A state election signals disaster for Australia’s ruling party

DANIEL ANDREWS, the premier of the Australian state of Victoria, calls his government “the most progressive…in the nation”. In a state election on November 24th it was returned to power in a landslide. Results are still trickling in, but as The Economist went to press, the Labor party had won almost 43% of first-choice votes (the electoral system allows voters to rank parties in order of preference), compared with 31% for the Liberals, the country’s conservative ruling party. Victorians, Mr Andrews declared, had chosen a “positive and optimistic plan” over “the low road of fear and division”.