Australia: Conservatives score surprise upset victory as voters reject Labor climate change and income inequality agenda
A preview of US 2020, where Dems are running on climate change and income inequality?
Australia’s ruling conservative coalition has scored a stunning upset victory in the country’s general election, defying polls that were predicting an easy progressive win.
The Labor Party was focused on climate change and raising taxes, and it appears there were a lot of “quiet Scott voters” who weren’t interested in what they were selling.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten called Prime Minister Scott Morrison to congratulate him on the election victory. He told Labor party supporters that his party didn’t win enough seats to form a coalition government.
“I know that you’re all hurting, and I am too. And without wanting to hold out any false hope, while there are still millions of votes to count … it is obvious that Labor will not be able to form the next government,” he said. “In the national interest, a short while ago, I called Scott Morrison to congratulate him.”
Morrison used his victory speech to thank “quiet Australians” who led the coalition to the stunning political victory.
“It’s Australians who have worked hard, started a business, started a family, bought a home,” he said. “These are the quiet Australians who have won a great victory tonight.”
The Labor Party banked on the power of “Climate Change” fear-mongering.
Australians flocked to the polls Saturday capping a bitterly fought election that may be the first anywhere decided by climate policy.
Casting his ballot in Melbourne, would-be prime minister Bill Shorten was bullish about forming a majority government after a final poll showed his lead increasing.
“Today is the people’s day,” he said. “Be it buying a ‘democracy sausage’, the kids having a bit of a sugar cake or what have you, and voting.”
“In the event that the people of Australia voted to stop the chaos and voted for action on climate change, we will be ready to hit the ground from tomorrow.”
. . . . A season of record floods, wildfires and droughts have brought the issue from the political fringes to front and centre of the campaign.
In traditionally more conservative rural areas, climate-hit farmers are demanding action. And in several rich suburbs, a generational shift has seen eco-minded candidates running Liberal party luminaries close.
If only the Labor Party had used the terms “Climate Crisis” or “Environmental Destruction”!
How big a surprise was this? So big even the NY Times couldn’t sugarcoat the Labor defeat:
Scott Morrison, Australia’s conservative prime minister, scored a surprise victory in federal elections on Saturday, propelled by a populist wave — the “quiet Australians,” he termed it — resembling the force that has upended politics in the United States, Britain and beyond.
The win stunned Australian election analysts — polls had pointed to a loss for Mr. Morrison’s coalition for months. But in the end, the prime minister confounded expectations suggesting that the country was ready for a change in course after six years of tumultuous leadership under the conservative political coalition.
“I have always believed in miracles,” Mr. Morrison said at his victory party in Sydney, adding, “Tonight is about every single Australian who depends on their government to put them first. And that is exactly what we are going to do.”
The election winner touted his coalition’s “Australia First” approach.
Labor leader Bill Shorten After conceded and announced he would be stepping down as head of the party, after losing an election which many mainstream media and exit polling described as “unlosable” for the left.
Scott Morrison, the conservative prime minister, pulled off a shock defeat in Australia’s national election on Saturday.
. . . . Morrison pushed the party’s economic and immigration policies while seeking re-election, while his opponent, the Labor Party’s Bill Shorten, presented a vision that included addressing climate change and developing federal interventions into the economy.
“Tonight is not about me, or even the Libs, tonight is about every single Australian who depends on their govt to put them first. So friends, that is exactly what we are going to do,” said Morrison in his speeach after the results.
Comparisons are being made to Trump’s 2016 upset victory against Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps the most important aspect for Americans to note is that 54 polls in a row indicated this election was essentially “unlosable” for the Labor Party. Until it wasn’t, that is.
So when the Mainstream media touts polls that declare [insert Democratic presidential candidate] beating President Trump handily in 2020, just recall this result.
Here is some post election analysis.
Conservatives everywhere are joyfully spreading the news through social media.
