Well, he did it. Bill Shorten snatched defeat right out of the jaws of victory.
Which is all the more embarrassing when you remember how he formerly introduced himself to Arnold Schwarzenegger as Australia’s next Prime Minister.
But, incredibly, not only did all of the media pundits get the election result wrong, but so did our nation’s leading betting agency.
Because according to The Australian, the only other people to lose as much as The Australian Labor Party, were Sportsbet. As Brighette Ryan wrote:
It has been an expensive federal election night for betting agency Sportsbet, which has had to pay out both Labor and Liberal punters.
On Thursday, the agency opted to pay out all bets on Labor, in a strong signal the race was already over.
Over $1.3 million was paid out to those who threw money behind Labor and its leader Bill Shorten, with someone walking away with a $128,000 win.
Sportsbet were obviously not alone in suffering from a bad case of The Bradley Effect.
The illustrious Peter van Onselen predicted that Labor would win 86 seats, whereas Waleed Aly went with a more conservative 81.
Although, he somewhat presciently alluded to the victory of Trump in 2016 when pressed with the question as to whether or not there was any way for Morrison to win: “Waled Ally predicts @australianLabor to win around 81 seats”.
But before analysing the decalogue of reasons why Labor lost, we should all honour Rowan Dean—our leader at The Spectator Australia—who was the only media pundit that had the courage and foresight to predict a Coalition win.
As Dean tweeted all the way back in April: “49-51 As I and I aloen have said for the last six months, Scott Morrison can and will win this election.”
Unfortunately, Dean never really explained why he was so sure about his bold prognostication. But what follows are ten reasons why Sportsbet—and every other media polling agency in the country—got it so wrong. Continue reading
- Image: Courier Mail
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News category: Analysis and Comment.
