Breaking: Big Election Upset in Australia

[Valin]

Power Line

Steven Hayward

May 18 2019

Australia held a national election yesterday which all of the polls predicted for weeks would be won handily by the Labour Party. The ruling Liberal Party (which is the conservative party in Australian politics because they still understand the historic meaning of liberalism) has been in office for over a decade, and had struggled as ruling parties often do when they grow stale in office. In fact leadership fights within the Liberal Party had left it in chaos heading into the election campaign. The pollsters and the media called it an “unlosable election” for Labour.

But in a stunning upset, the Liberal Party has won the election. It sounds a lot like our 2016 election, no? Apparently lots of voters told the pollsters one thing, but voted differently in the voting booth. (Update: Keep in mind that Australia has mandatory voting—you get fined something like $50 if you don’t cast a ballot—so this upset can’t be a polling error, since polling ought to be simpler in such circumstances. The upset can’t be because of a sampling or weighting error as sometimes happens in our elections. It means lots of people really did lie to pollsters. Good for them.)

The most interesting angle to this upset is that the Labour Party went all-in on climate change. Here’s how AFP covered it in the run-up to yesterday:

(Snip)

Already I’m seeing the left blame their defeat on Rupert Murdoch. But maybe the “message to the world” should be that climate change is not a vote winner.

Let’s see whether this augurs any change in the left’s fanaticism for the “green nude eel” here at home, not to mention the upcoming European parliamentary elections, and a prospective general election in Britain. The Australian result continues a clear pattern: with only a few exceptions, left-leaning parties have been in retreat just about everywhere.

More here from Henry Olsen, written several days ago: “Australian Conservatives Face Their Own Trumpian Uprising.”

[Valin]

Australia’s Voters Reject Leftist Ideas

A stunning conservative win has lessons for the U.S.

John Fund

May 19, 2019

Hell hath no fury greater than left-wingers who lose an election in a surprise upset. Think Brexit in 2016. Think Trump’s victory the same year. Now add Australia.

Conservative prime minister Scott Morrison shocked pollsters and pundits alike with his victory on Saturday, and the reaction has been brutal from supporters of the opposition Labor party. They can’t seem to decide whether Australia’s electorate is stupid, evil, or both.

(Snip)

Matthew Lesh, the head of research at Britain’s Adam Smith Institute, says the Australian election result has broader lessons for American and British conservatives: “Create broad differentiation” from your opponents, he advised today in the Telegraph. “Be the party of lower taxes and aspiration — and never give up. Then an unexpected victory could be heading your way.”

[Valin]

What the Dems Can Learn From Down Under

Given a choice between pie in the sky or a paycheck, voters will choose the latter.

David Catron

May 20, 2019

Imagine an election in which one party promises to save the planet and the opposing party pledges to save your job. Which is more likely to get your vote? For most people, those who support families and coach T-Ball on weekends, the answer will not require a lot of soul searching. You may have, for various social reasons, told some pollster that the “Save the Earth” party has your support. But it’s a lot easier to focus on the environment if one can count on a steady income. Consequently, in the end, you’ll vote for the “Paycheck Party.”

This shouldn’t require enormous prescience to predict, yet it consistently surprises the pollsters. The latest election in which they managed to miss the blindingly obvious just took place Down Under between the Labor Party and the conservative Liberal-National coalition........................(Snip)

The possibility that the Australian election would produce a victory for the Liberal-National coalition was missed by the pollsters and the Western media for the same reason they never imagined Trump would win. They don’t understand that, given a choice between expensive utopian schemes and creating an economy that will permit them to provide for their families, most people (including Aussies) will vote for the latter. There’s a message here for the Democrats, if they will listen. If they don’t, they will regret it next year on Election Day.