Australian election summary pic.twitter.com/0VG5vUU16Z
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 18, 2019
Brazil! Israel! India! Australia! Trumpism is now officially a global phenomenon! https://t.co/1XU31wh5j9
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) May 18, 2019
Climate change is an issue for people on twitter and TV studios most people in the country don’t really care. Morrison was talking about trade, jobs & immigration, savings for retirement and housing prices https://t.co/RPoFXzAEUV
— Anesu Machoko (@akm29727083000) May 18, 2019
United States
Italy
Brazil
Australia
Who is next?
Perhaps the extreme left is out of touch with what people actually want from government.— Mark Walls (@wcmarkwalls) May 18, 2019
.@LiberalAus Strategist Grahame Morris: When it started everyone said @ScottMorrisonMP was going for the bronze medal, then in the campaign he got silver, last night he got gold and the Liberal Party ought to give him diamonds.
MORE: https://t.co/9NDyNWoPyW #SpeersOnSunday pic.twitter.com/rzN7dXv2KH
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) May 18, 2019
And savor the liberal tears.
Pretty sad result for Australia… with a backward thinker at the helm, they will continue to feel the brunt of climate change while doing little to reverse its progress. https://t.co/wusgcYgy35
— Mark Crozier (@CrozierMark) May 18, 2019
Call him what he is. A Fascist! So Terribly sad for the Planet. Humanity does not deserve to survive this Far Right Madness. ☹️ The USA, UK, Australia and now Brazil?
Brazil election 2018: far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to become next president – live https://t.co/kJFBYa84Rl
— ????????❤️Graham Lebbern ????❤️ (@glebbern) October 28, 2018
Ultimately, American Democrats should take note.
Maybe normal people in real life — as opposed to activists on social media — don’t want to return to the pre-industrial age or to see their wealth seized by force and redistributed to people who didn’t earn it. Maybe.
— Ken Gardner (@KenGardner11) May 18, 2019
And perhaps it will.
Of note to Trump 2020 campaign:
Against expectations, Australian voters rejected Labor party message focused on climate change and income inequality. https://t.co/lQG5iMDrlP
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) May 18, 2019
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Comments
Outstanding! On to the British EP election next Thursday, where a massive Tory loss may trigger a change in government there.
I don’t know anything about their news media, but if it’s anything like ours then it’s isn’t a “stunning” surprise upset but just another rejection of the fake news.
Oddly enough, the conservative party in Australia is called the ‘Liberal-National Coalition.’
And voting is madatory.
More oddly enough, the NY Times hit that nail on the head with their headline “Morrison Wins in Australian Election, Confounding Pollsters”
If voting is mandatory, and pollsters are confused, lots of somebodies were lying to them.
I think there is a simpler explanation: the pollsters – and the media outfits who sponsor them – were flat-out lying. Too often the media-sponsored polls are designed to try to create a bandwagon effect to energize the far left while (in an effort to intimidate low-info voters) portraying non-leftists as worse that Nazis. It seems to have failed this time.
Absolutely.
Everything, everything the left does is dishonest and corrupt. Why would anyone think their polling isn’t rigged?
“Hello sir. Do you plan on voting for the racist fascist who wants everyone to die of heatstroke or the angelic humanist who wants to save you and give you stuff? “
Political liberalism is what we now in the US call “conservatism”, because the socialists stole the name just like they steal everything else that isn’t nailed down.
[political] climate change. It’s ironic that they failed to predict that, too.
When lying to voters is a strategy then lying to yourself isn’t far away.
When a significant fraction of voters take great pride solely in voting for the winner, it is important to dilute the impact of such voters by lying to pollsters.
That doesn’t make sense, if people like to vote for the probable winner. You want your guy leading in the polls so that he’ll get the extra front-runner votes.
But I don’t think people vote much more for the winner. And their votes aren’t close.
Lying to pollsters is a good idea. If Hillary had realized she needed more votes from Detroit to win Michigan, she would have had those votes counted 10 or 20 times, instead of only 6.
Like it or not, we live in the Kardashian era where the nonsensical prevails and that includes people whose vanity requires that they vote for the winner of an election regardless of who that person may be.
