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Commentary: The grateful state: The 2020 Queensland election

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2021

Paul D. Williams
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Abstract

This article explores the totemic 2020 Queensland state election, at which a two-term government plagued by a deteriorating economy and widely criticised travel restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic was returned with an increased majority. The article posits three arguments: that COVID-19 created a new ‘lens’ through which electors evaluated public policy and that allowed voters to frame public health and safety over the more usual measures of economic performance; that Queensland voters drew on their traditional political culture – especially their predilection for strong leadership and state chauvinism – to evaluate the Palaszczuk Labor government’s pandemic management favourably compared with contemporaneous events in Victoria; and that Queensland voters expressed similar confidence in a Labor economic recovery plan that contrasted favourably with the LNP’s economic platform. In sum, this article argues that Queenslanders in 2020 cast a ‘gratitude vote’ for a government they saw as being in control of both public health and economic recovery.

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Queensland Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , June 2021 , pp. 57 - 72
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021

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