Qld State Election | Facing the worst defeat since 1974

Newspoll points to crushing defeat for Labor

• by: Michael Mckenna and Jamie Walker
• From: The Australian
• March 24, 2012 12:00A 

Anna Bligh will today lead Labor to a crushing defeat at the Queensland election, reducing it to a rump of barely 20 seats and handing Campbell Newman a massive parliamentary majority to launch his premiership. 

An exclusive Newspoll for The Weekend Australian shows that the ALP's base vote has slumped to 28 per cent and that the Liberal National Party under Mr Newman will win at least 55 of the 89 state seats up for grabs.

The LNP is set to ride a swing of 11.7 per cent into government, according to Newspoll, and Labor's woes will be compounded by the likelihood it will lose its leadership alternatives to Ms Bligh in an electoral bloodbath that rivals the disastrous 1974 state result when it was reduced to a "cricket team" of just 11 MPs and condemned to a further 15 years in opposition.

When preferences are factored in, the LNP has 60.8 per cent of the vote, more than 20 points clear of Labor on 39.2 per cent.

Using last year's state election rout of Labor in NSW as a guide, Newspoll estimates that the Bligh government will lose up to 28 of its existing 51 seats, twice the number the LNP needs to win.

However, former Labor premier Peter Beattie said the ALP could end up with as few as 12 state seats and be deprived of its "best and brightest" including Ms Bligh's heir apparent, Deputy Premier and Treasurer Andrew Fraser, and Education Minister Cameron Dick.

Labor's attacks on Mr Newman over his family business interests and donations from developers to his former mayoral election fund in Brisbane - in what he described as a smear campaign - appear to have backfired comprehensively.

The Newspoll of 1538 voters, conducted from Tuesday to Thursday, found that the LNP leader's popularity increased decisively over the five-week election campaign.

Mr Newman's standing as preferred premier lifted from 44 per cent to 51 per cent, while Ms Bligh's rating fell from 40 per cent to 36 per cent. Dissatisfaction with Ms Bligh jumped from 50 per cent in early February to 58 per cent.

Katter's Australian Party, making its debut today, attracted a late surge in support to boost its vote from 5 per cent to 9 per cent over the course of the campaign. Crucially, Newspoll found support for the KAP spiked to 12 per cent outside Brisbane, putting it in a position to win between two and five seats in the regions.

The Greens' vote slumped to 6 per cent, one of its poorest results on record, as its support leached to the Labor Party due to the polarising impact of Mr Newman's success.

His audacious bid to make history by becoming the first person to jump straight into the premiership from outside parliament has paid off richly for the LNP, which has shredded Labor's support base in Brisbane, where it holds 34 of the 40 metropolitan seats.

Newspoll shows that under Mr Newman the LNP now has 50 per cent of the vote in Brisbane, up from the 37.4 per cent it got at the 2009 state election.

Labor's vote in the capital has slumped from 48 per cent to a lowly 31 per cent.

Other opinion polls this week showed Mr Newman would comfortably win his individual battle for the state seat of Ashgrove at the expense of Labor incumbent Kate Jones, who stepped down from the Bligh ministry last year to campaign fulltime against him.

In her final pre-election news conference yesterday Ms Bligh conceded she was facing defeat in a "significant landslide" that would end 13 years of Labor government in Queensland and leave the ALP in power at the state level in only South Australia and Tasmania.

But she was unrepentant at targeting Mr Newman personally. "It's been a very robust campaign and I don't step away from that," she said.

Rounding out his campaign in Ashgrove, a clearly confident Mr Newman renewed his appeal to Queensland voters to ignore Labor's warning that a landslide win for the LNP today would give it too much power in government.

"I can guarantee people that we will be very humble if we win," he said. "We understand if we win it's an immense responsibility that will be thrust upon us ... We will conduct ourselves with humility, grace and dignity, and every single day, if we're the government, we will be working for Queenslanders."

While the swing in Newspoll to the LNP would cost Labor 39 seats if repeated uniformly at today's state election, reducing it to just 12 seats, chief executive Martin O'Shannessy said it was more realistic to use last year's result in NSW as a point of comparison. On that basis, Queensland Labor would lose 28 seats, and enter opposition with 23 MPs, he said.

There would be four independents in the new parliament, in addition to the likely newcomers from KAP. Mr Newman will take office in a commanding position, having increased his lead over Ms Bligh as preferred premier from four points at the start of the campaign to 15 points.

Tellingly, seven out of 10 Queenslanders go to the polls today believing that the LNP will win the election, against just 16 per cent who say Labor will prevail.

Even among Labor supporters, only 30 per cent believe Ms Bligh will get another term.

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