2020 Queensland state election


The 2020 Queensland state election is scheduled to be held on Saturday 31 October 2020 to elect the 57th Parliament of Queensland. All 93 seats in the Legislative Assembly of the unicameral parliament will be up for election.

Background

At the 2017 election, Labor won majority government with 48 of 93 seats. The Liberal Nationals won 39 seats. On the crossbench, Katter's Australian Party won three seats, One Nation won one seat, the Greens won one seat and Independent Sandy Bolton won the seat of Noosa.
Labor has won all but one state election since 1989, and has only been out of government for five years since then. It lost its majority in 1996, giving way to a Coalition minority government that was defeated in 1998. In 2012, it suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government in the state's history, but regained power in 2015.

Electoral system

In Queensland The candidate who stands for election and wins the majority of votes in an electoral district becomes a Member of Parliament—MP for short. This is commonly referred to as winning a seat in Parliament.
Of the political parties contesting the election, the party, or coalition, that win the majority of seats forms the government.
The party, or coalition that gain the next highest number of seats forms the opposition, with the remaining parties and independents candidates being allocated to the cross bench.
Queensland Parliament is the only state parliament in Australia without an Upper House. This makes it a 'unicameral' parliament, meaning that it has just one House—the Legislative Assembly.
Queensland has compulsory voting and uses full-preference instant-runoff voting for single-member electorates. The election will be conducted by the Electoral Commission of Queensland.

Date

The election will be for all 93 members of the Legislative Assembly. Pursuant to Queensland has fixed terms, with all elections following this election held every 4 years on the last Saturday of October. The Governor may call an election earlier than scheduled if the Government does not maintain confidence, or the annual appropriation bill fails to pass.
Under the legislation, the caretaker period will commence on 5 October 2020, 26 days prior to the election date.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consideration is being given to holding this election as a full postal ballot.

Registered parties

Since the previous election, 2017, five political parties have been registered by Queensland's Electoral Commission: the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, North Queensland First, the Animal Justice Party, Clive Palmer's United Australia Party, and the Informed Medical Options Party.
In June the Legalise Cannabis Queensland Party submitted an application for registration to the Queensland Electoral Commission.
Parties currently registered in Queensland are:

Liberal National

Several research, media and polling firms conduct opinion polls during the parliamentary term and prior to the state election in relation to voting. Most firms use the flow of preferences at the previous election to determine the two-party-preferred vote; others ask respondents to nominate preferences.

Graphical summary

Poll results