Following Cunningham's decision to retire in the lead up to the 2015 election, Gladstone was considered a notionally Labor seat. Butcher won the seat with a 23.2% primary vote swing, and a 25.9% two-party preferred swing in his favour. He actually won 52 percent of the primary vote, enough to win the seat outright, with the Liberal National candidate falling to third place.[2] For some time, it had been a foregone conclusion that Gladstone would revert to Labor once Cunningham retired. The city of Gladstone has been a Labor stronghold for more than a century, and most calculations of "traditional" two-party matchups (Labor v. National before 2009, Labor v. LNP since 2009) during Cunningham's tenure showed it as a safe Labor seat. Indeed, Butcher would have won Gladstone in 2012 on a margin of 11 percent even in the midst of Labor's collapse that year.
Butcher consolidated his hold on Gladstone in 2017, helped by a redistribution that notionally increased his majority from 11.9% to 13%. He picked up a two-candidate swing of 10.7% at the election, this time over a One Nation candidate, with the LNP candidate falling to third place.[3]
He was re-elected in 2020 with a primary vote of 64.4%, and took 73.4 percent of the two-party preferred vote,[5] making Gladstone Labor's safest seat outside Brisbane and the third safest Labor seat in the chamber.
