The gambling lobby’s failure to seriously influence the 2016 ACT election should embolden governments around Australia that have a mind to deal with gambling reform.
Donald Trump has become the poster boy for ‘post-truth’ politics.
Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
The narrative Donald Trump has played during the campaign is that the elites who have abandoned him or disagree with him are all part of the establishment he seeks to destroy.
It’s a uniquely American phenomenon for newspapers to suggest one candidate over the other.
Patrick Fallon/Reuters
To decide between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, American voters will have to decide which narrative they prefer, leaving the truth to emerge later from the political rubble.
Donald Trump has enacted the paranoid style, giving its ideas a platform and legitimacy, in his presidential campaign.
Reuters/Carlo Allegri
How does Donald Trump get away with the type of campaign he’s running? Why, if he’s a narcissistic demagogue, has he found an audience who respond to his politics?
Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has reportedly devoted himself to mobilising a conservative lobby in Australia.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Mobilising and organising large numbers of voters makes for a powerful political force, and as a tool for change in democracies. Its use is not limited to ‘elites’.
Labor’s ‘Mediscare’ campaign played to an existing belief about the Coalition’s health policies.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
There have been three clear lessons from this long election campaign: the vote is fragmenting, the media is fragmenting, and long election campaigns are not a good idea.
In a historical context, Labor’s ‘Medicare SMS’ was not particularly surprising or even unprecedented.
AAP/Alex Ellinghausen
The idea of hitting voters with a powerful message on election day is just the culmination of three trends in Australian campaign communication that have been brewing for decades.
Medicare wasn’t a major election issue at the start of the campaign.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Daniel Kreiss, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The contrast between Trump’s no-data approach and Clinton’s analytics-heavy campaign offers an opportunity to evaluate the role, and usefulness, of data in political campaigns.
Campaign strategist Lynton Crosby has become something of a folk-devil for sections of the British and Australian media.
Reuters/Stefan Wermuth
Lynton Crosby is the manipulator with the Midas touch, who has a reputation for tapping into those ideas and prejudices that coarsen public life but are seemingly widely held and a ballot-box boon.
Both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten are complex, enigmatic figures.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
A party can have the most brilliantly informed and farsighted policies. But if the protagonists cannot communicate these effectively to the electorate, they will be overlooked.
Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull will be working hard to prevent the kind of errors and complacency that have tripped up leaders before them.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Political campaigns today are presented as products of bottom-up participation, not top-down direction. But even if a campaign appears grassroots-driven, it’s likely to be run from the centre.