The Howard Government is at risk of losing seven of its 35 Senate seats, and a dozen or more of its House of Representatives seats in Queensland are in danger after Labor's landslide win on Saturday. Three years ago Queensland's loyalty to the Coalition helped the Howard Government scrape over the line to win a second term. It now holds 19 of Queensland's 27 seats in the House of Representatives, making up almost a quarter of its numbers there. But if Saturday's voting figures were repeated at the next Federal election, only a handful of those members would retain their seats.
Labor needs a net gain of just six seats to win office.
Almost all of them would fall to Labor on Saturday's voting. While the Coalition will almost certainly poll better in the federal election than it did on Saturday, it would have to poll far better to prevent Queensland alone delivering Labor the seats it needs to win office. The Queensland election count also suggests that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is likely to win the 14.3per cent of votes she needs to take a Senate seat from the Coalition - either from the Nationals' Senate leader, Ron Boswell, or from the Liberals. One Nation averaged 2 per cent of the vote in the 39 seats it contested on Saturday. That is only one of seven Senate seats the Coalition could lose if just 2per cent of voters shift their preference from it to Labor, the Democrats or One Nation.