From Crikey’s Pollbludger:
With just two days to go to the election, Queensland politics appears to be headed into uncharted waters, with Premier Campbell Newman’s grand gamble on his precarious inner-north Brisbane seat of Ashgrove looking increasingly like a busted flush.
If a poll conducted the night before last by ReachTEL for the Seven Network is even a little bit right, the Premier of Queensland stands to be swept from Parliament by Labor candidate Kate Jones, whom the poll credits with a 54-46 lead in her bid to win back the seat she lost to Newman in 2012.
For Newman, this is no ordinary opinion poll, to be written off with homilies about the only poll that matters being the one held on election day.
When bad polling had emerged from Ashgrove in the past, as it did on a number of occasions, Newman could respond with the half-convincing line that it had all been seen before — specifically in 2012, when numerous polls conducted early in the campaign suggested Newman had bitten off more than he could chew in tackling a seat with a Labor margin of over 7%.
However, this latest result puts that excuse to rest. In 2012, the very same pollster, at the very same stage of the campaign, using the very same methods, found that Ashgrove had swung decisively in Newman’s favour, by exactly the same margin presently being attributed to Jones.
…On the most generous reading, that could leave a buffer of as many as 10 members between the LNP and Labor on the crossbench. However, six or seven would seem more likely — including at least three and perhaps as many as six in seats won by the LNP in 2012.
Taking that into account, it begins to look more plausible that the LNP could indeed fall below the magic number of 45 — particularly if more polls emerge to suggest that Asghrove will not be counted among whatever the LNP’s final tally might prove to be.
Comrade Campbell gone and a hung Parliament, surely the final blow for Dead Duck Tony if so.
