email: I don’t often agree with former ALP Senator John Black’s political analysis – he places too much weight on demographics for my liking – but I did nod my head vigorously when reading his piece on the Queensland election in yesterday’s Financial Review. Black argued that the same cohort of voters who Peter [...]

Most of you have probably seen or heard about this already, but for those that haven’t – campaigning via brutal honesty.

Peter Van Onselen observed in his now infamous tracking poll article this morning: Labor strategists are rushing campaign workers into the electorates under threat, even flying operatives in from interstate, in a last-minute attempt to turn around local fortunes. I think we’re starting to see some evidence of this on the ground. Emma reports in [...]

From today’s Crikey email: As my distinguished colleague William Bowe noted this morning at Pineapple Party Time, Peter Van Onselen has reported in The Australian internal Labor tracking polling which shows the party in dire straits. Van Onselen states that swings of between 8 and 10% to the LNP are being picked up in South [...]

I observed in a post here at the beginning of the week that the blame game inside the ALP about the failings of the Queensland campaign had started to leak out into the media. Evidently, some Labor types have been bending Andrew Crook’s ear as well, if his story in Crikey today is any indication. [...]

In the absence of enough material for a new round of campaign updates, enjoy the following community service announcements. • This effort from the LNP comes with its very own website: • Labor gets personal: These kids shouldn’t play so rough – someone’s gonna start crying. That said, if the LNP feels like getting too [...]