The Op-Ed in the AFR this morning is by an Anonymous merkin from the Libs.
Why Morrison won by a Coalition campaign insider
From the outset, Scott Morrison correctly made the election about trust and values; which leader do you trust?
Anonymous
May 20, 2019 — 12.01am
Stunned by the looming loss
on Saturday night, Labor spokespeople sought to blame Clive Palmer and One Nation for the far better than predicted results for Scott Morrison and the Coalition, potentially setting up an argument that the Coalition’s victory was somehow not legitimate.
But this ALP position betrays a failure to recognise that Labor and Bill Shorten ran a bad election campaign, and Scott Morrison ran a winning campaign.
Morrison made the election about trust and values. AAP
Labor made many mistakes, both in its campaign and the strategy that underpinned it. Labor assumed that the 2016 election result was a solid baseline, but it wasn't for reasons that should have been clearly recognisable months ago.
- In 2019, there was no “Mr Harbourside Mansion”;
- Malcolm Turnbull’s 2016 “exciting time” election campaign theme built around innovation did not resonate with vast sections of the community and, in regional areas, especially Queensland, it actually scared people who feared for their job prospects;
- Turnbull would not accept arguments in favour of a scare campaign, particularly on climate change;
- Labor’s “Mediscare” campaign was very effective and it had no equivalent in 2019;
- And most importantly, Bill Shorten was not expected to win the 2016 election, which meant there was no real scrutiny of Labor’s negative gearing and capital gains tax policies.
Knowing all this, campaign strategists would have – or should have – known there were a lot of votes in play: Undecided and “soft” voters who were not “rusted on” to any one party.
In the days immediately before Saturday’s poll, Liberal Party polling was finding that around 15 per cent of the electorate was still undecided, and the “soft” vote remained at around 30 per cent. Coalition strategists knew that, as seen in the 1993 election, many voters would not make up their minds until they entered the polling booth.
With hindsight, Shorten made a major tactical mistake not resuming campaigning in key seats from Friday afternoon through to Saturday. In contrast, Morrison blitzed five marginal seats.
From the campaign outset, the mood of the electorate was hard to read. What seemed clear was there was little appetite for either party, but also that voters did not want a minority government.
Labor’s big campaign spending promises did not resonate with the electorate. SMH
The electorate was effectively split into three main groupings: no change, change, ambivalent. Voters were frustrated with politics and viewed politicians as self-interested. The key question then became: How do you convince these voters to vote for you?
All of this favoured a presidential-style campaign and from the outset, Morrison correctly made the election about trust and values; which leader do you trust?
Public and private research had consistently shown that people did not necessarily trust, or like, Shorten, and he was especially unpopular with women, who saw him as an ambitious union leader and politician.
Throughout the campaign, Liberal strategists sought to hammer home this message. It was there in Morrison’s low-key, family-based campaign launch, compared with Shorten’s “ritzy” launch a week earlier. And again in the pictures of Morrison and his family on the front pages of major newspapers last Monday.
Labor was locked into a “big spending, big announcement” strategy. But key parts of the electorate saw this as Labor presenting “retail offers”, rather than a vision.
This is why Shorten’s big campaign announcements did not produce a major lift in Labor’s primary vote in opinion polls. This should have been a warning signal to Labor strategists.
Voters might have been hopeful that Labor would deliver, but they did not trust them to actually do it. Many people simply did not believe Labor’s budget promises.
This perception was reinforced at several points during the campaign. There was Labor’s decision to “match” Morrison’s housing deposit announcement. There were the tax changes sold as inter-generational theft. Party research showed that pitting one group of Australians against another “jarred” with many voters – it's a double-edged sword when many of the “winners” in this battle were children of the “losers”.
Climate change and the associated issue of the Adani coal mine in Queensland was another major theme that Labor struggled to bring home. Voters were concerned that Shorten refused to spell out the economic costs of Labor’s carbon policy, which only furthered the doubts about his trustworthiness and Labor’s ability to manage the economy.
On the wages front, while research showed key sections of the electorate responded positively to the idea of wage increases, there was also an associated concern about what it would do to the economy. Labor's wages policy horrified small business.
So, again, a positive policy from Labor only served to reinforce major concerns about Shorten and Labor.
As in 1993, this election was one for the Leader of the Opposition to lose – and he did.
From a campaign perspective, it's a result that will reverberate across federal and state politics for years to come.
The writer was a Liberal Party campaign strategist.
https://www.afr.com/news/politics/n...-a-coalition-campaign-insider-20190519-p51ozs
