Queensland politics - should Anna Bligh call an early election?

Wednesday, 28 January 2009 15:46 | by Graham Young

While our samples are done for qualitative purposes, you can draw some quantitative conclusions. This is a good example.

We asked respondents whether they were more or less likely to vote Labor if there was an early election. 38% said they were less likely. How significant is that?

The dissection below gives you some clues.

You can basically disregard the views of LNP voters, because they weren't going to vote for the government anyway. There might be some potential defectors in the ALP voters column, but at six percent they are likely to be overwhelmed by other issues.

Family First, Democrats and One Nation are small samples, and this is partly a function of their distribution in the community, so their views are marginally important, although combined they could be important in a number of seats where small differences in preference allocation could be the determining factor.

Greens are very significant, and could make the difference for Labor, particularly if they just vote one and don't preference them. This is a bloc that runs two-thirds or better to Labor on preferences, and represents around 10% of the vote come elections.

Undecideds and Independents are also quite important. Independents are increasingly important in election results, and represent 5 seats in the Queensland Parliament. Our sample has eight percent declaring themselves as Undecided.

So, the cumulative effect of this is that there would want to be very compelling reasons for Bligh to call an election in February or March of this year. And if she does, voters should ask themselves just how bad things may be going to get.

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