As to your other point, conservative law makers never have a majority, so telling the pollsters the truth is just a waste of time. Take the opportunity presented by the pollster’s call to promote a ‘Kardashian’ candidate who will suck up many of those ‘winner’ voters who may otherwise have voted for your candidate’s true competitor.
“conservative law makers never have a majority” I doubt that. The Senate is majority Republican and has quite a few conservatives there. Mitch McConnell and Charles Grassley have been reelected many times, and don’t doubt that the left would spend any amount to defeat them.
So no, I won’t usually tout some Democrat unless I really have a clue who is polling. Besides I don’t know who the real competitor is. Is it Kamala Harris? Joe Biden? Anyone they have would make most people gag.
Gee, the polls were ‘wrong’ again.
What blantant corruption. Who takes the globalist media seriously anymore, except other globalists?
I’m in a not so high plains area of Wyoming near Montana. It was Snowing today. It didn’t last but there were large areas below 40F. Both the temp (low) and the percip (high) are off, but within the normal distribution.
The farmers along the Missouri will probably wish the water was raising sea levels instead of flooding them.
Heavy rain here too along the east coast, and cooler for longer than normal. That’s consistent with predictions for coming ice age.
There’s a pattern here. The polls are often wrong. Everyone is shocked when they are wrong, despite the fact that it’s common. And the wrongness only runs one way. There’s NEVER a surprise leftist victory.
Is it corruption, stupidity or both?
The polls are corrupt, the stupid believe them, so both.
Climate change really isn’t that big a deal when you have to worry about how you’re going to pay next months rent.
I tend to discount outright lying. I know people claim it’s not a sampling error but I think it’s a subtle bias in sampling and computation.
I don’t have definite data but I suspect that the pollsters call a set of responses ‘good enough’ when they get a statistically significant mix of Republican, Democrat, and independent voters (or Liberal and Labour). They then apply some weighting to adjust the sample to reflect a valid demographic mix for the electorate they are sampling. This induces two problems. One is that the percentage of voters claiming party affiliation is a moving target, as well as being subject to biased estimates. The other problem is that people often claim to be independent or non-aligned while still having a strong affinity for one party. I suspect this is more often the case for conservative leaners than liberal ones since it’s still more socially acceptable to openly voice liberal views. This makes the ‘independent’ voter sample a crap shoot, and probably significantly undersamples conservative leaning non-aligned voters.
I’d really like to clarify, that is to say correct, a couple of the memes posted above:
Dinesh deSousa: Brazil! Israel! India! Australia! Trumpism is now officially a global phenomenon! Except Scott Morrison is nothing like Trump. The previous Prime Minister lead the Liberal/National (Centre Right) coalition government on a lurch to the left. They ended up left of centre where the Australian Labour Party (progressives (???)) had vacated for the far left. Scott Morrison, who has only been PM for six months, lead the coalition back towards the centre, or perhaps the edge of the centre right.
Mark Crosier and Esoteric CD made comments about climate change.
“But we ran our campaign primarily on climate change legislation and wealth redistribution, how did we lose?” (ALP)> Frankly fellas, it’s all in that sentence> The ALP wants 45% renewable energy to save the planet. Australia has six coal fired power stations. There are over one and a half thousand building or planned around the world. Meanwhile, whilst STILL promising that ‘Green Jobs’ and alternative energy would cut power costs we have seen them increase dramatically and become significantly less reliable as a result of the alternative energy initiatives already in play.
“Except Scott Morrison is nothing like Trump.”
Sure he is. “Australia First”
Fun Scott Morrison fact: He and his wife tried IVF for 14 years, finally gave up, and then God gave them two lovely daughters conceived naturally. So he’s used to miracles.
He’s also Australia’s first Pentecostal prime minister.
Australia has a huge energy problem. Their electricity bills are way higher than even high rates in the US. People can’t afford it, so when a party promises more of the same it doesn’t go over well.
How many pollsters are really political operatives trying to drive a herd mentality?
I take it the Russians meddled in the election.
Obviously! /snark
Hillary loses yet again.
Does this mean the left in Australia isn’t as good at stealing elections as they are in the USA?