‘They were having a go at Victorians’: how the Liberals miscalculated the ‘anti-Dan’ election strategy

As Daniel Andrews suggested, there was a feeling among Victorian voters that the Liberal party had abandoned the state during the pandemic. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, appeared once alongside the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, during the six-week election campaign and spoke for just three-and-a-half minutes, during which he reminded voters of the state’s “darkest time” – its several lockdowns.

It was a bold move, given the pandemic had been conspicuously absent from the campaign up to that point, partly due to fears within Labor that it could lose votes in blue-collar areas worst affected by it.