And they did https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/world/asia/australia-prime-minister-election.html Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia has won a second term, completing a stunning turnaround for his governing center-left Labor Party that trailed in the polls for months as a festering cost-of-living crisis weighed on voters. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the country’s public broadcaster, called the election for Mr. Albanese just a half-hour after the last polls closed on Saturday. It was a resounding defeat of the conservative opposition led by Peter Dutton. He began the campaign riding dissatisfaction with the status quo, but was hamstrung by a string of missteps and an association with some of President Trump’s messaging and policies. Mr. Dutton, the leader of the Liberal Party, also lost his parliamentary seat in the conservative stronghold of Queensland, which he had held since 2001. His loss echoed the ouster of Canada’s conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, whose defeat was seen as a rejection of his embrace of Mr. Trump. Australia was the third major U.S. ally, after Germany and Canada, to hold elections since Mr. Trump’s second term began in January. The Trump administration’s efforts to influence the vote in Germany did not appear to bear fruit. In Canada, Mark Carney won another term on an anti-Trump platform. While Mr. Trump did not figure as prominently in Australia’s election, the global turmoil unleashed by his administration has weighed on voters there. ... Grahame Don, 56, voted for the Liberal Party for decades but started backing Labor in the last election. Mr. Trump’s tone of talking about issues was bleeding into Australian politics, he said on Saturday. “This country has only gained from things like migration and international students that they have tried to make divisive,” he said.
