Friday 20 Sep 2019 | 18:21 | SYDNEY
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The 2016 US Presidential Election

Did ‘elites’ get the 2016 US election wrong?

In a recent speech to the Sydney Institute, Australian Ambassador to the US Joe Hockey said that, just before last November's presidential election, he 'simply could not shake the feeling that the signs were pointing to an outcome that no way ordinary.' My congratulations to Ambassador

The merits of generals in government

As I facetiously said on a number of occasions during my recent abortive run for the Senate, you cannot have too many generals in parliament. Looking at developments in the US presidential transition, there will be a fair few retired generals supporting President-elect Trump. These include the

Is there a global wave of populism?

I was really pleased to see this new essay in The Monthy by Andrew Charlton and Lachlan Harris, because it draws further attention to the decline in public support for our two major parties, a phenomenon which is gradually reshaping Australian politics (Peter Hartcher focused on it earlier this week

The election is over, time to move on

For many outside of the US, the country that is arguably the proudest of its democracy has a very odd way of electing its president. We can understand, just, why the founding fathers' obsession with the rights of individual states led to the Electoral College. Of course it seems strange that

Trump: Not the ideal poster-boy for European populists

Sometimes luck can be so timed as to give an impression of genius. So it seemed with Angela Merkel’s announcement last week that she would stand as the German Christian Democrat Chancellor candidate for a fourth time in 2017.  The announcement itself was no surprise: Merkel’s apparent

Trump's voters will be disappointed by his economics


Trump: An unimaginable president

Even with the precedent of Brexit (similar in terms of the political forces involved and the level of shock the result produced), it is forgivable that most analysts of US politics failed to see a Donald Trump presidency as the most likely result on 8 November. Absent the ability to personally

Don't give up on the US in Asia just yet

Contrary to Hugh White’s argument that we’re better off appeasing China than risk going to war with Donald Trump, we are likely to see a recalibrated version of US offshore balancing in Asia under Trump that will impose added burdens on allies, but will not mean either the careless provocation

The death of the median voter

Conventional political science wisdom since the 1950s has seen elections in America, and in other well-established democracies, as driven by the struggle for support of the 'median voter'. Well-oiled political party machines, arrayed not too far from the midpoint along a left-right spectrum, are

The real Trump-Putin connection

Among the first (and originally few) world leaders to congratulate Donald Trump on winning the White House was Russian President Vladimir Putin. But was Putin also the first to call it? After months of speculation about Russian meddling, nobody is now saying that Putin 'threw' the election

Weekend catch-up: President-elect Donald Trump

By John Gooding, Digital Editor at the Lowy Institute and Associate Editor at The Interpreter. This week saw Donald Trump clinch the US presidency by flipping Florida and several Great Lakes states. Given his erratic personality, the long-term consequences of Trump’s victory are very much

Australia must prepare for an Asia without America

Our first thoughts should be for Americans, and the damage that has been done to their institutions, their society and their national self-respect. But there is nothing to say about this American tragedy that has not been said far better by Americans themselves. So let’s leave it at that. Our

Why Trump won

This is the first of a series of posts on the 2016 election outcome. This post explains why Trump won and provides some reflections on my own journey. The next piece will be prospective on Trump’s foreign policy generally and then one directed towards the Australian government specifically. Over

What Donald Trump means for India

Like all American envoys, the US Ambassador to India Rich Verma has had a difficult job in the past forty-eight hours, as New Delhi gets to grips with the election of Donald Trump. US-India ties, he argued, transcended the ‘friendship of the American President and the Indian Prime Minister’,

Election night with the Republicans in Ohio

Spirits are high at the Cuyahoga County Republican watch party in Cleveland City. The House of Representatives is set to remain in control of the GOP and Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has seen off a challenge from former Democratic governor Ted Strickland, meaning the Democratic party is going

There's more at stake than the White House

The presidency is just the beginning; making sure no authority is foisted upon the people is the American way, which means said people face a very long list of choices at the polling booth. County Boards of Elections exercise considerable ingenuity in the design of multi-page ballots that

Donald Trump: Straight from Plato's nightmares


The gloves are well and truly off in North Carolina


US-Russia rivalry takes the stage


Trump: The GOP's wrecking ball


Republicans play risky game down ballot




The debate that made losers of us all


Some Americans already looking forward to 2020


The first debate: The loser is the electorate


First thoughts on the presidential debate


What they're thinking in Ohio as the polls tighten


Powell not taking the rap for Clinton email saga


Clinton rests, the world waits


Two months to go: It's Trump's to lose


Why the media is getting antsy about Clinton


Labor Day reckoning: Soon it will be time to choose


Hit first, and then just keep hitting


Roger Ailes and the dark arts


Manafort exit unlikely to end Trump's Russian fetish
