Queensland Election Results 2012

Last Saturday on the 24th March, 2012 Queensland voted in a new government. It was a landslide victory which will go down in Australian politics history and we now have a new Premier, Mr Campbell Newman.

He was born on 12th August, 1963 and is the 38th Premier of Queensland. Campbell Newman previously held the position of the Lord Mayor of Brisbane from 2004 to 2011 and during that time he was re-elected in 2008. He was an excellent Lord Mayor so hopefully he is up for the challenge of managing this huge State of Queensland.

I was explaining to the kids about politics and was trying to work out the best way to explain how we vote etc. About a week ago James had to give a talk on why one subject is better than the other. He chose ART vs MATHS and I used this analogy. I said lets say you had to get up at Assembly on Friday and explain to all the students the reason they should vote for ARTS as a subject. You would have to give lots of reasons why they should vote for ARTS. Then your friend would get up in front of the school and give all the reasons why MATHS is great and why they should vote for MATHS. I said you can only have one subject and every student gets to decide. There are lots of reasons why ARTS or MATHS is good, it's just convincing the students to vote for your subject and the reasons why. James totally got this and could understand what we were all doing with the voting.

On the way to school every morning before the election there are people with signs for Campbell Newman or Kate Jones waving to the motorists so it's right in our face every day. James told me that Campbell Newman was going to win because he had seen more signs for Campbell. I explained to him that it will be how many people vote for him, not how many people are on the side of the road with the signs.

I remember as a child when the elections were on tv they would have the boring old tally room on all night and we (the kids) couldn't watch any normal tv. We found it all so boring however last Saturday night my sister and I were sitting on the couch glued to what was happening on the tv and the tally room. We found it all very bizarre considering how we felt about it as kids. Mind you, this election was pretty significant. Above is the "before" and "after" of the cabinet positions.

They mentioned on the news that Canada has seen this type of landside victory before. Check out these Canadian stats:-

Prince Edward Island general election, 1935, in which the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island under Walter Lea won every seat in the legislature, the first time in the history of the British Empire that that happened.
Canadian federal election, 1958, in which the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada won 208 seats out of 265.
Canadian federal election, 1984, in which the Progressive Conservatives won 211 seats out of 282.
New Brunswick general election, 1987, in which the Liberal Party of New Brunswick won every seat in the legislature.
Prince Edward Island general election, 1993, in which the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island under Catherine Callbeck won 31 of 32 seats in the legislature.
Prince Edward Island general election, 2000 in which the Progressive Conservative Party of Prince Edward Island under Pat Binns won 26 of 27 seats in the legislature.
British Columbia general election, 2001, in which 77 of 79 seats were won by the British Columbia Liberal Party.
Newfoundland and Labrador general election, 2007, in which Progressive Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador won 44 of 48 seats.
Quebec general election, 1973, in which the Quebec Liberal Party under Robert Bourassa won 102 out of 110 seats in the Quebec National Assembly.
Saskatchewan general election, 2011, in which the Saskatchewan Party under Brad Wall won 49 out of 58 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan.