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Labor loses "unlosable" election in Australia

Highland Deac

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In a remarkably similar replay of the 2016 US presidential election, Australia's Labor Party suffered a stunning defeat to the center-right Liberal Party coalition. Polls consistently showed Labor leading right up to election day, but when the results were in Labor had won only 66 seats to the Liberal's 71-72 (76 are necessary for control.) Conservative Scott Morrison will continue as PM.

Some of the comments from the articles about the election are interesting: "Morrison, who is a former immigration minister and Pentecostal Christian, campaigned to keep the economy strong, slash debt and reduce taxes across the board. That seemed to trump the Labor Party's vows to tackle climate change, increase taxes on the wealthy and boost funding to schools and hospitals. "It's a credit to Scott Morrison as an effective campaigner," Warhurst said. "The effective part of his campaign was to throw doubt into the minds of the Australian community about the cost of Labor's proposals." Also, "..there were fierce debates about the rolling leadership turmoil, formal recognition of indigenous Australians, and the treatment of female MPs in parliament. "I think people have become afraid after a very negative campaign," Labor supporter Julie Nelson told Reuters at the party's Melbourne election night function. "They [the Liberals] managed to convince people they should be afraid of change." Sound familiar?

Anybody who thinks that Trump and the GOP will be easy marks in 2020 is fooling themselves, imo. It seems as if traditional liberal democracy is under assault in nearly every advanced democracy, and the reasons are nearly always the same: growing white tribal nationalism and social conservatism, growing fears of diversity and non-white immigration, heavy rural/suburban majorities for conservatives, and right-wingers successfully running negative campaigns while most of their more liberal opponents don't have effective messaging or a connection with voters. Oh, and the polls were wrong - again.

Link #1: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/18/world/australia-election-scott-morrison-intl/index.html

Link #2: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48305001
 
The polls and pundits being off in 2016 has been overplayed. The polling average in the last week of the campaign had dropped to an average of 3.5%, and Hillary won by about 2.5 %, so the polling average was only off by about 1%. But yeah, no one likes taxes, and if you can effectively paint your opponent as a big tax and spender, it certainly helps your chances.
 
“Liberals” need to own/embrace a positive view of cooperation (reasonable balance of individualism and collectivism) the importance and patriotism of paying taxes, emphasize doing government responsibly, etc. And show/claim how it’s irresponsible, ineffective, and harmful for “conservatives” to just prattle on about lower taxes and less “regulation”.
 
“Liberals” need to own/embrace a positive view of cooperation (reasonable balance of individualism and collectivism) the importance and patriotism of paying taxes, emphasize doing government responsibly, etc. And show/claim how it’s irresponsible, ineffective, and harmful for “conservatives” to just prattle on about lower taxes and less “regulation”.

That's too complex. It's easier to say the government wants to steal your money.
 
Don’t forget dead babies FTW

That works here in the south and parts of the midwest. But does that work in Europe, New Zealand and Australia? (I've never been to Australia or New Zealand and share Lewis Black's view that if they want to be part of our world, they need to get off their islands and push them closer to the rest of us.)
 
Definitely some interesting dynamics in this one. Australia was said to care about climate change giving their increasingly miserable summers and things happening like fish dying en masse in their rivers, but the winning party was the one who's ignoring it and doing things like building new coal mines (coal still one of Australia's top exports). Labor did worst in Queensland, home to said new mine. People gon choose short-term benefits over long-range planning everytime, sadly, and Labor didn't do enough to convince of the benefits of their plans to actually tackle the crisis.

Also worth noting Australia hasn't really had a significant economic downturn in 20 years (not even in 2008), so perhaps that makes them a little more averse to change.

Australia still a wonderful country though that is better than us in so many ways, including their preferential voting system, described in super NSFW language fashion here:

 
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