Trump was not a significant factor, and that matters

Post election there is always jockeying to write the narrative. Frequently these are either complete fantasy, or “faction” – fiction based on fact – giving psychological support to the narrator, or manipulating listeners to the narrator’s advantage.

One theory that is gaining traction is that Donald Trump caused this result. It’s an easy story to write, given some added credibility by the election result in Canada and doesn’t require tediously poring over electoral statistics, talking to voters or analysing the evidence.

Two groups have a vested interest in hyping the theory that this was Donald Trump’s doing: the architects of the LNP campaign wishing to deflect attention from real faults and failings; and Greens, Labor and Independents wanting to delegitimize concerns about high immigration, government efficiency, free speech, DEI, education, government regulation, budget deficits, runaway debt, and lack of defence preparedness, that might be shared with Trump.

I’ve taken an early peek into the entrails of my qualitative exit polling and it shows Trump had very little to do with Peter Dutton’s loss. As of Sunday I had 578  responses.

The sample is left-leaning with Labor marginally over-represented, while Greens and Independents are significantly over-represented, and the Coalition is significantly under-represented.  

Out of the total sample 104 mention Trump in some way. This is 18%. But out of this subset Trump is overwhelmingly mentioned by ALP (42%), Greens (21%) and Independents (24%), a total of 87% of the sample.

Sounds like Trump might have been a hugely persuasive meme.

But not so fast. Are these habitual Labor, Greens and Independent voters, or have they changed their vote on the basis of Trump or Make Australia Great Again? They might even be fans of Trump captured by Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots tribute band.

A rookie error in analysing polling is to assume that quantity indicates that something was a deciding factor. To be a deciding factor it must move votes. If it is a clear concern for just one group of voters but not others it may rather be a tribal marker, but not significant to the whole community.

We ask people how they voted last election, and if they regard themselves as traditionally voting for one party or another. This allows us to identify genuinely swinging voters who are the voters who determine elections.

There was only one person who had changed their vote from the Coalition and cited Trump as a reason: “Mostly vote LNP. No longer.  Too many Trumpist crazies in it for my liking”.  

So one moving against the LNP out of a sample of 578 does not explain a swing of 2.56%.

The other issue is the sense in which people use the word Trump. Not everyone is negative towards Trump, nor do they necessarily tie Dutton, or the Coalition to Trump.

So one moving against the LNP out of a sample of 578 does not explain a swing of 2.56%.

This lack of actual influence actually tends to be borne out by the Canadian result, despite even Trump taking the blame for it. In Canada, as per the graph below, you can see the Tory vote held up quite well while Trump was initially insulting “Governor Trudeau” and insisting Canada should be the 51^st state. The turning point was a politician with TRU as the first three letters of his surname, but this was Trudeau. When he resigned on January 6 is when the Canadian Liberal Party’s fortunes started to revive, and the Conservative Party’s to decline.

By Undermedia - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114547795

And during the election campaign the Conservative Party’s figures improved, so that they had their best result since 1988 a year when they won a record majority. The reason they didn’t win this time was tactical voting by left of centre voters.

What happened in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s riding of Carleton illustrates this point. In 2021 35,356 people, or 49.9% voted for Poilievre. In 2025 he totalled 39,585 votes, 4229 votes more, but only scored 45.8%.

That still would have been enough to win in anything resembling the previous election, where the Liberals scored 34.3% of the vote and the New Democratic Party (Canada’s socialist party) 11.5%.

However, this election the left voted tactically. The New Democratic Party dropped to 1.4%. Their total, plus that from other minor parties, along with a 20% surge in voter participation saw Poilievre off, but it would be hard to say it was Trump that did the damage.

The other piece of contrary evidence is the success of Reform in the UK elections. Party leader Nigel Farage is a pal of Trump’s, so if Trump was going to be a factor in an election this was it.

The result was a rebuke to both the major parties. Reform captured 30% of the vote, Labour 20%, the Liberal Democrats 17% and the Conservatives 15%. The Greens won 11%. This gave Reform 43% of the seats on offer.

Reform also won the traditional Labour seat of Runcorn and Helsby in a byelection.

The Liberals should not let themselves be stampeded into some sort of “centrist” party on the basis they lost this election because they were “Temu Trumps”, “Trumpish”, “Trumplite” or any other such epithet.

The real reasons will emerge over time. Hasty actions now, or allowing false narratives to set in place, will make the task of getting the party back on track even harder.

They look like they are down and out for a count of at least two elections, but another lesson to be drawn from both Canada, the UK and even the US, is that we are in a time when politics are extraordinarily fluid.

It would be a bad idea for any party to be despondent, and perhaps fatal for any winner to be triumphalist.