Andrew Laming has been re-elected for a fourth term in Bowman in an election that has brought his party to government under Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
With 79 percent of the vote counted on Saturday night, Mr Laming had 59 per cent of the vote (two party-preferred) compared to 41 per cent to the ALP's Darryl Briskey - a 1.43 per cent swing against Mr Laming on two-party preferred.
Palmer United Party candidate John Wayne has picked up 13 per cent of the primary vote with The Greens candidate, Penny Allman-Payne securing 6 per cent, down nearly 4 per cent on 2010.
Andrew O’Shea, the Family First candidate, received 2 per cent of the primary vote.
The Palmer United Party vote has impacted on Andrew Laming’s first preference vote, which is down 6.5 per cent on 2010, but the Labor primary vote is up just 0.26 per cent on 2010.
Mr Laming, addressing the party faithful at his electorate office in Cleveland last night said the federal LNP victory meant a farewell to the chaos of the past six years of Labor.
Mr Laming said the LNP victory signalled a return to stable government.
He said the campaign in Bowman had been "incredibly competitive" and an amazing but unsuccessful attempt by Labor to try to claw back the seat.
"Not only that, we don't think Labor has taken anything off our margin and that's due to the incredible work of the booth captains and volunteers," Mr Laming said.
"The small booths always run against us but it is the big booths, such as Alexandra Hills State High School and Birkdale South, that go in our favour as is the pre-polling which we expect will be an avalanche to us.
"Our big-winning booths are the middle-Australia seats of Redland Bay and Victoria Point, where it is obvious people have had enough of Labor.
"We have matched the booth results to the 2010 election and even though we don't have the pre-polling results yet, we are still sitting on the same margin as last time.
"The Palmer Party has been an incredibly disruptive force for the LNP and taking votes off the other two major parties but I think the Greens have been the key victims - not necessarily because of Palmer but because they were no longer in bed with Labor.
"From our scrutineers, many of the Greens voters went informal and did not complete their ballot or because they weren't directed to vote for Labor there was leakage to me."
Mr Laming said it was the first time he had lost booths at Capalaba and at Dunwich on North Stradbroke Island. He also lost Coochiemudlo Island and Alexandra Hills State School but won Macleay.
He said it was a surprise to win Thornlands and a "real victory" to win the bigger booths of Birkdale South and Thornlands.
He also said an early swing of 4.92 per cent to the ALP's Darryl Briskey would be whittled away to zero by the end of counting of pre-polls.
The election will be remembered for the proliferation of pre-polling.
In Bowman, 20,712 voters took advantage of pre-polling booths at Cleveland and Victoria Point over the past two weeks and 9503 applications were made for postal votes.
That equated to 31.5 per cent of Bowman's 95,872 voters who did not cast votes on election day.
Bowman Returning Officer Kate Barry said she was delighted with the pre-polling figures and said it had helped with getting counting completed early.
ALP candidate Darryl Briskey said he was pleased with the result despite losing and congratulated Mr Laming and thanked all the volunteers and scrutineers.
With more than 58 per cent of the vote counted, there was a 2.36 per cent swing to Mr Briskey, two-party preferred, which compared to a national 3.3 per cent swing away from the Labor Party.
"It's a load of rubbish to say that Mr Laming has not lost any of his margin because there was a swing against him in primary votes of more than eight per cent," Mr Briskey said.
"Bowman is one of the few seats in Queensland that has experienced a swing towards Labor and on two-party preferred, the swing to me was about three percent.
"The big hit Mr Laming got to his primary vote went to Palmer United Party's John Wayne who ran a very strong campaign and won nearly 13 per cent of the primary votes.
"It's a good result for us and I'm very pleased with it and it shows the caravan really does work."
Mr Briskey said his campaign was run on a shoestring budget of $10,000 and paled into insignificance in dollar terms to Mr Laming's campaign.
