The core issues during the US presidential election were cost of living, immigration, abortion and the character of the candidates. These same issues – intractable, incendiary and dispiriting – will also figure here in the next federal election, which threatens to be as close, as unpredictable and as divisive.

When combined with a sharp campaign, the potency of those issues – plus youth crime – was shown last month in Queensland, where the expected landslide for the LNP failed to materialise.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

When the campaign began, Labor faced a wipeout. It calculated it would retain 14 or 15 seats. Now it could be 36, including the Greens seat of South Brisbane.

Sentiment shifted significantly at the beginning of the second week after Katter’s Australian Party leader Robbie Katter pledged to repeal abortion laws. Labor’s nimble campaign had ads running by the end of that week on TV, YouTube and Meta, reminding voters that the LNP leader David Crisafulli had voted against decriminalising abortion in 2018. They warned women their health rights were under threat. State and federal Labor campaigners have no doubt Queenslanders heeded the warning.

Peter Dutton has now, belatedly, recognised and acknowledged the danger it poses to him.

Abortion was not the only issue in Queensland, but it was a big one, intensified by Crisafulli’s record and poor handling. Labor believes it helped save inner-city seats and others such as Springwood, Pine Rivers, Gaven, Mansfield and Bundaberg. They also believe it could have a similar effect federally. So do a significant number of Liberals.

The LNP’s efforts to dismiss it as a........

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