Back from the brink: Labor's re-election at the 2017 Queensland state election

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Williams, Paul
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2018
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History will record the 2017 Queensland state election not only for its series of firsts — Annastacia Palaszczuk is the first woman state premier to win two successive elections — but also because it defied expectations. Despite its own lack-lustre campaign, an inauspicious economic climate and the revival of Pauline Hanson's One Nation (PHON), Palaszczuk's Labor Government enjoyed a small after-preference swing to it (despite a small primary swing against it) to win four additional seats and, with it, its first majority in the Legislative Assembly. Conversely, the Liberal-National Party (LNP) lost three seats in a significant primary swing against it, while PHON, after a chaotic campaign, won a just single seat in a statewide primary vote that fell well below expectations. This article argues that these unexpected results can be attributed to a number of factors, ranging from Palaszczuk's relative popularity to voters’ desire for stable government to their disdain for an opposition (and opposition leader) many conflated with both PHON and former LNP Premier Campbell Newman. The article also suggests the election of the first majority government since 2012 could mark the stabilising of a hitherto volatile Queensland electorate as Palaszczuk appears to extend Labor's second electoral hegemony.

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Queensland Review

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25

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1

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© The Author(s) 2018. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND 3.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/) which permits unrestricted distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

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Historical studies

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Other history, heritage and archaeology

History and philosophy of specific fields

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