Australia held its elections on Saturday. The Labor Party on the center-left beat the Liberal National coalition (conservative), with incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese garnering a historic victory, accomplishing something that no PM has done in over 20 years–getting hired by the country’s voters for a second consecutive term. The Aussie chief executive position comes with a three-year term. But some are trying to blame President Donald Trump for the opponent’s loss to Albanese. I’ll get back to that in a minute.
First, here are the details
The Australian Electoral Commission’s projections gave Albanese’s ruling center-left Labor Party 70 seats and the conservative opposition coalition 24 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, the lower chamber where parties need a majority to form governments. Unaligned minor parties and independent candidates appeared likely to win 13 seats.
Australian Broadcasting Corp. respected election analyst Antony Green predicted Labor would win 76 seats, the coalition 36 and unaligned lawmakers 13. Green said Labor would form a majority or minority government and that the coalition had no hope of forming even a minority government.
The minority/independent candidates’ wins seem to suggest, according to analysts, that Labor will need to”form a coalition if the final count shows that his party ultimately falls short of a parliamentary majority.”
Some recent polling suggested that many Aussies were shaken by Pres. Trump’s tariff policies, including slapping a 10 percent levy on all of Australia’s imports:
A survey published Wednesday by Australian think tank the Lowy Institute found that over 60% of Australians did not have any level of trust in the U.S. to act responsibly.
Here’s how media is framing the projected election results, though–by focusing on candidate Peter Dutton as a Trump/DOGE clone who snatched defeat from the jaws of a sure victory over Albanese:
After Trump’s inauguration in January, Dutton, 54, who was leading the polls against his rival Albanese, saw a turnaround in popularity after many of his party’s campaign promises, including on immigration, were seen as widely emulating Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
In the lead-up to the election, Liberal Party insiders told Reuters that the anti-Trump sentiment was spurring risk-averse voters to move away from Dutton at the ballot box.
Trump had been “a wrecking ball” for Australia’s conservative coalition, said Andrew Carswell, the former press secretary to Liberal Party Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who lost office in the previous election, according to Reuters.
The NBC News report linked above notes that the Labor prime minister did something wily and very much like American Democrats during the campaign. He played heavily on voters’ fears:
Albanese, meanwhile, refrained from mentioning Trump on the campaign trail, instead telling voters on Monday, “The last thing you need is a volatile government.”
The same story notes that while the PM hasn’t been vocal in attacking Trump, instead making noises about strengthening Australia’s alliance with the U.S., he also has not visited the White House in the president’s second term.
As far as the election Down Under goes, the polls, to paraphase a well-worn saying, tell the tale, with a YouGov temperature reading published Thursday showed the incumbent party eking out a weak majority in the election, suggesting it could “win up to 85 seats in the 150-seat lower house, with the opposition facing a net loss of 11 seats, which would be its worst performance since 1946.”
This is a developing story. RedState will provide updates as warranted.
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