Dictator Dan and the Hillbilly Dictator have a lot in common

In other Anglophone countries the parties of the right now tend to represent the middle to working classes, leaving the upper social stratas to the socialists and woke.

Revolts in outer Melbourne against Andrews suggest some possibilities. Most voters are swung by issues that matter directly to them, not generally grand policy narratives, and addressing these properly can induce huge swings.

Inner Melbourne seats tell a different story, with Greens candidates, and Green-like independents, as well as Teals doing well.

Again drawing on Queensland, an electoral map of South East Queensland from the 70s bears little resemblance to one now, things and people change, and parties have to change with them.

There was also a wrinkle in a handful of seats where ethnic Chinese make up over 25% of the vote. These seats should have been within reach of the Libs, but fell back towards Labor, apparently on the basis of Peter Dutton’s foreign policy. Belt and Road paid dividends for Andrews.

Ultimately the answer is not to be, as appears to be the case now, Labor-lite. Voters have to know what you stand for, and what benefit they will get from it, and you need to demonstrate that they will not, and cannot, get it from the other side.

Sometimes that means taking a risk and opposing policies that are popular in the short-run for a long-run gain. But it also means not appearing to be too radical. The Goss government won by offering solutions to issues that mattered, not by promising to change the world.

Offer competence, and voters will follow as the other side fails.