Australia - 7 September 2013

[countydurhamboy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hReBMauqhrY

For those who don't know what we're talking about...

I very little about Australian politics, but it seems amazing that handshake could have swung voters though.                                                                                                                                   I know Gillard has been very unpopular and labour have been clobbered in state elections but I'm still expecting, her to pull of a narrow victory when voters are faced with the choice of PM Abbott.

[countydurhamboy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hReBMauqhrY

For those who don't know what we're talking about...

I very little about Australian politics, but it seems amazing that handshake could have swung voters though.                                                                                                                                                       I know Gillard has been very unpopular and labour have been clobbered in state elections but I'm still expecting, her to pull of a narrow victory when voters are faced with the choice of PM Abbott.

It wasn't the handshake alone, it was just what convinced people that he was a brute. For months before, there had been rumours of a bucks night video (which never actually surfaced) and he was forced to explain why he broke a taxi driver's arm. The handshake didn't make people think he was a thug, it merely allowed them to decide that what they had been told was in fact true. I think prior to the handshake, they were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, caught up in partisan mud-slinging, the handshake dispelled that cynicism.

Thank you, very helpful.

[countydurhamboy]

 How significant is first term incumbency in australian elections? Strongest swings to ALP in QLD and to LIB in VIC I take it?

[countydurhamboy]

Is anyone else unable to fathom that, barring some kind of catastrophic polling failure, Tony Abbott is actually going to become Prime Minister of Australia shortly? This is surreal.

It's a bit strange, but no stranger than Howard becoming such in 1996. We then just got used to his presence, but the very idea would have been (was) laughable a few years earlier.

Considering Australia's avoided recession under ALP its even more remarkable.
It seems a divided party loses every time, regardless of any other factor.

[countydurhamboy]

Sky exits have Griffith at 50-50.

Wow. Surely not?
Watching Sky; they are really ramping LNP fortunes in QLD.