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| Pauline Hanson |
The Labor Party has done One Nation's Pauline Hanson over again.
The seat of Lockyer has been delivered to sitting LNP candidate Ian Rickuss and the preferences of Labor's Steve Leese have played a decisive factor.
At the latest count last night, Mr Rickuss had 33.66% of the primary vote, Ms Hanson had 27.31% and Mr Leese a telling 24.93%.
As Labor preferenced the LNP above One Nation, their preferences have flowed to Mr Rickuss and pushed him well into the lead.
The vote of Katter's Australian Party candidate David Neuendorf collapsed to 7.31%, a massive 16.5% swing against him from 2012. Mr Rickuss had a swing of more than18% against him.
But the key figure here is the more than 7% swing to Labor after a strong campaign by Mr Leese.
More than 80% of Labor voters follow their party's how-to-vote cards, so Mr Leese's preferences shut Ms Hanson out. It was a similar story in the 1998 federal election in Blair where Labor preferences cruelled her.
Election expert Cr Paul Tully said it was clear "Ian Rickuss has retained his seat with Labor Party preferences".
"That has put Rickuss several thousand votes ahead of Pauline Hanson," he said.
In a bizarre twist, the Electoral Commission Queensland made a mess of the preference allocations and last night was doing a recount.
As reported by the QT website, the error was detected by Cr Tully after he noted the ECQ site had the two-party preferred count as a contest between Mr Rickuss and fourth placed Mr Neuendorf when it should have been between Mr Rickuss and the second placed Ms Hanson.
Cr Tully sent out a tweet about the error and the ECQ pulled the incorrect preference allocation off its site.
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