Regional Queensland election battle could determine government

Coalition frontbencher Christopher Pyne earlier in the day effusively described his party as an “election-winning machine” but his leader, Malcolm Turnbull refrained from declaring victory.

Following past election trends, counting of postal votes this week has favoured the LNP, and the regional Queensland seats of Capricornia, Flynn and Herbert, which had all been in the ALP camp at the close of counting last Saturday night, are now on a knife’s edge.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Flynn, an electorate that takes in the northern Burnett and parts of the central highlands.

A check on the Australian Electoral Commission website has a two-party preferred pie-graph sliced neatly in half – 50:50 for the ALP and LNP candidates.

First party preference voting after a week of counting shows that ALP candidate Zac Beers had 25,957 votes.

The incumbent LNP candidate, Ken O’Dowd had 27,241, but a two-party preferred distribution of votes puts both candidates at 37,287 votes.

In the neighbouring electorate of Capricornia, current LNP member Michelle Landry had 30,917 of the first preference vote, compared to her ALP rival Leisa Neaton on 30, 446 votes.

According to the AEC calculator, Landry is just 175 votes behind on a two-party preferred basis.

Further north, in the electorate of Herbert, centred around Townsville, incumbent LNP Ewan Jones had 27,764 votes at the end of the week, compared to the ALP’s Cathy O’Toole on 24,333.

A two-party preferred distribution put O’Toole ahead by 348 votes.

Another regional Queenslander, Bob Katter, the leader of Katter’s Australian Party, earlier this week announced that he would support a Turnbull coalition government on supply and confidence matters, and Victorian independent candidate Cathy McGowan made a similar indication on Friday.