Brisbane Council election 2024 LIVE updates: Counting begins in ...

Independent councillor Nicole Johnston will hold her ward of Tennyson, securing 61.10 per cent of the unofficial preliminary count.

Johnston was an LNP councillor before being suspended and resigning from the party in 2010.

She was the only independent councillor to be elected to Brisbane City Council in 70 years.

So far, 6.31 per cent of the vote has been counted in Tennyson.

The LNP’s Henry Swindon is coming second with 17.44 per cent of the vote.

The LNP’s Tracy Davis is comfortably ahead in the McDowall ward, where 7.45 per cent of the vote has been counted so far.

McDowall, which included suburbs such as Bridgeman Downs and Everton Park, was considered a safe LNP seat with a margin of 13.5 per cent ahead of the election.

With 2462 votes counted so far, Davis, the incumbent, has 59.60 per cent of the vote, with Labor’s Mark Wolhuter coming second on 20.82 per cent.

With 20 per cent of the vote counted in the Ipswich West state by-election, the LNP’s Darren Zanow has a narrow lead over Labor’s Wendy Bourne.

The seat was vacated by Labor MP Jim Madden and the state opposition will be hoping to secure an early win ahead of the state election in October.

At 7.45pm, Zanow was 123 primary votes ahead of Bourne.

While many regard Ipswich as One Nation heartland, in the early count the party’s candidate Mark Bone was running last, behind Legalise Cannabis Qld’s Melody Lindsay.

The Electoral Commission of Queensland has yet to display a tally of votes in the Inala state by-election. Labor expects to have a better chance of holding that seated, vacated by former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

About 1.1 million Queenslanders voted early in the local government election, while about one million voted today.

An ECQ spokeswoman said final turnout for the election would be determined after the return of postal votes, with about 140,000 votes still able to be returned before the deadline of Tuesday, March 26.

Booths closed at 6pm, but any electors still in a queue were allowed to cast their vote.

Former LNP lord mayor (and Queensland premier) Campbell Newman has complained about his voting experience today.

On X, Newman claimed a polling booth in the Hamilton ward, held by the LNP’s Julia Dixon, had run out of ballot papers.

In a statement provided earlier in response to questions about wait times and reported issues, an ECQ spokeswoman said it had more than 7000 staff working at more than 1000 polling booths.

“The ECQ has received very few reports from returning officers about issues at booths,” she said.

“The ECQ will be reviewing data and turnout numbers from today to inform planning for election day for the state general election in October.”

There’s lots of ways to have your say... including in the weekly poll we run for Brisbane Times readers through Idea Xchange.

On Wednesday, we asked if you had already voted and, if not, when you were planning to.

Only 40 per cent of you said you would be voting today, with 37 per cent saying you had already voted, with a further 11 per cent voting on Thursday or Friday. The rest of you said “other” – which I assume means you’re not voting at all.

My colleague Felicity voted on Thursday at City Hall, and tells me that pre-poll voting was a great experience. “It took less than five minutes and the staff were really friendly.”

I voted this morning and saw all three of the candidates for my ward there (along with my federal MP and the guy he beat in 2022). After voting we got some baked goods from the canteen.

Our editor Sean voted in person at 4:30pm this afternoon before coming into the office. He tells me there was a bit of queue at his local school, and they were out of democracy sausages.

Pandemic-era politics changed elections, leading more people to lodge their vote early, either by pre-poll or postal votes.

In the Brisbane City Council campaign, the major parties were well aware of this trend, making their big announcements early and contacting registered voters directly to ask for their vote. For example, the LNP dropped leaflets in letterboxes across Teneriffe and Newstead telling voters there would be no polling booths in those suburbs on election day so “it’s important you consider applying for a postal vote”. The QR code on the leaflets took people to an LNP website to order postal votes.

The Electoral Commission of Queensland said it was not illegal for parties to handle postal vote application mailouts, but voters were encouraged to apply directly to the ECQ.

“The most direct and secure way for Queenslanders to apply for postal votes is via the ECQ website,” a spokeswoman said.

In any close election contests, the postal votes may decide the outcome: the ECQ allows until 5pm on March 26 for postal votes to be returned in order to finalise the count.

Australia Post will be busy.

It is way too early to draw any conclusions from the first 204 ballot papers counted in Brisbane’s lord mayoral race.

But we can confirm that every candidate has received at least one vote.

On the unofficial preliminary count, LNP Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has 98 votes, or 54.75 per cent.

Labor’s candidate Tracey Price has 68 votes and the Greens’ Jonathan Sriranganathan has six votes.

Legalise Cannabis Queensland’s candidate Clive Brazier has three votes, while independent Bruce Tanti has three, and independent Gilbert Holmes has one.