Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wins a second three-year term

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: AP

Updated 7:48 AM EDT, May 3, 2025


MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has become the first Australian prime minister to win a second consecutive three-year term in 21 years. Opposition leader Peter Dutton conceded defeat in Saturday’s election, saying, “We didn’t do well enough during this campaign, that much is obvious tonight, and I accept full responsibility for that.”

“Earlier on, I called the prime minister to congratulate him on his success tonight. It’s an historic occasion for the Labor Party and we recognise that,” he added.

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. Energy policy and inflation have been major issues in the campaign, with both sides agreeing the country faces a cost of living crisis.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/australia-election-albanese-dutton-251063e866513dfa48b773fb4d6b0d29

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Updated source.

Original article/headline/link -

Australia's Labor Party, buoyed by anti-Trump bump, set to win reelection

May 3, 2025 at 7:04 a.m. EDT


SYDNEY -- Australia's center-left government was expected to win reelection Saturday in a remarkable turnaround driven partly by anger over President Donald Trump's disruptive trade war and its impact on the close U.S. military ally.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was projected to secure a second term, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, completing a stunning comeback for the Labor Party leader, who trailed in the polls two months ago. With about 30 percent of votes counted, however, it was still unclear whether the Labor Party would be able to govern outright or if it would need to partner with a smaller party or independents.

Trump's tariffs -- first 25 percent on Australia's aluminum and steel, then 10 percent across the board -- had driven voters toward the even-keeled incumbent and away from his conservative opponent, Peter Dutton, whose policies and rhetoric have echoed the American president, said Sean Kelly, a political columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Trump has absolutely dominated the trajectory of this election," Kelly said, adding that the global uncertainty unleashed by Trump had made "Albanese's boringness quite an appealing commodity."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/05/03/australia-labor-albanese-trump-election/
[link:https://wapo.st/3EBWz01No paywall] (gift)

[Lovie777]

1. Sounds like shithole is helping non RW parties.............

[travelingthrulife]

2. Little bit of a silver lining to this tragedy. Canada and Australia may have beaten

their right wing insanity back.

[OrlandoDem2]

3. The world is waking up to the disease of Trumpism that must be eradicated.

Trumpism is a dangerous ideology that must be eliminated.

First Canada wakes up and votes correctly! The Left won!

Then Australia will awaken and the Left will win!

Europe will surely follow. They hate Trump’s affinity for Putin. They hate Trump’s idiotic rhetoric. They detest his tariffs. The Left will surge in Europe election after election.

There is hope for the future!

[Eugene]

4. and other reports say Peter Dutton either has lost or is on track to lose his seat in parliament

nice

[speak easy]

5. Opposition Leader Dutton did lose his seat

after holding it for 20+ years. Like Poilievre, he paid the price for smoking too much MAGA manure.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Now calling it a landslide - Labor increased its majority

https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2025/results?sortBy=latest&searchQuery=&filter=all&selectedRegion=all&selectedParty=all&partyWonBy=all&partyHeldBy=all

Currently 86 Labor (up from 77), 39 Liberal/National (down from 53), with 15 seats still to announce. 76 is a majority.

Australia PM Albanese makes stunning comeback with landslide win

Official vote counting won't finish for days, but Albanese's centre-left government will dramatically increase its majority after the conservative Liberal-National coalition suffered a thumping defeat nationwide.
...
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told BBC Newshour that Dutton ran a "very Trumpian campaign", and the US president was "the mood music that had a very big influence on how people perceived" the Liberal-National opposition.
...
Labor is on track to finish with 86 seats, the Coalition about 40, and the Greens Party with one or two, according to projections by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Other minor parties and independents are ahead in nine seats.

That represents an increase of nine for Labor and a significant drop in support for the Greens. However most "teal" independents have been returned in their more conservative, inner-city electorates.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9djze015xlo

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Madow Blog-It's not just Canada: An anti-Trump backlash helps fuel Labor Party win in Australia

Opposition to Trump helped propel a center-left party to victory in Canada. Days later, an eerily similar set of circumstances unfolded in Australia.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/s-not-just-canada-anti-trump-backlash-helps-fuel-labor-party-win-austr-rcna204874

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was seen as overtly aligned with Trump, and not only did his party suffer as Liberals held on to power, Poilievre also managed to lose his own seat in Parliament, a seat he had held for over 20 years.

Less than a week later, an eerily similar set of circumstances unfolded nearly 9,000 miles away. Politico reported:

Incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secured a come-from-behind win for his center-left Labor Party in Australia’s election Saturday while his right-wing challenger lost his seat. The Labor landslide came after Albanese’s government spent months trailing the opposition in polling, but gained support rapidly in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s clash with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

As was the case in the Canadian elections, the center-left Labor Party was faring poorly in national polls up until quite recently. As was the case in the Canadian elections, Labor started gaining ground as part of an anti-Trump backlash. As was the case in the Canadian elections, the candidate most closely associated with the American Republican — Peter Dutton, the hard-right candidate who “embraced MAGA-style politics” — not only fell short of his goal of becoming prime minister, he also appears to have lost his own seat.

The New York Times reported that there’s a “Trump factor ... shaping global politics,” but it’s not a trend the White House will like.

In major votes in Canada and Australia over the past two weeks, centrists saw their fortunes revived, while parties that had borrowed from the MAGA playbook lost out. President Trump has been back in power for only three months, but already his policies, including imposing tariffs and upending alliances, have rippled into domestic political battles around the world. While it is too soon to say that anti-Trump forces are on the rise globally, it is clear that voters have Mr. Trump somewhere on their mind as they make decisions.

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. noted in his latest column, “The president hoped his dominance of the world stage would inspire an international swing toward the nationalist far right. Instead, Australians — angry and mystified by Trump’s tariffs — gifted their center-left prime minister, Anthony Albanese, whose Labor Party trailed in the polls only a few months ago, a landslide victory few predicted.”

When this happens twice in five days, it’s a safe bet other leaders in democracies around the world took note