Anne Tiernan writes in The Conversation (14.6.16) about why Queensland is a key battleground in the federal election campaign, and highlights many of the state’s marginal seats and contested regions that may well decide which side of politics forms government.
‘There are 19 good reasons why Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten have been spending so much time in Queensland. To win government, Labor needs a net gain of 19 seats nationally– and that’s the exact number of marginal seats being fought over in Queensland this election.
‘Stretching from far north and central Queensland to a cluster in the state’s south-east, there are 12 federal seats with margins of less than 5%, and seven more on margins of less than 8%, which in a Queensland context can be considered marginal. Of those dozen most marginal seats, the Liberal National Party and Labor each have the edge in five, though the LNP is likely to take back Clive Palmer’s seat of Fairfax. Bob Katter holds the other in Kennedy.
‘Our team at Griffith University chose ten of those key Queensland seats to watch closely and we have developed interactive profiles of each one, drawing on Australian Bureau of Statistics population, income, housing and education data.’