Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: I don't think voters are rejecting Trumpism

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

After Albo’s massive win across the ditch on Saturday, I can see a lot of commentators are tempted to blame it on Trumpism - in the same way they blamed the Canadian election upset on Trumpism.

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.

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