Queensland election a tale of two campaigns

Anna Bligh is expected to take Queensland back to the polls within days, clinging to power in the face of a resurgent Liberal-National Party under Campbell Newman. In the final of a series of reports from Larvatus Prodeo, we look at the expected campaigns …

One of the threshold assumptions in elections in a single member constituency Westminster system is that each major party is in it to win. But how true is this when defeat looks inevitable for one, and victory certain for the other? A good example of such a scenario is last year’s New South Wales state election. The ALP, surely, was aiming to save as much “furniture” as possible, not to pull off a massively unlikely victory. Yet, psychologically, that’s a bad place for a campaign to be in.

This year’s Queensland election, now most widely tipped to be called next Monday for February 25 or March 3, is still, in the opinion of most pundits, and no doubt in the mind of the Liberal National Party, likely to be similar in outcome to NSW, if perhaps not of quite the same dimensions. A good example of such thinking is Peter Brent’s latest Mumble blog at The Australian, where for reasons not clear to me, he seems to assume a 10% nearly uniform swing to the LNP (the last Newspoll had the prospective swing somewhat lower).

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Crikey

Editor's Note: Not quite about Coal Seam Gas Mining, but the 2 issues live together ... like it or not.   I live in Queensland and we are all mystified as to when Anna will be calling the state election, wasnt this week cause we were getting back to work.... I thought it was last week... hmmmm....   SQUAWK!!!