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Anthony Albanese has ridden a wave of anti-Donald Trump sentiment to win a second term as Australian prime minister, just three months after polls suggested he faced a humiliating defeat.
Early election results on Saturday indicated that Albanese was set to become the first Australian prime minister in more than 20 years to claim a back-to-back victory and the first Labor leader to achieve that feat since Bob Hawke in 1990.
Broadcaster ABC called the win for Labor early in the count, with the opposition Liberal party failing to achieve the swing needed to unseat its rival.
Liberal leader Peter Dutton lost his seat of Dickson in Queensland and conceded that his party had lost the election. “We didn’t do well enough during this campaign. That much is obvious tonight and I accept full responsibility,” he told supporters at Liberal headquarters.
Labor needs 76 seats to form a government. The number of seats it will win is not yet clear, but Labor members celebrated wildly in Sydney as the party edged closer to a majority.
Support for the Liberals collapsed over the course of the election campaign. Their platform — which included Trump-like proposals such as plans to slash government spending and public sector jobs and attacks on “woke” agendas — failed to gain traction with voters who have been repelled by the US president’s tariff agenda and aggressive foreign policy.
James Patterson, a senator and spokesperson for the Liberals, said: “One factor we can all recognise is the Trump factor.” He described Trump’s impact on the race as “significant”.
Australia’s poll comes days after voters returned the Canadian Liberal party to government in a sharp turnaround in the polls due largely to Trump’s intervention. The Liberals were running a distant second to the Conservatives before Trump mocked Canada, threatened to annex the country and said he would impose tariffs on it.
Irene Kontominas, who was voting in the marginal seat of Fowler in Sydney’s outer west and backed Labor, said that Trump had played a part in her vote. But she also argued that Dutton had failed to make a compelling case for dumping Labor.
“It’s not enough. It’s better the devil you know,” she said.
Albanese started the day broadcasting live from Melbourne Cricket Ground, where he said the prospect of back-to-back wins was the “holy grail”. Later he appeared onstage at a working class social club in Western Sydney to declare victory.
The election was largely fought in the suburban seats of Melbourne and Sydney where disgruntled voters struggling with rising rents and mortgages, plus high electricity, food and petrol prices, have soured on both big parties.
In Western Sydney, a traditional Labor heartland where 10 per cent of Australia’s population lives, the Liberal party had hoped to gain significant ground.
But Sajedul Hasan, an accountant in Fowler, said Dutton’s proposal to force thousands of public sector remote workers back to the office if he was elected had triggered a “massive change” in voter sentiment, given the area’s proximity to central Sydney and the presence of many people who work from home.
He added that Dutton’s failure to know the cost of food during television debates has also damaged his chances. “If you don’t know the price of eggs, how can you represent us?” Hasan asked.
