Labor and LNP avoided big issues in campaign

While the impact on preferred premier status was nowhere near as great (41% down to 38%), it still meant that Labor’s negative campaign had worked.

The weakness in the public perception of Tim Nicholls meant that while Adani should have wedged both him and Labor, it only seemed to wedge him.

Both sides supported Adani, but Palaszczuk’s decision to veto the loan somehow let her off the hook with city voters, while keeping her sweet enough with regional ones.

Perhaps if Nicholls had talked to voters about some of the other issues they were interested in he could have done better. Or if Palaszczuk had, she might already have declared victory.

These issues were: jobs, renewable energy and power prices; debt; infrastructure; size and cost of the public service; and unions.

The answers are complex, most with negatives for both sides and with voters being split on what they are.

So jobs can be a product of new mines, or hiring “front line public servants”. Electors love renewable energy, at the same time that they hate high power prices, but don’t understand the two are linked.

Infrastructure requires capital, but both sides had sworn-off privatisation, and they had the same problem with debt. So repayments had to be incremental, and in the indeterminate future.

There are unions the public doesn’t like, such as the CFMEU, but picking a fight with unions might have brought all of them out, and some of them are very cuddly, particularly those to do with health and education.

In the end the only other issue that appears to have made an impact across a broad range of electorates was the possible relationship of a minority government with One Nation.

Our research suggests this didn’t change many votes at all, but it certainly lit-up the Greens and Labor bases. Because of his poor standing it was more a problem for Nicholls than Palaszczuk. Many believed her promise she would go into opposition rather than deal, compared to his undertaking to treat with whatever he might be given.

Newman became less of a factor as the election progressed. At the beginning he had 152 mentions out of 341 responses. By the end it was 75 out of 261. But Nicholls couldn’t make up the difference.

It’s rare that leaders make the difference, but if you don’t run hard on issues, personality is all voters have to judge you by.