But I'm not convinced they’re right - at least not in the way they think they are.
What these commentators are saying is that Trump has given Canadians and Australians the ick so badly that they voting against anything that looks like him: Dutton in Australia, Poilievre in Canada or just right-wing-ism in general.
I don't think that’s what happened here. Look at what’s happening in New Zealand at the moment - the two parties in our parliamentary system that would probably share the greatest number of policy positions with Donald Trump are NZ First and ACT - and both are polling much higher than they historically have.
But also, those commentators seem to be conveniently forgetting what just happened in the UK on Friday night - which is that the Reform Party absolutely swept the local elections in a shock result.
Reform, led by Nigel Farage, is probably the closest thing to Trump in the English-speaking world.
So as much as the left would like to believe what happened in Australia and Canada is a Trump ick factor that they can pin on the rest of the right - I don’t think it is.
I think what’s happened is the same thing that happened with Covid: safe voting.
I think Trump and his tariff talk - and the possibility of a massive global slowdown - has freaked out voters in a similar way to how Covid freaked out people. And when people freak out, it favours the incumbent, because it’s better the devil you know to protect you.
That's why the Canadians returned their incumbent Government and that’s why the Australians returned their incumbent Government.
The same doesn't apply to the UK, because that was a local body election which is about rubbish and roads - not central Government which is about tariffs and healthcare.
So I suspect we shouldn't over egg how much voters hate Trump as much as understand how much he might be frightening them.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
8 comments:
As expected, anti-Trumpism is the new strategy for the Left to win.
Australia will realize this if Labor installs the prospective CGT tax on pension funds - it would be the first country in the world to do this. Greedy Left govts will copy at once.
An interesting perspective Heather. But If voters get scared by Trumpisms and vote for the status quo, what does that say about 77.3 million Americans who voted for Trump in the full knowledge of his campaign promises. Perhaps they saw Trump as the status quo. Which, while a horrible thought, simply underlines the ignorance of Americans about how the real world works. However, it seems the opinion polls are reflecting massive buyer remorse now those voters realise that there is a personal cost to voting Trump. It only took 100 days for the truth of Lincoln's famous aphorism to sink in: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time". Naturally Trump remains oblivious to that message.
It is striking how many news reports have leapt on the anti-Trump band-wagon to explain the Australian election results, while ignoring the seismic shift that occurred in the UK Local Body election just 2 days earlier, when support for both Labour & Conservatives plummeted as Nigel Farage's Reform Party surged. Many different countries: many different problems: same direction of bias for all our media reporting!
Cara: you are an astute person. Not a MSM journo.
You are pretty good at convincing yourself that 77million are having buyers remorse Jonesy. I think the next three months will show that any dip in popularity is temporary while the markets settle down after the deals are made between the main players.
Trump warned this would be a temporary phase as the headless chooks occupied most of the TV screens.
But already the signs are that even China wants to do a deal so who knows what to expect.
I think the people most likely to experience buyers remorse are the Australian and Canadian voters who will quickly realise they have backed the wrong horse.
Too bad.
As a voter in Canada I can tell you that the main question during the elections in Canada was who is best equipped to deal with Trump? Trump is a real threat to Canadian prosperity and stability. It was Poilievre's election to lose. He is a career poilitician and he proved to be rigid, and unconvincing. He also allied himself very closely with Trump initially. He never tried to move a little to the centre where most of the Canadian electorate is. Carney is not a politician and so appealed to many for that reason. I believe Carney would never have been elected without Trump in the White House. Even Bloc voters voted for Carney.
I totally agree. The Canadian election was 100% about Trump.
I couldn’t help scratching my head as I read the article and wondering what Heather was talking about. She obviously never listened to Carney on the campaign trail-he talked about Trump incessantly.
Mr Bibby, you are a hopeless romantic. Waiting for the Trumpian good times is a lot like waiting for the second coming. A lot is promised but nothing ever happens. Trump's 90 day tariff pause is rapidly running out but no-one has seen a single one of those big beautiful trade deals he promised. And no-one will, because a trade deal takes months, even years to put together. They can't even agree on an agenda in 90 days. Look at the talks with China that haven't actually started yet. They are going to meet in Switzerland to talk about what they want to talk about. China's in no hurry because they know that by delaying they can trash America's Christmas, and the voters will not be happy about that. In the meantime those pesky mid-term elections keep getting closer.
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