Next Saturday some 3.7 million Queenslanders will cast their vote, 400,000 of them for the first time, either because they have turned 18 or they arrived from interstate or overseas.

Even with nearly a week until polling day, the electioneering has all been done; there is very little that hasn’t been done, said, or announced.

There are no last minute election result-changing killer cards to be played. The LNP started with a strong lead in the polls and will end the same way, with one issue dominating – youth crime.

I’ve formed that view from my eyrie perch after talking to campaign insiders from the major parties and based on analysis by Dr Kevin Bonham, arguably Australia’s best election forecaster.

Bonham, a prolific blogger and academic from Tasmania, largely flies under the radar, but his decades long forecasting based on public polling is without peer.

Labor losses

He is predicting the LNP will hold 56 seats, the ALP 29 and the crossbench eight, including four Greens. This marks a relative return to normal election outcomes, not the huge change of government swings in 2012 and 2015.

The Queensland intelligence – from those that do know – temper those figures, but only to the degree that the LNP holds 52 or 53 seats with an expanded crossbench of up to 10.

Not all Labor’s losses will go to the LNP.

Labor will cop it in the neck in the regions and the peri-urban Brisbane fringe – their decade long strongholds.

I still hold that the Katter Party will win a couple more seats, such is the anti-anything Brisbane sentiment in the North, while holding their existing four plum seats.

The Greens will possibly pinch a couple of inner-city seats, McConnell one of them.

I was chuffed that this week my ‘State Election Bingo BS board’ had a tick in every box. All the issues I’ve flagged over the past six months got a guernsey.

Labor played very hard on cost-of-living busting measures (50 cent transport fees, electricity rebates, bulk-billing GP clinics, free school lunches), because that was the one hand they had to play. While the LNP were relentlessly campaigning on crime.

To date, Labor – while presenting lots of vote winners – has failed to mount a sufficiently cogent scare campaign to frighten off potential LNP voters. The Campbell Newman bogeyman has finally been put to rest.

The use and rise of AI and specialist social media genres during the election, especially TikTok, has been a sight to behold. But will it have made a difference, or merely been a transient humorous distraction? The jury is still out.

Truth out the window

Truth flew out the window, with more porkies being told than in any past campaign. We are certainly living in a new ‘post truth’ society. Oh, for an independent properly resourced election fact checker/monitor!

Campaign fatigue has sent in. The forever smiling Premier Steven Miles doing his best whirling dervish impression will need to sleep for a month, such has been his energy leading up to, and during the campaign. He certainly set the campaign pace.

For his part David Crisafulli – who was remarkably on message for a long period, albeit he was slightly rattled the last few weeks – will go to his grave reciting “adult crime, adult time”. We will remember that slogan that’s for sure.

Over this last nine days of the campaign I will hone in on the corporate bookmaker markets for individual seat odds, that will be the best insight into what’s happening in the ground game.

It finishes as it starts. For all the thrust and parry during the campaign, the LNP’s lead based on crime will prove insurmountable. Labor had too much lead in the saddle bags.

I’m going the early crow, God help me if I’m wrong.

Greg Hallam is the former executive director of the Local Government Association of Queensland and member of the State Disaster Management Group