David Crisafulli will almost certainly cobble together enough seats to become Queensland’s new premier. He now looks set to become only the second Liberal or National to win a state election since 1989.
And yet election night doesn’t feel euphoric for the LNP.
Having been on track for a landslide win just weeks ago, the LNP looks likely to barely hold a majority in the new parliament.
Crisafulli will become a premier with an asterisk. A premier with a mandate to implement his hardline crime promises, but not to do much else at all, having run a “small target” campaign designed to protect its once-huge polling lead.
Crisafulli looks likely to become a premier with some immediate problems.
The first one, a looming internal reckoning, was writ large on ABC television less than three hours after the polls closed on Saturday.
Having spent most of the campaign away from the spotlight, hard-right favourite Amanda Stoker was asked about her previous support for nuclear power. She struggled to answer: initially parroting the party line but eventually breaking ranks, saying nuclear was something “we should look at”.
With a very narrow, likely majority to protect, Crisafulli will have no wriggle room to tolerate internal dissent. Stoker’s election night gaffe might have written herself a one-way ticket to the backbench.
Stoker is also emblematic of another problem for the LNP.
Crisafulli will become a premier with virtually no support in the state capital. Voters in Brisbane largely rejected the LNP, after a campaign that came to focus on abortion rights. The Christian soldiers still scare progressives in the city.
Queensland is now a state divided. Conservative in the regions, leaning to the left in Brisbane. This creates long-term problems for both parties. But it is particularly fraught for a party attempting to govern for the whole place, with virtually no room for anything to go wrong.
Crisafulli will become a premier who took a 58-42 polling lead and almost got run down by a surprising, energetic Labor campaign.
The lasting impression may be that, if the election campaign had run another week, that the polling slide might have continued.
