Poll Position: Rockhampton ready to Get Carter?

Written by CQ Extra Staff

Friday, 14 March 2008

If two local media polls are to be believed, Brad Carter is in good position to become Rockhampton's next mayor, but the growing Brad Carter delegation is not popping the champagne cork just yet.

Our own poll - which posts the question "Who should be mayor of the new Rockhampton Regional Council?" -  has Mr Carter basking in 61% of voters' favour, with 183 votes.

Next is Tim Griffin with 15.7% percent of the vote with 44 votes, Then it is Jim McRae 15.7%; Vicki Bastin-Byrne 6.7%, Gerald Victor 6.3% and Gavin Finch with 3%(Click here to view poll) (In fairness to Mr Finch, however, it must be pointed out that the CQ Extra local news site does not enjoy nearly as strong of a user base in Mt Morgan as it does in Rockhampton and  what will soon be the former Livingstone Shire -ed).

When contacted for comment, Mr Carter said that he was "encouraged by these results; however, I still believe it is very competitive and my assessment is that a lot of voters are still making up their mind."

On this, if our souces are as reliable as we think they are, Mr Carter is absolutely right.

We've heard that the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, has conducted a phone poll of 360 local residents which very much reflects the public sentiment expressed in our CQ Extra news site poll.

In this poll, the numbers we've received reflect a massive share of undecided voters (admittedly, this is an option that the very poorly-worded CQ Extra online poll should have presented) - nearly half of the region's voters will be rocking up to tomorrow's polls still undecided.

Among decided voters, though, Brad Carter has apparently garnered 49% of the vote. Next inline are Jim McRae and Tim Griffin who we believe are each sharing in the low 20% of the vote.

If you're adding up all those percents, you've already noticed that there's not much left for the remaining three candidates - Gerald Victor, Gavin Finch and Vicki Bastin-Byrne.

At any rate, and speaking of percents, we're almost 100% certain that the Bully will be publishing these results in tomorrow's (Saturday's) paper, so if we're wrong there will certainly be egg on our faces.