Habemus Minns

So, state election day today. It appears that not only has Labor won (Dominic Perrottet has called Chris Minns to concede), it has positively conquered… last time they won an election in NSW they did so by just one seat, whereas if current figures hold they’ll do by about 20 if not more. I took this screenshot just before 10pm from the ABC website:

I’m genuinely astounded by this. I mean, I thought Labor was actually in with a chance for once but that they would still face a challenge from the Coalition and that the latter might still scrape through… but no, Labor is romping home and they’ve taken a bunch of seats from the blue mob to boot. I’m actually kind of shocked by how comparatively poorly the Coalition did. That said, apparently there were over a million and a half postal votes so I suppose that may affect the final numbers… but I don’t suppose there’ll be anywhere near enough to overturn the evident result of tonight, might narrow the margins a bit.

That said, I have seen some commentary online that this was really a vote against the Libs and not for Labor, and I think that’s not entirely wrong…

Quite. The NSW ALP has been coasting for a long time by keeping its head down and not being the Coalition, and that’s not going to be enough any more. They’ve succeeded in reminding us that they exist (with our media being what it is, it was easy to forget for some years there than the ALP was actually still a thing in NSW), now they need to actually BE something. Ball’s in your court, Christopher, please don’t fuck this up.

Anyway, even funnier than the Coalition being given its marching orders is this delightful screenshot I found on Facebook of the Sky “News” coverage:

…and then this even better closeup on Peta Credlin that I ganked from Twitter:

I feel their pain.

And it is GOOD.

As for ye olde print media, this is what Bevan Shields from the Sydney Morning Herald said before the big day (thanks to Terry Sedgwick for catching and annotating this):

I imagine that Bevan is busy wailing and gnashing his teeth right now, and furiously hammering away at his word processor to lecture us on how we all got that ultimate decision terribly, terribly wrong.