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HomeThePrint EssentialScott Morrison’s win in the Australian elections is a Trump-like shock for...

Scott Morrison’s win in the Australian elections is a Trump-like shock for opinion polls

Scott Morrison’s conservative coalition beat the heavily-favoured Labour Party and stopped just short of a majority in the Australian elections.

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s surprise victory in the Australian general election is being compared to the 2016 election of Donald Trump in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK.

Though Morrison’s campaign was not as vicious as Trump’s, his re-election represents a very similar phenomenon — the deep polarisation of a country.

Though the complete results are not out yet, Morrison has already declared victory. With over 70 per cent of votes counted, Morrison’s Right-wing Liberal and National Party coalition is ahead on 74 seats, just two short of a majority. The coalition could just take support from a couple of independents to form the government.


Also read: New Zealand & Australia must learn to manage diversity without anxiety


Announcing the victory, Morrison thanked his supporters and said that he had “always believed in miracles”. Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition Labour party, Bill Shorten, has resigned.

How Morrison defied the pollsters

Electoral pundits, pollsters and politicians themselves are still struggling to comprehend the result. In opinion polls over the last two years, conservative parties have consistently trailed behind the Labour party.

A Labour victory was so widely predicted that 70 per cent of bets at bookmaker Sportsbet were in favour of it, according to a report in the Washington Post.

Close to the elections, Morrison adopted a campaign playbook which has become familiar to the world in recent years. Some of his cabinet colleagues were tainted by corruption charges, so they became unfit to appear in public. Using the opportunity, Morrison made the entire election about himself, a la Trump.


Also read: How Jacinda Ardern’s response to terrorism reveals what macho leaders like Donald Trump lack


Much like the Brexit vote and the US elections, both sides had pitched this election as the one which would determine the very future of the country.

While the Labour party talked about climate change and renewable energy, Morrison emerged as the leader who would ensure that the jobs in country’s coal counties remain intact. As the opposition promised replacing these coal plants with renewable energy ones, Morrison promised the constituents that he would fight against such “climate change activism” and ensure their job security.

Furthermore, he promised tax cuts and a tough immigration policy. In comparison, the Labour party talked about a more relaxed immigration policy and more social programmes.

What happened in the Labour camp

An article by Brigid Delaney for The Guardian described the scenes within the Labour party camp after the results came out. Party members and leader Shorten were gathered at an airport hotel at Essendon Fields to celebrate a victory, but soon the gloom descended.

“Inside it is awful. This is meant to be Bill Shorten’s victory party, but the energy is heavy — as if some trauma had taken place and a great shock was being absorbed… Later people are openly sobbing when Shorten gets up to speak. No one is consoling anyone, because each person here seems to be in the middle of their own unique and terrible pain,” Delaney wrote.

The shock Delaney reported echoed the reaction of the losing sides in the US and the UK Brexit vote.

Why is it a shock?

Analysts say when electorates are so polarised, opinion polls often fail to predict the correct outcome.

Delaney added that the young Labour supporters had become so deeply disconnected with the much-older conservative base that they missed how badly the latter wanted the status quo to remain.

“Citizens stopped knowing each other. The polls got it wrong, the media got it wrong, people were so siloed in their own tribes and social media bubbles that the other side winning felt like a profound shock. Like it wasn’t meant to happen.”

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